World News & Domestic Politics

Baca backs down on bid for parolees

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 23:50:22 +0000

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

July 15, 2011

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has backed down in his bid for the department to take on sole supervision of state parolees, an official confirmed Thursday evening, opting instead for a hybrid plan that would leave his deputies out of rehabilitation casework.

Baca’s initial proposal was an unprecedented attempt to handle the thousands of parolees being passed from the state to the local level in lieu of the county’s probation officers, who already do that sort of work.

No law enforcement agency in the nation handles parole or probation supervision, a task decidedly more oriented toward social work, officials say.

Critics said Baca’s plan presented potential conflicts of interest because the same deputies who were arresting and jailing criminals would have also been serving as caseworkers after the inmates were released.

Assistant Sheriff Cecil Rhambo said Baca decided to allow the county’s Probation Department to handle reentry and case management, while deputies and possibly LAPD officers do traditional suppression work and compliance checks.

“I don’t know that it was a back-down,” Rhambo said. “Listening to all the nuts and bolts as to what it takes to manage this, as people were throwing out the labor-intensity of it all, [Baca] thought what might work better is a hybrid version.”

That type of plan would still have to be presented by a committee of county officials and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Rhambo said the department would still be conducting education programs within county jails and offering some offenders rehabilitation programs in lieu of traditional incarceration.

Winning sole responsibility of the state parolees being passed down by year’s end would have allowed Baca to eventually add about 300 new employees during a time when hiring has stopped.

Reached on Thursday night, Baca said the funding breakdown under a hybrid plan was unresolved. He maintained “law enforcement has to be a part of this . . . there’s a role for everybody.”

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

World – latimes.com

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U.S. formally recognizes rebel group as Libya?s government

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:50:16 +0000

Reporting from Washington and Benghazi, Libya?

The Obama administration formally recognized a rebel group as Libya’s government, giving the forces struggling to overthrow Moammar Kadafi’s regime for the last five months a dramatic diplomatic boost and potentially access to billions of dollars in badly needed cash.

Setting aside fears that Islamic radicals may emerge among the insurgents, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Friday in Istanbul, Turkey, that the United States would join more than 30 other nations in extending diplomatic recognition to the Transitional National Council, which is based in Benghazi and controls eastern Libya.

Kadafi’s 4-decade-old regime, which controls much of western Libya, “no longer” has legitimacy to govern the country, Clinton said. As a result, she added, Washington will deal with the council as the legal government “until an interim authority is in place.”

Clinton acknowledged to reporters that administration deliberations have been lengthy, but she insisted the time had been necessary.

“We really acted in warp time in diplomatic terms, but we took our time to make sure ? based on the best possible assessments,” she said.

Habib Ben Ali, media liaison for the rebel council, called the announcement “a terrific development for us ? a real political victory.” U.S. diplomatic recognition is “the icing on the cake,” he added.

In a radio broadcast, Kadafi poured scorn on the decision, and insisted he is not giving up power or leaving the country.

“I don’t care which countries recognize the rebels’ transitional council,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Tell NATO and other countries to pick up the white flag and ask our forgiveness.”

North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes, backed by U.S. intelligence and other support, have been bombing Kadafi’s military forces and other ground targets since March 19 under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. But the poorly trained and lightly armed rebels appear stalled on several fronts, and have yet to dislodge Kadafi’s regime.

The move comes at a time when Western and Arab governments are increasingly eager to wind down the war. Pressure is building in several European countries for an end to a conflict that was originally expected to last fewer than 90 days.

In one sign of the eagerness to end the war, Turkish officials said at the Istanbul meeting that they, like the French and some other governments, were prepared to consider the possibility of an internal exile for Kadafi, rather than his departure from the country.

The chief effect of recognition may be financial. The rebels have been pleading with Washington and other governments for months to release frozen Libyan assets, including $ 34 billion held in U.S. banks, and that now appears increasingly likely.

At the Istanbul meeting, France said it was taking steps to unfreeze $ 250 million, while Italy said it was moving to unfreeze $ 100 million. U.S. officials said it would take time to release the Libyan money because of legal restrictions, but the task is easier if the council is the recognized government.

