A few months ago, Sandra Fluke testified before Congress in indignation about having to pay for her own contraceptives. Barack Obama called her personally on the phone to offer his condolences and support for her sacrifice and her worthy cause. Meanwhile, the family of Brian Terry, the Border Patrol agent who was brutally murdered with one of the assault weapons sent to Mexico under Attorney General Holder’s Justice Department “Fast and Furious” program has never received any such call. An almost mumbled (according to the parents) "sorry" call that was placed to them at the funeral of their son by the White House was all they got.
In order to provide a condensed version of what exactly took place here, I’ll try to capsule the series of events that led to the final intervention by President Obama on Attorney General Eric Holder’s behalf.
The stated goal of “Fast and Furious” which technically ran from 2009 – 2011, was to let over 2000 weapons, to include assault weapons, 50. Caliber weapons, sniper weapons, etc. in the U.S. “walk” (via gun smugglers) through the U.S. border to Mexico. The “logic” here was that these weapons could then be tracked to high profile drug dealers. The problem with that logic (just for starters) was that there was no real way to track those weapons. Further, the Mexican government had not even been informed about the operation. When they DID find out about it the Mexican ambassador to the United States was quoted as saying that Fast and Furious showed an “outstanding lack of understanding of how criminal organizations are operating on both sides of our common borders.” Meanwhile, the killing spree resulting from these weapons making their way to some seriously bad people in Mexico resulted in an estimated several hundred deaths of innocent people, and the murder of agent Terry. His body, along with two of the assault weapons from the operation was found along the U.S. and Mexico border in December of 2010. When all the gun smoke had cleared, this operation resulted in charges against 20 people, not a single one of them drug cartel leaders.
Meanwhile Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News uncovered emails from inside the Department of Justice that indicated that Obama Administration officials were planning to use the consequences of Fast and Furious to further a gun-control agenda back in the U.S. by arguing for new rules about gun sales. So, my friends, as John McCain might say, there they were advocating more gun control in the U.S. while our own government was sending assault weapons south of the border to further that cause. People forget that in 1995, Eric Holder had stated that “We must brainwash people to be against guns.”
Attorney General Eric Holder needs to be held accountable for Fast and Furious.. Period. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) who is the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R- Iowa) of the Senate Judiciary Committee have been attempting for well over a year and half to do just that. Therein lays the problem. Through a series of admissions, stonewalling, then retractions, then denials of knowing anything at all about Fast and Furious, then lies, then more admissions of “hey maybe we did know about that”, then “losing” over 10,000 documents, then more stonewalling, Eric Holder has dragged out these hearings for well over a year while never providing the actual documentation that Rep. Issa was asking for. Holder was more than happy to provide hundreds of documents, just not the specific ones that were requested. He did this under the guise of “cooperation” with the investigation. Meanwhile at a press conference, although he did express regret for Agent Terry’s death Mr. Holder never had the class to call the Terry family personally to express those regrets. The short "sorry" at the funeral was all his boss could offer up.. Terry's parents said that they could barely make out what he was saying, and it didn't last long. In the end, calling the $50,000.00 in tuition per year Georgetown student who was too broke to buy her own birth control and using it as a political tool to proclaim the "war on women" was much.......much more important than the life of a border agent who was gunned down in cold blood with weapons provided by our own government while protecting his country. Ten months after their son was gunned down, Brian Terry's parents received a letter from Eric Holder simply saying he was "sorry for their loss".
On June 20th, 2012, Eric Holder became the first Obama Administration official to be held in contempt of Congress by a vote of 23 – 17 along strict party lines. Just minutes prior to this, President Obama, at Holder’s request , stepped in to claim Executive Privilege on the documents that Rep. Issa was requesting. The legality of Obama's order aside, the Obama Administration may have bit off more than they can chew here without even realizing it. Now for the first time, by Obama’s own admission, the trail of lies and knowledge of the Fast and Furious operation could lead not only upward past Holder’s desk but to the White House itself. Obama’s claim of Executive Privilege certainly seems to indicate that reports of the operation were prepared for his eyes, whether or not he actually ever read them. If a full vote of the House grants Rep. Issa the authority to request outside counsel to take this to Federal Court, we could be in for a very informative and interesting ride indeed. Some people are already comparing this to Watergate, but we must remember that Watergate was the result of a petty break-in , resulting in cover-ups by the Nixon Administration. With Eric Holder trying his very best to become the most corrupt hack of an Attorney General since John Mitchell, and with the murder of a Federal Agent thrown in to boot, this is much more than a petty burglary. Stay tuned.