ABC:
Asked about the Fast and Furious program at the Univision forum on Thursday, President Obama falsely claimed that the program began under President George W. Bush.
“I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration,” the president said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable.”
In actuality, the Fast and Furious program was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.
Previous programs involving ATF agents allowing guns to “walk” across the border so as to trace them were run during the Bush presidency, but not this particular “field-initiated program.”
Excuse me. The program did began under Bush in 2006.
Same operation but a different name.
Get your facts straight.
Posted by: Carolo | September 21, 2012 at 05:49 PM
ATF Project Gunrunner has a stated official objective to stop the sale and export of guns from the United States into Mexico in order to deny Mexican drug cartels the firearms considered "tools of the trade". However, since 2006 under Operation Wide Receiver (2006-2007), Hernandez Case (2007), Medrano Case (2008) and Operation Fast and Furious (2009-2011), the Phoenix offices of ATF and USAO did the opposite by permitting, encouraging and facilitating 'straw purchase' firearm sales to traffickers, and allowing the guns to 'walk' and be transported to Mexico. This has resulted in the death of US border agent Brian Terry and considerable controversy.
In summary, same operation, same gunrunners, same gun shop in AZ that sold the guns. Only change was the name of the operation.
Posted by: Carolo | September 21, 2012 at 06:00 PM
Mr. Caputo, you are a lying Republican. I will not subscribe to the Herald again until you take your lying ass to the RNC and continue to work for them.
Posted by: Robert Martin | September 21, 2012 at 06:54 PM