New E-Mails Released By White House on “Fast and Furious” [2]
According to CBS News, new e-mails released by the White House on Friday (and very quietly done, I should add) beg more questions from this White House and other departments that new about this operation. What did the White House REALLY know about this operation, and who in the White House did anything to try to stop in from happening? In a case like this, you would have a hard time trying to convince me that no high level Administration officials knew anything about this, and that it never came up in conversation with the President of the United States. While there is no proof of that just yet, that does not mean it did not happen and the people want to know the truth about this operation. If these e-mails did anything, they sparked the interest of more Congressional investigation and more questions not only on “Fast and Furious” but also an operation known internally as “Wide Receiver”.
We now know that “Fast and Furious” was not the first operation where agents for the government allowed guns to “walk”. In the e-mails that were released about the Fast and Furious scandal, there is no mention to allowing guns to be given and allowed to leave the country. If the ATF allowed guns to leave the country in “Wide Receiver”, then why should we not assume that it happened again in Fast and Furious? The bigger question here is who allowed this to happen, and did the Justice Department sign off on allowing guns to be given to drug cartels and taken back over the Mexican border? If this is the case, there needs to be some explaining not only from DOJ but from the AFT and also the White House on what they knew about these operations.
We have to back up and hit the more internal problem with these operations, and that is they make no sense what so ever. To a person sitting back in their home and looking at these investigations, the only questions is “why would our government give out guns to known criminals, only for them to be used, possibly, against America in general or American citizens, at the very least? This is what the American people are wondering, and we want to hear answers. But like every other investigation that takes place, people are stonewalling the investigation. One man, Kevin O’Reilly, is one of the men in the e-mails that were released by the White House on Friday. When Congressional members have asked to speak with him, the White House says he is out of the country (Iraq) and not able to speak with Congress son this matter. Does that not seem to be a little odd to all of you out there? The one man who may be able to shed some light on these operations from a White House standpoint is out of the country and has no plans to come back any time soon? I see it to be a little bit out of the ordinary, but this is nothing new in politics. When you do not want someone to testify, you send them out of the country and bring them back when it all blows over. The problem is that this is not going to blow over anytime soon, and soon enough the people will be asking more questions about what the White House knew and when they knew it.
There are still so many unanswered questions when it comes to Fast and Furious, and we have not even scrapped the bottom of the barrel yet to see the true story behind what the ATF has done in this case. What would posses a government entity to allow this to happen to weapons? These weapons have already been associated with the killing of an American citizen, and someone needs to take responsibility for that. Firing the head of ATF and not answering questions as if this will blow over is just not good enough when the American people are looking for answers. This would be an even bigger story than it is if it was not for the media, who in large part, does not want to talk about it. You may hear something about it here and there, but for the most part they are as silent as the government is when it comes to what really happened to these weapons and why it was done in the first place. This is what happens when we allow the government to do as they wish. Intentions may be good in many cases, but I cannot see a good intention here in this case. The only losers are those who are now staring down the barrel of guns that were released by this government to try and, well, I am not so sure what they were trying to do.
If we really start to make an issue of this and start asking questions whenever we can about this program, maybe, just maybe, we can get the media and even the White House to explain to the people what was allowed to be done in this case. While the White House MAY have been kept in the dark about the inter-workings of this program and what was being done, someone knew about it and allowed it to happen. Those people need to explain themselves and be truthful to the American people. I cannot imagine DOJ having no knowledge of this program and what was being done. It just does not make sense. They are there to make sure these programs are at least somewhat legit and have legal purposes to support them. To say DOJ would have found a legal reason to hand off guns that would “walk” is a little hard for me to believe. On the other hand, high ranking officials in DOJ are pretty hush-hush on this program, so that may tell us something right there.
Whatever the reasoning was behind the programs that allowed guns to walk into the hands of criminals, the American people demand and deserve an explanation to what happened in this case. I understand there are some programs that need not be talked about, and for the most part I am fine with that. If the program had something to do with national security and the whistle was going to be blown on informants, I may take a different opinion on this matter. But since it seems this was done for illogical reason and the DOJ and Administration want no part of answering questions, the people have more reason to believe that there is a much bigger story behind the walls in Washington. We need to see the facts first, of course, but from where I am sitting the White House looks like it knew more and knows more than they may be letting on. These e-mails, at the very least, show that someone in the White House knew about at least one of these missions and what was going on. When American civilians and also border agents are put at a disadvantage in trying to protect the homeland, the government and the family of these agents deserve an explanation. Not only that, but the people in general deserve to know why weapons were allowed to be shipped off to drug cartels when we would have to know what they would be used for.
