Blood On Their Hands

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man has been on a bit of a justified rant concerning what can at best be described as dereliction of duty by higher-ups in the ATF and Justice Department concerning gun trafficking from the U.S. into Mexico. Now at least one member of the mainstream media has for once done their watchdog duty.

From CBS News: (full text and video available at the link below)

Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, (Federal agent John ) Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.

Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.

ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.

So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.

Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.

Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.

Their answer, according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs."

There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a "schism" among the agents. "Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case...we are doing what they envisioned.... If you don't think this is fun you're in the wrong line of work... Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 ... to serve lunch to inmates..."

"We just knew it wasn't going to end well. There's just no way it could," Dodson said.

On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Dodson got the bad news from a colleague.

According to Dodson, "They said, 'Did you hear about the border patrol agent?' And I said, 'Yeah.' And they said 'Well it was one of the Fast and Furious guns.' There's not really much you can say after that."

Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry's murder.

So a law enforcement agency of the federal government stood back and let criminals smuggle weapons into Mexico that not only contributed to the growing violence down there, but led directly to the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

I'm afraid that at this point I've just about run out of outrage at all the crap this administration has pulled, from refusing to investigate racially-based intimidation of voters during the 2008 presidential election, to refusing to enforce laws it doesn't like, to refusing to obey court rulings it disagrees with, to now concocting some harebrained scheme to ... what ... build a case that argues for the continued existence and support of the ATF by willfully allowing a crisis situation to worsen so it can claim the ATF is needed to solve a problem that it in fact helped create!?!

Heads should role - but, sadly, won't...