Articles by Herschel Smith

The Daily Caller has a report that seems to be evidence that holes are showing in the DoJ story on Operation Fast and Furious.  With these holes is coming new light, and now, names.

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, will soon air a different side of Operation Fast and Furious: what Mexico-based U.S. law enforcement officials dealt with. Senior Justice Department leadership in Washington ignored concerns Mexico-based Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officials raised about the program, according to assertions made as part of the congressional investigation.

A House oversight committee hearing on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. will examine effects Operation Fast and Furious had on “The Other Side of the Border.”

Former ATF attaché to Mexico, Darren Gil told Congressional investigators that, when he became aware of an “abnormal number of [Fast and Furious weapons] recoveries” in Mexico, he called Phoenix-based ATF officials with his concerns. Gil said they told him they were “working on it” and he was “satisfied” with that first response.

“Unfortunately, my chief analyst and my deputy would come back and say, Darren, these are – we’re getting more and more of these seizures,” Gil said. “And I would make inquiries with the Phoenix field division and I wasn’t getting any responses back.” Gil said he “may have gotten two more phone calls” saying the same thing: “Yeah, we’re working on it, we’re working on it.”

Gil said his analyst and deputy would enter E-Trace data from the weapons they seized in Mexico, but were not granted access to the information about the specific guns. So, because Gil’s colleagues in Phoenix shut him out and wouldn’t answer any specific questions, Gil reached out to Washington-based officials.

He called Dan Kumor, ATF’s chief of international affairs, only to get a similar answer. Gil told Congressional investigators that Kumor said it was “an on-going investigation.” (Issa, Grassley blast Holder in letter after secret meeting with ATF’s Ken Melson)

“They’re looking at straw purchasers, they have cooperative Federal Firearms Licensees and it sounds like a significant investigation,” Gil said Kumor told him, adding that “he didn’t have access to the trace information either.” But, Gil said Kumor told him every official “on the chain” up to Kumor from Phoenix was “aware of the investigation.”

Gil said he wasn’t satisfied with the lack of answers from Washington-based officials, and got into “screaming matches” with Kumor. “Hey, when are they going to shut this, to put it bluntly, damn investigation down, we’re getting hurt down here,” Gil told Congressional investigators he’d scream at Kumor.

Assuming the accuracy of this testimony, “every official on the chain up to [chief] Kumor from Phoenix” was aware of the investigation.  It’s apparent that “the investigation” refers not to some larger program into which Operation Fast and Furious fit as a puzzle piece, but the illegal gun running itself.  Otherwise, there is no need to stonewall and hide information.  The Mexican government already knew about broad-based efforts to interdict weapons transfers.  More evidence emerges.

Gil also told Congressional investigators that Obama administration officials worried he’d tell the Mexican ambassador or brief the Mexican government on the operation. He said that’s why he wasn’t given specifics or details about Operation Fast and Furious. “I can tell you what I was told and they were afraid I was going to either brief the ambassador on it or brief the Government of Mexico officials on it,” Gil said, adding that, “They were just worried about somebody leaking whatever was unique about this investigation.”

Gil said his bosses promised him Operation Fast and Furious would be shut down in the summer of 2010. It did not officially end, though, until the end of 2010, after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death.

Gil and now-acting ATF attaché to Mexico Carlos Canino also told Congressional investigators high-ranking ATF and Justice Department officials bragged about what they considered successes of Operation Fast and Furious. Officials they said included Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who oversees the DOJ’s criminal division, and acting ATF director Ken Melson.

“Lanny Breuer says, yeah, there is a good case, there is a good case out of Phoenix,” Canino said of a meeting he and Gil had with Breuer and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual.

Lanny Breuer.  This Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General.  And here is my bet.  Lanny Breuer is no rougue attorney with the DoJ.  He conspired and acted in concert with others in the administration to violate the arms exports control act.  We need a special prosecutor to expose the truth and full extent of the illegalities.

My regular readers may be wondering why I haven’t weighed in on the horrific killing spree perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway.  In fact, I think that it’s important for Christians to engage in honest, open self-examination in light of events such as this, as suggested by one reader at National Review Online’s Corner (in reponse to thoughts by Mark Steyn).  This sort of thing is extremely serious, and for those on the left believe that there is a sense of unease among right-leaning Christians, you are correct whether we admit it or not.  So I may as well engage in open confessions and admit what we all know to be true.

I have made my position clear on personal ownership and carryng of weapons, and Christian scholars far better than I have already made a case against gun control.  But … evil actions like those in Norway, that cause so many people, so young, to perish in such a violent way, should cause soul searching for every sane individual, and especially so for those of us who claim to carry the name of Christ.