The rebels have said they need $ 3.5 billion this year to prosecute the war and administer the cities and towns they control.

While Kadafi’s forces also appear to be running out of cash and fuel, the rebel council said this week that it was essentially broke after a $ 500-million line of credit in Europe was cut off. With Libya’s oil industry shut down by fighting, the rebels must import virtually all gasoline and other fuel for the war effort and government services.

The rebels also hope to draw cash from a temporary trust fund set up by the 32-member contact group for Libya, which was meeting in Istanbul and includes the Arab League and the U.N. That money has been held up by countries that donated it, but are seeking assurances that the council intends to set up an inclusive and democratic government.

The move Friday also has a symbolic component. It may give the rebels added legitimacy among ordinary Libyans, including those in Kadafi-controlled areas of the country’s west. Supporters hope it will help convince Kadafi’s forces that his regime cannot survive much longer.

The Obama administration has been deeply divided on extending diplomatic recognition to the rebels since the armed uprising broke out in eastern Libya in February.

The rebellion spread quickly, but then regime forces moved to regain territory and Kadafi threatened to massacre his opponents. Despite the NATO air campaign, the conflict has appeared stalemated for months, with the country effectively cut in half.

World – latimes.com

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The ?Arab Spring? becomes the ?Arab Mobilization?

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 19:50:23 +0000

Paul Keys

The nations outside North Africa and the Middle East refer to the troubles there since January as the “Arab Spring,” perhaps trying to link it romantically to the uprising in Poland. However, the Middle East TV networks refer to it as the “Arab Awakening.” Why the polemic choice of labels? This week an Arab TV network explained when they called it the “Arabs awakening to jihad.” This is internal jihad as the Moslem Brotherhood take over nation after nation to put together their caliphate while the West dreams springtime fantasies.

Last night the new word on al-Jazeera, our State Department’s favorite news source which is the mouthpiece for the Moslem Brotherhood, was “mobilization” as in a “call to arms” or a “gathering of troops.” It was used in reference to the mobs gathering in Tunisia and Syria but not Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Jordan or Bahrain. Who is the leader of these forces being mobilized? The Moslem Brotherhood. n covering the demonstrations in Jordan they gave full credit to the Moslem Brotherhood and their affiliated Islamic Action Group. You could tell al-Jazz was inciting like mad–mobilizing though they did not use the word there yet.

Not only is al-Jazz mobilizing troops for Tunisia and Syria but so is the USA ambassador and al-Jazz gave him a lot of time tonight. It is like he is cheer-leading the troops that al-Jazz is mobilizing for the Moslem Brotherhood. This fellow, Robert Ford, was appointed without Congressional approval. He is “a professional diplomat.” Well, this professional diplomat has opened a Facebook page to encourage the rebellion and a video that had been on the Washington Post website of him in Hama with the French ambassador has been “closed due to its removal.” Understand: I do not think that Bashir Assad is a “good” guy and would be comfortable with them all killing one another off, but I am not comfortable with my country siding with the Moslem Brotherhood in nation after nation. . .Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria. Will the Obama-Clinton State Department support the Moslem Brotherhood as it tries to overthrow the king in Jordan?

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/the_arab_spring_becomes_the_arab_mobilization.html at July 16, 2011 – 08:28:06 AM CDT

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U.S. Recognizes Rebels in Libya

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 17:50:20 +0000

[This is totally silent on the information in the DEBKA Report.oth true. I googled and could not find corroberation of the Debka Report...yet. Perhaps they are both right in various ways.]

By SEBNEM ARSU and STEVEN ERLANGER, NYT

ISTANBUL ? The United States formally recognized the rebel leadership in Libya as the country?s legitimate government on Friday. The move, made at an international gathering here to discuss the five-month-old conflict in Libya, ratcheted up the diplomatic pressure on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi amid a continuing NATO-led bombing campaign to push him from power.

At the meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Colonel Qaddafi?s government no longer had any legitimacy, and that the United States would join more than 30 countries in extending diplomatic recognition to the main opposition group, known as the Transitional National Council.

