An Update On Fast And Furious

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article yesterday with some new details on Operation Fast and Furious. The New York Post has reported that the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) ordered one of its agents to buy weapons with taxpayer money and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

The article reports:

Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork.

This is no way to run a country. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that Fast and Furious guns turned up in El Paso, Texas in January 2010.

The article at Hot Air speculates on why the Fast and Furious was allowed to continue after it became obvious that the operation was out of control. There are two possible reasons:

1.  The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

Or:

2. A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

The article at Hot Air suggests that it may be a combination of the two. At any rate, it would be nice to see someone in the government held accountable for this horrible operation.

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