Libya ... the plot thickens

[Gerry Clinchy]

Are you really surprised by this? This is nothing new in terms of long term American policy. The US has been and continues to be, by far, the largest supplier of military weapons to the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry). The fact that some of these weapons end up in the wrong hands is nothing new. How selective do you want the U.S. and U.S arms dealers to be when selling their Billions of dollars of weapons to foreign entities each year?

Also, you do realize that policies that led to the fast and furious operation started in 2006 under the Bush administration, right?

No, Henry, I am not surprised, it is historical fact that the US has dealt in supplying arms for many years in the past. However, hasn't it been Obama's mantra that he is so much smarter about foreign policy; and so much more transparent; that he disavows policies of the past ... etc. He went right ahead doing the same thing. If there is a connection between this and Benghazi, it also means that he was anything but transparent about continuing those policies of which he is/was so critical.

Second, the Bush operation ("Wide Receiver") was shut down long before F&F began ... when they realized it wasn't working, they shut it down. And that operation had even used tracking devices on the guns. The bad guys figured it out, and were removing the tracking devices, and the guns were "lost". So the operation was terminated. The #s of guns involved were much less than F&F distributed ... and F&F had no effective provisions for tracking the guns. F&F was separate and distinct from the Bush operation. And, guess one might say it was pretty much dumber, since they already knew about the failure of Wide Receiver. And would the F&F operation still be going on if someone of conscience at the field level had not blown the whistle on it? You may recall there were emails that hinted that the flaws in the operation that allowed these guns to be used in violence & traced back to the US might carry some collateral benefit to the cause of stricter gun control. Makes me wonder if anybody even cared about catching any of the bad guys or a few dead Mexicans as long as the gun control agenda could be advanced.

Nope, not at all surprising to me or you that some (many? most?) of the arms end up in the hands of the wrong people. Evidently, however, it WAS a surprise to Obama (according to the Times article).

[starjack]

nobody cares except you guys that want to make the potus look bad....nobody cares about lidya

dont even think of calling yourself an american.

[starjack]

Nobody cares except you guys that want to make the POTUS look bad....nobody cares about Lidya

You know i should of expected nothing less from the most classless person on this forum

[BonMallari]

Nobody cares except you guys that want to make the POTUS look bad....nobody cares about Lidya

That's about the coldest and most calloused statements I have ever witnessed here on POTUS...and somehow not surprised as to its originator

[Gerry Clinchy]

There you go again........ let me dumb it down for you, Google "wide receiver gun walking", even your beloved FoxNews covered it.

Here I'll dumb it down for you further, here's a link. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...gun-operation/

Are you and Rush dipping from the same prescription bottle?

From the article you cited:

Wide Receiver was an operation during the Bush administration similar to Fast and Furious under the Obama administration where illegally purchased weapons entered Mexico instead of being stop by ATF. Under Wide Receiver, which ran from 2006 to the end of 2007, the ATF recruited a gun dealer to sell some 450 assault rifles to known straw buyers and then watched as many of those guns crossed the Mexican border.

Under Fast and Furious, more than 2,000 illegally purchased guns were not tracked, with many crossing into Mexico. Public outcry over Fast and Furious was ignited when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down last December. Two of the guns recovered at the scene were later traced to Fast and Furious.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...#ixzz2ETHPkqJ0

Wide Receiver ENDED in 2007, which would have been two years before the current administration took office. I don't recall the exact date that F&F was initiated.

Certainly there was SOMEone left in ATF who could have remembered that Wide Receiver failed, and that to do the same thing all over again, with even less "control" over the guns, was just plain dumb.

The fact that those who were involved will still receive their pensions is an insult to a rational mind, IMO.

[mngundog]

If I'm not mistaken - R's & D's alike believed they were there - So what info did GW have that he failed to pass on????????

Two months after the war began Bush went on TV and declared:

"We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories," "For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."

This wasn't speculation, he said that we found things that never existed and later he admitted they were never found.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Interesting comment by Mark Levin about the WMDs ... back when no WMDs were found in Iraq, Levin had speculated that Sadaam had moved them to Syria. It's kind of interesting that now Syria is mixing up WMDs, but no one has made any reference to where Assad got the stuff.

Very disturbing that Assad has not denied the allegations of mixing up sarrin gas, and has said that he does not intend to use such stuff on his own people. If I were one of Assad's unfriendly neighbors, I'd be very uncomfortable right now. In fact, the way things go in the ME, even if I were one of his friendly neighbors I wouldn't be feeling very comfortable either.

[Buzz]

Nobody cares except you guys that want to make the POTUS look bad....nobody cares about Lidya

Actually, there was a good interview on Fox News about this very issue. I have posted it a couple different places here on POTUS, but so far, no comments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNUJ_Ce5O0

[huntinman]

Actually, there was a good interview on Fox News about this very issue. I have posted it a couple different places here on POTUS, but so far, no comments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNUJ_Ce5O0

Maybe because everyone on the board knows how you feel about Fox News. It actually surprising you even deign to call it Fox News instead of your pet name for it. So are you saying you agree with menmon? You don't care about the folks killed in Benghazi either?