Fast and furious administration

It’s been a little more than a week since President Obama’s Fast and Furious scandal started to gain traction, and I’m still reeling from it. For those who don’t know, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives recently came under fire for creating a gun-walking operation called Operation Fast and Furious.

Basically, the ATF was attempting to hunt down some upper-level gun runners and drug dealers in northern Mexico by selling marked guns that could later be traced back to these people. This isn’t the first time the ATF has done something like this, but it is the first time it has been met with such a disastrous outcome.

Of the 2,000 guns the ATF originally distributed, only 700 have been recovered, none of which were found on high-profile suspects. But this isn’t even the worst part of it.

Not only did we lose about 1,300 guns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, a region known for violent drug cartels, but these guns have actually started to show up at crime scenes across the region. They’ve been linked to the deaths of many Mexican citizens and at least one U.S. border patrol officer. So, why does this involve President Obama? Well, certain testimony from ATF officers, as well as certain documents, pointed to the White House knowing that this operation was in full effect.

Of course, this all would have been cleared up quite easily had President Obama stuck to his original campaign promise of full transparency. But, like the true politician he is, President Obama enacted his first use of his executive power Wednesday to stifle documents that might lead this operation back to his administration.

Now, I’m pretty pissed off that this all happened without the ATF even attempting to inform local Mexican government officials. And I’m extremely disturbed  my government used tax dollars to help fund Mexican drug cartel terrorism.

But what really gets me is that my president literally has a legal get-out-of-jail-free card. Whether he knew about this operation is a completely moot point now, as he’s allowing those who did a free pass from further investigation.

He’s attempting to let people who caused the death of a U.S. federal officer go free just so he doesn’t have to answer some embarrassing questions.

Not only does that make him a liar, but it makes him a coward, and we cannot let something like this be swept under the rug.

­— kevsjack@indiana.edu