?We will help the T.N.C. sustain its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Libya, and we will look to it to remain steadfast in its commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms,? Mrs. Clinton said.

In an audio speech carried on Libyan television, Colonel Qaddafi appeared as determined as ever to fight on, and dismissed the recognition of the rebel government by the leading powers.

?Trample on those recognitions, trample on them under your feet,? he told thousands of supporters in the coastal city of Zlitan, who had gathered for a rally broadcast on state tv, Reuters reported. ?They are worthless,? he said.

In the early stages of the war, Western nations were reluctant to extend recognition to the rebels, not knowing who they were and worrying about their possible ties to Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Over the months, though, those fears have been assuaged, and most nations are lined up behind the transitional government.

The step allows the United States and other countries to turn over to the rebel group some of the Libyan financial assets that have been frozen in foreign banks, to help underwrite its efforts to oust Colonel Qaddafi and to administer the part of the country that the rebels control.

?We have a lot of frozen funds around the world, and now it would be up the country to release a certain percent under certain conditions,? said Mahmoud Shammam, a rebel spokesman. ?We assured them in many ways that we are heading towards a democratic state and with the support of allies, friends we would make that happen.?

Italy?s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said that Italy would unfreeze some $ 140 million of Libyan assets and give them to the rebels, with more than $ 500 million to follow.

Other nations, like France and the United States, will now find it easier to hand over frozen Libyan assets to the rebels. The United States has more than $ 30 billion in frozen Qaddafi-government assets.

The Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that Turkey saw ?merit in the suggestion for the release of $ 3 billion from the frozen assets of Libya under U.N. supervision.? He suggested opening lines of credit to the rebels to meet their ?urgent need for cash? before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Turkey, he said, had already started a $ 200-million credit line.

Mr. Davutoglu told reporters Thursday night that Colonel Qaddafi culd remain in Libya if an agreement is reached, according to the Turkish Daily News.

In the rebel held city of Zintan, on the high plateau of the mountains in Libya?s west, where local men have pushed the Qaddafi militatry back on several fronts, a group of elderly men sat in the shade beside the main mosque.

They were buoyed by the news from Istanbul, which all of them had heard.

?The recognition of America has opened a door for us from Africa to the world,? said one of them, Mohammed el-Judaya.

Whatever the geopolitics, however, the men made clear they had ongoing practical concerns. Much of the mountainous food is short of food, fuel and water, phone service is mostly cut off and the Qaddafi forces are not far away. The war goes, with life stalled and hardships ahead.

?We have no money for Ramadan,? said Muftah Benghazi. ?This is difficult for us.?

Even with a growing list of international allies, the rebels have made only halting progress in wresting control of the country from Colonel Qaddafi?s forces. On Wednesday, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, told Reuters that NATO was intensifying its military campaign in Libya.

Yet, with a ?no-boots-on-the-ground policy? in Libya, the Western nations have found it hard to dislodge Colonel Qaddafi from power, as his forces have dug in around the capital, Tripoli, and other strategic cities where he retains at least some support among the civilian population.

NATO has been frustrated by the rebels? inability to organize themselves into a force strong enough to topple the government, even with thousands of airstrikes on the Qaddafi strongholds. Several countries, including Britain and France, have sent arms, ammunition and other military supplies to the rebels inan effort to build up their war-fighting capacity.
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Syrian troops kill 27 as protests intensify in Damascus area

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 15:50:17 +0000

BEIRUT ? Syrian security forces killed 27 anti-government protesters in several towns and cities after prayers Friday, mostly in Damascus, amid indications that opposition to President Bashar al-Assad is hardening in the capital.

According to the Local Coordination Committees, a group that organizes and monitors protests, 22 people were killed in neighborhoods and suburbs of Damascus, the highest daily toll there since the nationwide uprising began four months ago. Activists said the protests in the capital were also the largest yet, pointing to what they say is a rising tide of anti-Assad sentiment in the heart of his government?s power base.

