The New York Times had better get some more ridiculous hit pieces cooked up against House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa, because some more dead bodies have turned up in connection with the Obama Administration’s plan to push American guns into Mexico. CBS News has been following “Operation Fast and Furious” like a hawk, and they’ve got the latest body count:
Weapons linked to ATF's controversial "Fast and Furious" operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide.
According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the disclosed incidents may be only a partial list of violent crimes linked to Fast and Furious weapons because "ATF has not conducted a comprehensive independent investigation."
I can hardly wait for the full list of violent crimes linked to Fast and Furious to be compiled. So… what does it take to get the ATF cracking on one of those “comprehensive independent investigations?”
Among the crimes listed by CBS are a “confrontation between the Mexican military and an armed group,” which was armed with two Fast and Furious AK-47s, and “the terrorist kidnapping, torture, and murder of Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez,” whose sister was the attorney general of Chihuahua. She maintained her brother was kidnapped by corrupt police officers and cartel thugs.
The kidnappers released a video of armed and masked goons standing around Rodriguez, which became a sensation in Mexico. It’s possible some of the guns brandished in the video might have been provided courtesy of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. It’s hard to make out all the hardware carried by the terrorists, and there’s no way to get their serial numbers. The gang reportedly had two Fast and Furious AK-47s in its arsenal.
Rep. Issa appeared on Fox News to confirm that his investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has indeed led him to the White House, and he’s getting tired of watching the Administration throw little guys under the bus instead of answering his questions:
It’s not just Issa asking the Administration questions it doesn’t want to answer. Congressman Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) just wrote a second letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, demanding answers about Fast and Furious and its sister operation, Castaway, which was run out of Tampa. Somehow Bilirakis’ first letter seems to have gotten mixed up with the coupons, flyers, and Mother Jones subscription renewals in Holders’ mailbox, because the Congressman never got a reply:
As I previously noted to you, it is my belief that the ATF and the DOJ operated in an extremely misguided manner in allowing weapons to walk across the border and end up in the possession of dangerous criminal organizations. These actions have resulted in the loss of human life and property. I hope that you would agree that we must not allow flawed programs to continue to operate to the detriment of the safety and security of the United States of America.
It has now been nearly two months since I first expressed my concerns and questions to you regarding these practices and reports. The replacement of ATF leadership and a United States Attorney is a first step towards restoring the public’s faith and trust that the DOJ is competently taking actions to ensure the public’s safety against foreign and domestic threats and that it will defend the interests of the United States according to the law. However, at its worst, the lack of response and forthrightness to Congressional inquiries regarding troubling reports about the DOJ demonstrates a disconcerting ambivalence towards the representative branch of government. At best, it represents a lost opportunity to put to rest a troubling chapter within the DOJ.
Reuters carried a report yesterday about the discovery of a black bag along the Rio Grande in Texas, which had some interesting contents:
Agents discovered the weapons on Tuesday on a quiet stretch of the Rio Grande near Fronton, a small community about 210 miles south of San Antonio. No arrests have been made.
"These deadly weapons could have had a devastating impact on communities on both sides of the border and to our agents and other law enforcement officers," Rosendo Hinojosa, head of the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande valley, said in a statement.
Inside the black bag were a rocket launcher, grenade launcher, six assault rifles, 20 ammunition magazines for various weapons and three packages of what appeared to be C-4 plastic explosive, the statement said.
I wonder if any of this stuff is being checked against the list of Fast and Furious serial numbers. Hopefully that’s standard operating procedure at this point. There are still hundreds of Fast and Furious weapons unaccounted for, after all.
