Frivolity with Fast and Furious

And Additional Alliterative aaah-crap I can't think of an A word for musing

Was watching some news today about the Eric Holder stuff, and I have been giving it some thought. There have been very few (to my knowledge - I admittedly haven't researched it) repercussions for the Fast and Furious debacle in the DOJ. A few people reassigned, some ATF field agents reassigned to desk jobs (which makes it look more like they're being kept quiet then being disciplined - that is how it would look to a casual observer, myself included), not much else.

Holder is not terribly forthcoming (but who would be given the typical grilling one gets by congress - very supportive by your supporters, very antagonistic by your antagonizers - why should that be surprising), but the lack of anyone getting fired really is causing him problems. Virtually everyone in a position of power has a sacrificial lamb that they throw under the bus at this point (to carelessly mix metaphors) or at least a devotee to fall on his sword - yeah, 3 death metaphors in one sentence.

That is why it seems that we are left with one of two options - either Holder is the first ethical man in power, unwilling to let heads roll to take the heat off of him (doubtful) or he doesn't want to fire someone who could potentially implicate him.

Occam's Razor forces me to choose the latter option since an honest man in a political position is rarer than ... I don't know what, honest political figures are my bellwether for rarity - I usually use them to compare rarity of other items, like a mint condition Alpha Black Lotus.

The real problem is that I find it unlikely that he knew nothing, in which case he lied to Congress, and if he did not know, then he is incompetent (ignoring reports to him) or not in control (just never notified). None of those are good options. Considering the emails that have gone around with the words "gun walking" or the like, it is unlikely that he knew nothing of guns being allowed into the hands of criminals.

And before anyone uses the "Bush Administration did it too" argument, I'd like to point out a couple of things:

• First, one administrations mistakes does not give the next licence to continue those mistakes (yeah, yeah, two wrongs don't make a right). If it did nothing would ever change, we would still have slavery, wage controls, price controls, no income tax, the Vietnam Conflict (dare-I-say War), etc., etc., etc.


• Second, there are quite a few differences between the policies - Operation Wide Receiver was a monumental failure and was cancelled as I will detail below.

Differences between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious:

1. Wide Receiver installed RFID chips in the guns so that they could track and arrest gunrunners before the guns got into the hands of the cartels, Fast and Furious had no protocol for monitoring the guns electronically.


2. Wide Receiver never intended for guns to cross the border but still alerted Mexican authorities to the potential, Fast and Furious intended for the guns to cross the border and never alerted the Mexican government (putting Mexican government agents at risk). One could argue that the level of corruption in the Mexican government makes this a bonus for Fast and Furious, but anytime you are having a law enforcement effort that actually crosses a border, you should alert the other country.


3. Wide Receiver was stopped by the ATF when it proved a monumental failure (the cartels took steps to deal with the RFIDs) and prosecutions still resulted - it was stopped in a relatively timely fashion and did not require a whistle blower or a death to occur, while Fast and Furious, well, we all know when and why that stopped, and no one has been prosecuted because the ATF seems to have lost track of the guns sold.

There would not be as much furor had the program been stopped before the death (there still would be anger, but seeing that the program had been recognized as faulty and stopped first would likely have mitigated much of it). 400 guns got away in Wide Receiver, 2000+ in Fast and Furious. The real problem was the intent - the former never intended guns to get into Mexico, it was to find the straw purchasers and the people for whom they purchased. The latter targeted higher ups in the cartels (a laudable goal) but at significantly higher risk (intentionally putting guns into the hands of criminals on a semi-permanent to permanent basis). A basic risk analysis seems to say that the latter option is a bad idea, especially if you have the previous experience (wide receiver) from which to learn.