Video

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians mounted the largest protests Friday since the uprising began, pouring into areas where the government crackdown has been most intense. Authorities fired on the crowds, killing at least 17 people, activists said. (July 15)

The violent response shows that the authorities ?are 100 percent worried about Damascus,? said Rami Abdelrahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who estimated that 50,000 people took to the streets in and around the city.

Figures could not be independently confirmed because the government has restricted journalists? access to Syria. But the reported size of the demonstrations remains small compared with those that have toppled rulers elsewhere.

The deadliest crackdown came in the suburb of Qaboun, where 14 demonstrators died after security forces fired on a what activists described as a demonstration of 25,000 people. Video posted on YouTube showed thousands marching through the streets chanting anti-government slogans and holding banners proclaiming ?Out Bashar? and ?Game Over Bashar? in English.

Qaboun has emerged as an opposition stronghold in recent weeks, and dissidents had been hoping to hold a conference there Saturday to draw up a strategy for ousting Assad in coordination with a parallel gathering of exiled opposition leaders in Istanbul. But after the killings Friday, organizers called off the Damascus gathering because of safety concerns.

Another video showed the biggest demonstration yet to be held in the central Damascus neighborhood of Midan, where authorities have repeatedly tried and failed to quell protests by blanketing the area with security forces.

Two eyewitnesses put the size of the crowd at several thousand and said scattered demonstrations continued for several hours despite efforts by the security forces to disperse protesters with batons and tear gas.

Elsewhere, far bigger demonstrations passed off without incident, in an indication that the government may be losing its grip in some parts of the country.

In the eastern border towns of Deir al-Zour and Bokamal, security forces made no attempt to prevent tens of thousands of people from taking to the streets. Large demonstrations also proceeded unhindered in the heart of the central city of Hama, which has effectively been taken over by government opponents since security forces withdrew to the city?s outskirts more than a month ago.

The scale of the protests in Damascus was perceived as significant because, until now, the capital has been considered a stronghold of government support. ?Damascus has proved that it is changing,? said Wissam Tarif of the human rights group Insan.

Some activists say the protesters have been encouraged by signs that the international community is toughening its stance against Assad, following comments this week in which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Assad had ?lost legitimacy.?

Abdelrahman also attributed the growing numbers attending protests in the capital to the end of the university year last week, which has freed thousands of students for the summer.

Opposition leaders had been hoping to boost momentum for the effort to oust Assad at Saturday?s dual-city conference, which aspired to unite traditional dissidents with the largely spontaneous and youthful protest movement that has sprung up on the streets of Syria.

With activists concluding that it is now too dangerous for them to meet in Damascus, however, the effort to forge a cohesive opposition movement remains in doubt.

World: World News, International News, Foreign Reporting – The Washington Post

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India: No Leads on Mumbai Attacks

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:50:25 +0000

As the city of Mumbai continues to recover from the damage suffered during yesterday?s attack, the Indian government is struggling to simultaneously defend itself from criticism over allowing such a major attack.

To that end, officials insist that they intend to bring those responsible for the attacks to justice, even though they have no idea who that might be. Indeed, they have absolutely no leads whatsoever on the attacks.

Despite having no advance warning of the attacks (apart from some previous reports about something happening in Mumbai) officials say that the lack of intelligence did not amount to an intelligence failure.

The attacks have been seen by many as an attempt to disrupt the peace talks between India and Pakistan, which restarted only last month. The major 2008 Mumbai attacks ended all talks for nearly two years and left India threatening war.

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Rebekah Brooks resigns from Murdoch?s News International

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:50:18 +0000

LONDON ? Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, resigned Friday as head of the British newspaper division of Rupert Murdoch?s media empire, saying she had become a focal point of the scandal in a way that was jeopardizing the company.

?At News International we pride ourselves on setting the news agenda for the right reasons,? Brooks, one of Britain?s most influential journalists, said in an internal memo released by the company. ?Today we are leading the news for the wrong ones. The reputation of the company we love so much, as well as the press freedoms we value so highly, are all at risk.?

Rising to the post of chief executive of News Corp.?s British operation, Brooks has long been one of Murdoch?s favorites, a woman with trademark flaming red hair whom he once described as like a ?daughter.?

