Mike Vanderboegh has a post on Sipsey Street Irregulars about a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to the State Department, DOJ, and many other U.S. agencies. The unclassified cable sent on October 28, 2009 has a subject heading of "MEXICO ARMS TRAFFICKING: ACCESS TO CONFISCATED WEAPONS, A NECESSARY STEP MEXICO". After much discussion of how Mexico stores and catalogs confiscated weapons and how their court system treats the information, there is an acknowledgment that the claim that 90% of weapons found in Mexico originated in the United States is incorrect.
¶6. (SBU) Comment. Claims by Mexican and U.S. officials that upwards of 90 percent of illegal recovered weapons can be traced back to the U.S. is based on an incomplete survey of confiscated weapons. In point of fact, without wider access to the weapons seized in Mexico, we really have no way of verifying these numbers.So given this, why do Obama Administration officials including the new Acting Director of ATF continually repeat a claim that has been proven false in more than one venue?
Why?
ReplyDeleteBecause the 90% myth is the foundation of the Obama Administration's defense of Fast & Furious.
It is accepted as fact amongst the vast majority of the mainstream media (and virtually all Democratic partisans) that the vast majority of crime firearms get into Mexico via straw purchases at border FFLs. With this presumption, it is then easy to believe that Fast & Furious was a reasonable operation with good intentions and possibly less-than-perfect execution — while simultaneously absent any nefarious or criminal intent. It also makes it easy to believe that all of the agita about Fast & Furious is nothing but a Republican partisan effort to embarrass the Obama Administration, and to also fault Republican (and pro-gun Democrats) with collateral responsibility for decades of antagonism towards ATF.
If the 90% myth collapses, then not only is Fast & Furious a criminal enterprise, but the President has been caught lying directly to the American People.