So Mr. Breivik was apparently shooting a rifle (perhaps a Ruger Mini-14?).  He was apparently good with it.  I’m good with my rifle too, and I can put a tight group on target at 100 yards, but I don’t engage in open carry of my rifle.  I don’t engage in concealed or open carry all of the time, only when I consider the situation as warranting such security.  But this event goes to remind us that only God knows the future, and thus, my predilections on personal security and when I might need a weapon are not only foolish, but self-deceiving.

After serious reflection, I hereby vow to carry my handguns more often (both concealed and open, depending upon the circumstances).  But he was shooting a rifle, you say.  Yes, and that means that my moderate targeting skills with my handguns (in contrast to my finely-tuned skills with my rifle) need to get much better.  I hereby vow to buy more ammunition and get to the range even more often than I do.  And, I vow to continue my workouts at the gym and practice my tactics and techniques so that when the awful day comes that I need to perform tactical maneuvers against a shooter in order to defend myself or my family or friends, I am capable of doing so.  If I die defending loved ones, then I die.

As for the Mr. Breivik’s prose, I find it so inconsistent, incoherent, incomprehensible and ridiculous that it has no meaning for me at all.  With a short review of Mr. Breivik and after having sworn an oath to shoot better and more often, I think I have done my Christian duty regarding this event.  Oh, and I will pray for the families of the victims too.

On July 20 Glenn Reynolds linked a report about a respectful police officer conducting a stop to investigate an instance of open carry.  I won’t link the video, but you should stop by and view it.  Everyone is lauding the respectfulness and professionalism with which the cop conducted himself.  Even http://www.reddit.com/r/guns/ had good things to say.

Very well.  I’m willing to accept this, but there is something I want to highlight, something that still bothers me about this good stop, and compare it to this bad stop.  In both instances there is one commonality.  Both officers stated that they needed identification because, in their own words, “I don’t know who you are.”

I have been open carrying during walking my dog in the afternoons now for several months.  Police officers drive right by without so much as slowing down.  No one runs for cover, no one panics, and everyone wants to come up and chat and pet my dog (interesting, because she is a 74 pound Doberman).  I haven’t been asked about carrying by any officers.  Frankly, I can’t seem to get anyone very interested in the fact that I am openly carrying a weapon.  I’m okay with that.  I’d just as soon they not care.

But when I do get asked, my speech is ready.  If I am asked, the officer doesn’t need to know who I am.  That’s irrelevant.  I am not engaged in any illegality or criminal behavior, so my name doesn’t matter.  Said another way, the legitimacy of the exercise of my constitutional rights isn’t contingent upon a law enforcement officer knowing my name or other personal information.  I’ll be happy to show them my CHP, but only after I get agreement to my proposition.  That’s the point that the open carrier in the video was pressing home.  Fortunately, the officer accepted the proposition, but still, the notion that the officer needs to identify the carrier is ubiquitous among law enforcement officers.  And it’s wrong.

Next, to cops behaving badly.

A police officer’s dash cam in Canton, OH caught a disturbing exchange last month between a cop and a driver during a traffic stop. In it, the cop can be heard (and seen) berating a man for not telling the officer immediately that he had a concealed carry permit and thus a concealed weapon, even saying that he should have killed him. But there’s just one problem: the man tried several times but the officer cut him off.

That’s a problem. In Ohio (as in many states), the law requires concealed carry gun owners to immediately inform law enforcement if they have a weapon when they are pulled over. So when the man, named William, was not allowed to do so immediately, and the cop eventually found out, that created an issue.

“I could blast you in the mouth right now!” the officer says in the video after finding out about the man’s gun. “I’m so close to caving in your Godda**ed head,” he adds. “You fu** with me! You’re just a stupid human being!”

He continues: “Fu**ing talking to me with a Godd***ed gun! You want me to pull mine and stick it to your head? … I tell you what I should have done. As soon as I saw your gun I should have taken two steps back, pulled my Glock 40 and put ten bullets in your ass and let you drop.”

“And I wouldn’t have lost any sleep!” he screams.

Here is the video if you’re interested.  This is the other end of the spectrum.  The instance that Glenn cites is a respectful and professional officer, albeit still caught up in the notion that he needs to identify people behaving legally.  The officer in Canton is an uneducated jerk and a menace to society.  The police department would do well to cut ties with this asshole as soon as possible, before he gets himself and the department into legal trouble.

As a final note, it should be pointed out that it’s cops like this who give credence to the notion (some people preach) that the police are simply another gang we cut loose to terrorize the gangs we don’t like.  I would observe that frankly, we don’t need any gangs at all.  They can all go home.

It’s now official.

A Marine who braved intense enemy gunfire in Afghanistan to recover the bodies of four fallen comrades will receive the Medal of Honor for his heroism, defense officials said Wednesday.