She headed News of the World from 2000 to 2003, a time when the paper allegedly routinely used illegal phone hacks to gather insider tidbits from both celebrities and ordinary citizens, going as far as to interfere in a police investigation of a young girl who was kidnapped and killed in 2002.

Brooks is set to appear before members of Parliament on Tuesday ? along with Murdoch and his son James Murdoch ? for questioning about her knowledge of the case.

In previous testimony in 2003, she had admitted that News of the World journalists paid bribes to police to obtain information. But Brooks has denied knowledge of widespread phone hacking at the 168-year-old News of the World, which Murdoch closed last week to try to stem the crisis.

Prime Minister David Cameron, a personal friend of Brooks?s, and British opposition leader Ed Miliband had both called for her resignation, saying she should take responsibility at the very least for the poor handling of the scandal, in which Scotland Yard officials have called News Corp. officials uncooperative.

Brooks reportedly tried to tender her resignation last week, but Murdoch refused it. But amid reports that the Murdoch family is furious over the handling of the scandal, the company said Friday that the resignation has now been accepted, .

Tom Mockridge, who previously headed News Corp.?s Sky Italia operation, will replace Brooks, the company said.

Brooks, known in London media circles as a fierce competitor who was both courted and feared by politicians and celebrities, conceded in her resignation statement that she has become a lightning rod for the company.

?I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis,? she said. ?However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate.?

Cameron welcomed her resignation, saying through a spokesman that ?it was the right thing to do.? Miliband also hailed the news but added that News Corp. still has explaining to do. Several pundits said that James Murdoch, who oversaw News Corp.?s British operation, in particular needed to state more clearly what he knew, and when.

In an interview late Thursday with the Wall Street Journal, a News Corp. publication, Murdoch strongly defended his son?s handling of the crisis, saying he had managed the situation ?as fast as he could? and that the scandal would not affect his position at the company.

World: World News, International News, Foreign Reporting – The Washington Post

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Israel Ha Yom On Glenn Beck

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 09:50:18 +0000

OK, OK, Brian of London is probably stretching things with another Glenn Beck post but I also want to point you toward Israel Hayom which I?m becoming quite fond of as a new source of high quality Israeli news in English. It is refreshingly free of left leanings which is a pleasant surprise.

I?m really hoping I can attend his event on 8/24 (or even 24/8 if you can get your dates the right way round). He hasn?t announced arrangements for tickets in Israel yet but here?s hoping!

Here is a link to a long interview they conducted with Glenn Beck:

Israel Hayom?s Question: I was raised in Israel and taught to trust the American president almost like the Israeli prime minister. Is that still true?

?Even if Bush were still president today, I would give you a similar answer: look, I?m coming from a place in Poland where the king once granted the Jews a place to live. He said to them, here you will be protected. And they were protected ? until one day he died, and then they weren?t so safe anymore.

Don?t trust anyone except yourselves. Israel needs to demand from the world the right to defend itself. Don?t trust us or anyone else to protect you, because at some point, tomorrow or a thousand years from now, you will be let down, because everyone else has different interests than yours.?

And that is why we can?t be Dhimmis and live under Muslim rule ever again. Read the whole thing if you?re interested.

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Strange?s Last Night?s Top Ten Late-Night TV Jokes July 14 2011

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 07:50:27 +0000

STRANGE’S LAST NIGHT’S TOP TEN LATE-NIGHT TV JOKES July 14 2011

July Strangies: Stewart 2, Leno 1, Ferguson 1

By Strange de Jim
Beep beep! Love from Strange

Thursday, July 14
(O’Brien, Handler & Kimmel in reruns)

11. David Letterman guest Tim Harmston: Friends say if I don’t have children, who’s going to take care of me when I get really old. And I say, the super-hot Swedish nurse I hire with the money I save by not having children. “But she’s not going to love you the way your own child will.” I go, “I know. That’s why it’s so expensive.”

10. Jay Leno: Catherine Becker, the Pecker Wrecker, cut off her husband’s penis and ran it through the garbage disposal. You thought your wife put you through the grinder. Today the guy updated his Facebook status to “separated.”

