September 28, 2011 – 9:33 am - by Bob Owens at Pajamas Media.
Monday’s revelations by Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars and David Codrea at the Gun Rights Examiner, corroborated here at PJMedia and expounded upon at Fox News, comprise a “smoking gun” of the one of the most stunning political scandals in U.S. history.
As William Lajeunesse writes at Fox:
Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.
I don’t wish to understate it: elements of the U.S. Departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury are responsible for supplying an arsenal to narco-terrorists waging a civil war against an American ally. Our federal government may bear responsibility for at least 200 murders committed with “walked” firearms, in what Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales describes as a “betrayal” of her country by the Obama administration.
Are there legal ramifications? Perhaps. According to Title 18, 2331 of the U.S. Code, Operation Fast and Furious may amount to international terrorism, which carries with it stiff penalties for conspiracies that result in homicide. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act — which was originally used to prosecute the mafia — and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) may also fit, as may assorted state and federal charges. Charges may also result from two investigations launched by Mexican authorities, and Mexico could conceivably file charges with the International Criminal Court.
This is objectively the most important political and legal story in America right now.
But despite the revelations from of documents and testimony obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and repeated calls for full disclosure from senators and congressmen, mainstream media organizations have done everything in their power to bury the scandal. This can only be viewed as a partisan media’s attempt to protect a criminal executive branch.
Let’s play “if Bush did it.”
If thousands of firearms had been provided to the Sinaloa cocaine cartel by the Justice Department; and if those guns had been blamed for not one or two, but hundreds of murders by Mexico’s lead prosecutor, would there not be wall-to-wall front page coverage every day on the pages of the New York Times … if Bush were still president?
Under Bush, the MSM did provide blanket coverage for the warrantless wiretapping program — which was deemed legal by the courts and caused no deaths.
If circumstantial evidence, political speeches, and talking points from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush all suggested that the solitary goal of a gunwalking conspiracy was to put American weapons in the hands of criminals in hopes they would commit violent crimes in order to undermine the Constitution and Bill of Rights … the Washington Post columnists would call for impeachment and criminal prosecution each day.
Recall how they breathlessly reported the minute details and speculations of the Valerie Plame affair, which had much smaller stakes.
Instead, both the New York Times and Washington Post have responded to Gunwalker with attempted character assassinations of Congressman Darrell Issa, the lead investigator.
The Post ran a desperate hit piece on Issa, a story turned down by at least two other news organizations and left-wing blog Talking Points Memo for being too thinly sourced. They gave the byline to a reporter returning from a plagiarism suspension.
After that failed to stop Issa, the New York Times produced a hit piece so rife with errors that it amounted to fiction.
Among the MSM, only Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, and William Lajeunesse of Fox News have faithfully reported on the story.
Nobody died in the Watergate break-ins, but the Washington Post’s dogged coverage of the story created a reputation that the now clearly partisan newsletter coasts upon to this day. The New York Times spent untold man-hours and and money exposing the FISA warrantless wiretapping program — to the detriment of the nation’s national security — even though no laws were broken by the wiretaps.
Yet perhaps hundreds have died as a result of this administration’s conspiracy to supply weapons to a narco-terrorist organization, and the crack ABC News investigative team at the Blotter can’t be bothered. 60 Minutes is more enthralled by the murder of an American Nazi than the Obama adminstration’s Reichstag fire. CNN may as well be protecting Saddam again. Need we mention PBS or MSNBC?
The Gunwalker conspiracy is the kind of story that journalists dream of breaking their entire careers. It is now in the palms of their hands: a story in which they can make a difference, take down the evil and corrupt, and ensure justice is served.
Instead of reporting, however, they are complicit. They have chosen to acquiesce to a clear and obvious evil, an aberration of our most basic values. They are no longer watchdogs, but docile sheep.
More news organizations are shrinking, merging, and consolidating as they face a decrease in circulation and credibility. When they die, point back to this moment in time, and write as their epitaph:
They could have lived, but chose death.
Unlike those they allow this government to terrorize and murder with impunity.
See also: Gunwalker: Under White House Control?