Dakota Meyer, who left the service last year, will be the third living recipient of the award for actions in Afghanistan and the tenth man recognized for exceptional bravery in the current wars. He’ll also be the first living Marine to receive the honor since the Vietnam War.

White House and defense officials have not released details of the award or the timing of its presentation.

The 22-year-old’s heroics came while serving with an embedded training team from the II Marine Expeditionary Force out of Okinawa, Japan. In September 2009, his team was ambushed in controversial battle of Ganjgal, which claimed the lives of five Marines and nine Afghan allies.

A Defense Department investigation released five months later said that negligent leadership and a command refusal for artillery support directly contributed to the deaths of Meyer’s fellow fighters, and reprimanded three Army officers.

Contrary to the statement above, the warriors who perished included three Marines, a Navy Corpsman and a Soldier.  Readers might remember this as the engagement where a team was repeatedly refused airtillery support because it violated the rules of engagement.  Dakota fought his way through enemy fire, on foot, multiple times, to retrive his brothers from the field of battle.  The real delay in this had to do with the Marine Corps, which is notoriously exacting in things like this.

There are some loved ones who still grieve, and one particular article I wrote on the reprimands of field grade and staff officers who refused them support gathered their attention.

I have felt from the beginning that General McChrystal is ultimately responsible for the death of my son, his unit and SFC Ken Westbrook in Gangjal. I have written to President Obama for answers, as one father to another, to no avail. Seventeen months and 10 days later, we still greive for the loss of our sons. We feel the pain, and are engulfed in waves of grief with each each new casualty (and various other emotional triggers).

Our sons suffered Death by Incompetence, knowing at the end that those they considered brothers-in-arms abandoned them on the battlefield.

I have no wish to meet General McChrystal or hear his apology or condolences. I only hope that he lives a long life and is always tormented by the ghosts of those he called his brothers-in-arms.

Nothing will bring our boys back, so we move forward in life to honor thier (sic) sacrifice and cherish thier memory. To that end, I would like to voice support (and hope that others will too) for awarding the Medal of Honor to Dakota Meyer for the exceptional bravery that brought our boys home to rest. Thank you Dakota.  Semper Fi

I am Charlene Westbrook, widow of a United States Army Combat Veteran, SFC Kenneth Westbrook. My husband, Sergeant First Class Kenneth Westbrook, was grievously injured and later passed away from what was explained to me as graft vs host disease associated with whole blood, a rare blood disorder which doctors say he contracted while at the battlefield hospital in Afghanistan.

I was afforded the opportunity to review the redacted Investigating Officer’s Report. The eyewitness accounts of the unbelievable horror our American Warriors endured that day is unimaginable, unbearable and should have been avoided by all costs. The Investigating Officer’s findings and recommendations state that the officers appointed over those men were found to be negligent and derelict in the performance of their duties. The Investigator further recommended that the officers receive an administrative reprimand or a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand (GOMOR), however, no further information on whether those actions have been initiated and/or completed have not been provided.

My husband dedicated 22 years of his life proudly serving in the US Army with complete trust and honor to the very institution that in the end abandoned him and the other men who died that fateful day, September 8, 2009. I do, too hold McChrystal as the coward who has the blood of my husband on his hands.

“The American soldier is a brave one and he demands professional competence in his leaders. In battle, he wants to know that the job is going to be done right, with no unnecessary casualties. The non-commissioned officer wearing the chevron is supposed to know how to perform the duties expected of him. The American soldier expects his sergeant to be able to teach him how to do his job. And he expects more from his officers.” – General Omar N. Bradley.

I am Susan Price, the Mother of Fallen Hero Gunnery Sgt Aaron M Kenefick, USMC, killed that day on Sept 8th 2009. Like the Westbrook, Johnsons & Layton families, there are no words yet invented to share with you our sense of loss and void from our families lives!!!!!! Loosing a child or a spouse to WAR is one thing, loosing that special someone because of the deriliction and negligence of another, ESPECIALLY a “BROTHER IN ARMS” is something else.

We the families of the fallen five, have read the 15-6, Investigation report over and over and over again….It is unbelievable to read how many times my “BELOVED SON” called for help, and it is Beyond Human comprehension to read on further some smart ass remarks by some of these officers who discounted American Human Life, Special American Human life, front line Valor, not some back office cant get ahold of white gloved officer!!!

You cannot equate a piece of paper to the loss of human life, word has it that nothing came of this supposed reprimand!!!!! The word is that an order from a higher source told them not to answer the call for air support and artillery back up….The question is? Who gave the order and why?

So many unanswered questions this day. The actual mission was not even suppose to take place this day. Intel saids they were told that this would be a day filled with Taliban activity on the 8th. Who wanted my Son and the other Fallen Heroes put into this position? Why? So many unanswered questions!!!!!!!!!!!