9. Jimmy Fallon: Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson said his Twitter account was hacked yesterday after an image of a naked man was posted on his page. When the Lord taketh a Weiner he giveth a Johnson.

8. David Letterman: In France, today is Bastille Day, the day Paul Revere rode through Paris warning the French.

7. David Letterman: This is the last Harry Potter movie. Next it becomes a disastrous Broadway musical. This movie has poltergeists, sorcerers, elves … No, wait, those are the Republican Presidential candidates.

6. Jimmy Fallon: Spain’s running of the bulls is not nearly as scary as the U.S. event, the running of Sarah Palin.

5. David Letterman: We’re starting to repay our debt to China. Last week we sent back Yao Ming. And what about his brother Wyo Ming.

4. Jon Stewart: Correspondent John Oliver on the last space shuttle: What could be more appropriate than for me to go to Florida to watch something die?

3. David Letterman: New York has legalized gay marriage, and if you brought a gift for Paul and myself, just leave it in the lobby. Utah will never approve gay marriage, but they do allow a man to marry a woman with a slight mustache.

2. Jay Leno: Jim Norton at ESPY Awards: This is Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants. They call him The Beard, which is also what people call my girlfriend.

1. Jon Stewart: If Social Security checks don’t go out on August 3 it’ll just be old people, and they’d just blow it on medicine and hips.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 2010

Page 357 – No schemes that I could contrive seemed likely to deceive. They did not even deceive ME, and when a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

364 – The gospel left behind by Jay Gould is doing giant work in our days. Its message is “Get money. Get it quickly. Get it in abundance Get it in prodigious abundance. Get it dishonestly if you can, honestly if you must.”

365 – John D. Rockefeller is quite evidently a sincere man. Satan, twaddling sentimental sillinesses to a Sunday school, could be no burlesque upon John D. Rockefeller and his performances in his Cleveland Sunday school. When John D. is employed in that way he strikes the utmost limit of grotesqueness. He can’t be burlesqued — he is himself a burlesque. I know Mr. Rockefeller pretty well, and I am convinced that he is a sincere man.

See Related: STRANGE’S LAST NIGHT’S TOP TEN LATE-NIGHT TV JOKES ARCHIVE

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Interpreting and Analyzing Project Gunrunner

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 05:50:17 +0000

Media Matters excoriates those who traffic in confusion over Project Gunrunner.

This is starting to get pathetic.

Right-wing media outlets keep dishing out new “evidence” for why senior Justice Department leaders must have known about Fast and Furious, a failed operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). All they keep proving is that those officials knew about Project Gunrunner, the high-profile effort begun under President Bush of which Fast and Furious was one small part.

They’ve already used this conflation to baselessly claim that the stimulus included funds for Fast and Furious (the funds were earmarked for Project Gunrunner and were not distributed to the ATF office that handled Fast and Furious) and that a 2009 Holder speech proves that he was aware of the program (the speech references only Gunrunner and was given before Fast and Furious was initiated).

In their latest effort, these outlets are pointing to a two-minute clip of a speech that then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden gave on March 29, 2009. In the speech, Ogden said:

DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $ 10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

ATF is doubling its presence in Mexico itself, from five to nine personnel working with the Mexicans, specifically to facilitate gun-tracing activity, which targets the illegal weapons and their sources in the United States.

Let’s go over this again: Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious are not the same thing, and Fast and Furious wasn’t reportedly begun until six months after Ogden gave this speech.

Nonetheless, in an editorial comparing Fast and Furious to Watergate, Investor’s Business Daily claims that the Ogden video “may rival the tape that turned a ‘third-rate burglary’ into a presidential resignation.” IBD also claims that both the Ogden clip and Holder’s speech show the speaker “taking credit” for both Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious. They provide text from both speeches in which the speaker references the former and not the latter, because they are lying (and embarrassingly bad at it).

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com cites this clip to claim that Ogden left DOJ in late 2009 because he “wanted to reduce his chances of becoming the ‘fall guy’ for the Obama Administration after news of this doomed-from-the-start gun-running operation became public.”

