'Botched' Reporting

By Jeff Lipkes

The papers of record continue to whistle in the dark. The day after Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, still doggedly refer to Fast and Furious as a "botched" operation.

Wapo:

Agents did not interdict weapons they suspected of being purchased at Arizona gun shops by illegal buyers known as "straw purchasers." Instead, they planned on tracking them through the pipelines being used to deliver firearms to a Mexican drug cartel.

Last year, a Justice Department official told lawmakers in a letter that the ATF had not ever "sanctioned" or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico. Ten months later, the Justice Department withdrew the letter, acknowledging the botched operation.

WSJ:

The House voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt of Congress in a dispute that began over a botched federal gun-trafficking probe but has become a test of political wills.

NYT:

The politically and constitutionally charged dispute centered on whether the Justice Department must turn over e-mails and memorandums showing its internal deliberations last year about the botched Arizona-based gunrunning investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. President Obama has invoked executive privilege to block the subpoena.

As anyone who has spent 10 minutes researching the subject now knows, there was no surveillance of the gun purchasers known to be buying on behalf of drug cartels, nor was the Mexican government informed. These are not little oversights. There was simply no way to track the weapons. The guns could be traced only if they were abandoned at the scene of a crime, or seized in a raid.

Fast and Furious only makes sense as an attempt to beef up the disappointing numbers of U.S. guns that wind up in the hands of Mexican drug dealers. It was a "botched" operation only insofar as the administration didn't count on some ATF staffers coming forward with the truth.

We don't refer to 9/11 as a botched attempt by Muslims to land planes at JFK and Dulles. Let's work on getting the MSM to retire this word.

The NYT, incidentally, removed the story from its home page today. You need to scroll down, click on "U.S.," then scroll down again to "More News" and click again. Then you're rewarded with a picture of the Democratic press conference protesting the vote. The WSJ and the Wapo at least kept the story of the firstAttorney General to be cited for contempt on page 1.