Analysis & Commentary

David Codrea and Bob Owens have both had this in their sights. David does legitimate reporting as well as analysis and commentary, while I mostly focus on analysis and commentary. So at times I speculate or infer, usually based on a string of evidence or reports (some published, some maybe not). But regardless of however much we might like the reporting at Big Government, or Salem News, when they link up video or cite documents demonstrating that so-and-so was aware of Project Gunrunner, and flatly assert that he or she is admitting complicity in the smuggling of weapons to the cartels, it is both sloppy and not necessarily correct (note that I said not necessarily, and I’ll return to this later). It isn’t necessarily correct, not yet, and not exactly.

We know that Project Gunrunner began in Texas in 2005, and was designed primarily during the Bush administration to include the training of the Mexican authorities in the use of eTrace to track weapons. It involved a handful of ATF field agents, but until late in the Bush administration it wasn’t heavily resourced or funded. The Merida Initiative changed that. There were a number of problems with this initiative, but at the moment, I’m just relaying the facts.

The stimulus of 2009 sent more money in the direction of Project Gunrunner. When the Obama administration took office, there was increased attention on Project Gunrunner, and most astute readers are aware of Operation Fast and Furious which focused on the Southern border and which was run primarily out of the Phoenix office of the ATF. Fewer people are aware that there was a similar companion operation (called Operation Castaway) in which weapons were released to MS-13 in Honduras, run primarily out of the Tampa office of the ATF.

More recently, there is e-mail evidence indicating that the ATF was searching for anecdotal support for a demand letter on long gun sales in July of 2010. And only a few days ago David Codrea published a letter he received concerning the illegality of the trafficking of weapons, a point I have made (albeit not as clearly) before.

?[it] isn?t okay for the ATF to violate the National Firearms Act or the Arms Export Control Act if I must live within its stipulations.?

There is indeed illegality involved for knowledgeable individuals (the executive branch of the government cannot willingly violate laws legitimately enacted by Congress any more than can I). So there is a lot at stake to protect information and identities. It will be some time before everything is uncovered in this scandal.

But if there is sloppiness in some conservative commentary concerning the conflation of Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious (or Castaway), and even if Media Matters got this one at least partially right, there is another perspective.

There is a lot of dissimilarity between Project Gunrunner during the Bush and Obama administrations. Project Gunrunner was small during the Bush years, and doesn’t appear to have included any illegal trafficking of weapons. The Obama administration oversaw a significant expansion of the program, with strategic studies, Office of Inspector General recommendations for more expansion, the training of corrupt Mexican police, involvement of the FBI and DEA, etc.

We know all of these things based on irrefutable evidence. We can assess, or speculate, that there is cohesion of intent and knowledge of the operations up the chain of command within the administration. In other words, we can speculate that weapons trafficking was a subset of Project Gunrunner, as it morphed during the Obama administration into something much larger and organized than it was in the Bush years. Another way of saying it is that equating Project Gunrunner during the Bush and Obama years is inaccurate. Same words, different meaning.

We can speculate that since Mr. Obama is a statist, or Fabian Socialist in his thinking, his slip concerning bitterly clinging to guns and religion wasn’t really a slip. It was a glimpse into his soul, the very core of his being. I tend towards this interpretation, and thus I have no problem surmising that the chain of evidence plus what I know about Mr. Obama and his administration points towards complicity and prior knowledge within his administration. Mr. Obama is no friend to firearms.

But it’s important that this be stated as surmising at the moment. There is much investigative work to be done, and hunting for evidence from amongst this administration will be like pulling teeth. Finding the truth will be hard. Commentators are best advised to do better research before conflating phrases and terms, and get busy researching and digging. Personally, I believe that Project Gunrunner isn’t the same thing it once was. As I said before, same words, different meaning. But I’m unwilling at the moment to flatly assert much more than what I have said thus far.

The Captain’s Journal

Benjamin Netanyahu Bernard Makuza Bharrat Jagdeo Bhumibol Adulyadej Bingu wa Mutharika