McChrystal is responsible as well as the contributing 3 Officers who got off and those others who were a party to this knowledge. These men had families, they had a place in society besides the battlefield, they made differences in the lives of so many and for so many, who would want to scapegoat them out??????

Another comment made while my son called for 2 hours was “is this for Marines or is this for Army” I dont understand when you are at war what difference does it make what uniform you wear, all blood is the same color, and all I know is that my family and the other families of the fallen live in emotional pain every day of our lives due to this neglence. Where is Justice, does anyone really care about our men, really!!!!!!!!!!

As the father of James Ray “Doc” Layton, killed that day in Ganjgal, Afghanistan I will say this: This was the greatest loss a parent could endure. We all know the inherent risks our men and women take and to a point, we prepare for the worst. Knowing that our men were put into a situation in which they relied on help and were denied repeatedly, this is in-excusable. I have said before as a retired law inforcement officer, we rely on each other for back-up and know that when that call goes out our “backs” are covered. To know James, Aaron, Mike, Edwin and Ken lost their lives due to “inadequate” leadership in the operation center among several other cited incidents of “Negligence” on Sept 8th is sickening and unfortunately nothing new.

The post comments in the 15-6 investigation clearly states one of the Army officers in charge believed the Marines to be under “light, harrassing fire.” At 0530 hrs, the first shots rang out and the team said that they had been ambushed and were facing approx 150+ insurgents calling for help. At what point was this “light harrassing fire?” The 15-6 also states that what intelligence they gathered via intercepted radio traffic the day before from Ganjgal that they knew the team were going to be ambushed but thought by only approx 30 and yet knowing this they were sent into a “kill zone” a four man team including my son who were killed approximately two hours into the ambush still calling for air and artillery along with the rest of the unit, TWO HOURS!!!!!! The entire ambush lasted for hours.

It took 1,800 rounds of 50 Cal and two Hellfires to just get our son’s bodies, hours into the battle. The report clearly says the mission was compromised, the insurgents were well placed, even had recoilless rifles. The insurgents were well trained by military, wore uniforms similar to the ANA, even were mistaken as our counterparts by our own at one point, A clear setup. The mission was to take place the day before but was changed to the 8th “Oddly?” I think not. This whole ambush stinks of corruption and ass covering but by the enemy only, I also think not.

Brent Layton, proud father of fallen hero HM3 James Ray “Doc” Layton “Corpsman to the Core.” KIA 09/08/09 Ganjgal, Afghanistan

 There is no way to assuage the anguish of the loss of a son or husband.  But maybe with the CMH being awarded to Dakota, some small sense of righteousness may be brought to bear on a horrible, awful engagement where our warriors were abandoned.

From The LA Times:

The Justice Department is trying to protect its political appointees from the Fast and Furious scandal by concealing an internal “smoking gun” report and other documents that acknowledge the role top officials played in the program that allowed firearms to flow illegally into Mexico, according to the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF’s acting director, also told congressional investigators this month that the affidavits prepared to obtain wiretaps used in the ill-fated operation were inconsistent with Justice Department officials’ public statements about the program. Justice Department officials advised him not to raise his concerns with Congress about “institutional problems” with the Fast and Furious operation, Melson said.

“It was very frustrating to all of us,” Melson told congressional investigators in a private meeting over the Fourth of July holiday, “and it appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department.”

Not only was the department slow to react, Melson said, but Justice Department officials indicated they did not want him to cooperate with Congress.

A transcript of his comments was released Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Melson said he wasn’t attempting to shield his agency from its share of the blame. He acknowledged an instance in which his agents failed to intercept high-powered weapons when they could have.

“The deputy attorney general’s office wasn’t very happy with us” at the ATF, Melson said, “because they thought this was an admission that there were mistakes made. Well, there were some mistakes made.”

No one is surprised by this information.  As I’ve said before, it isn’t in the DNA of this administration to be forthcoming or accountable in its actions.  It appears that Melson made the decision to “turn state’s evidence,” so to speak.  But I do disagree with one thing.  He admitted to “mistakes.”  The trafficking of weapons in violation of the National Firearms Act and Export Control Act isn’t a “mistake.”  It’s an illegality.

The combination of illegalities and coverups by the administration is why we need a special prosecutor.

UPDATE #1: Media Matters accuses the LA Times of misfiring on this story.  But it appears that perhaps Media Matters is the one who misfired.  Government Accountability Project reports thusly:

Operation Fast and Furious (F&F) – a program run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that allowed thousands of lethal weapons to cross the Mexican border – was apparently no secret among high-level political authorities at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Among those in the know? Newly-confirmed Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Prior:

Interpreting and Analyzing Project Gunrunner

Congressman Bilirakis Questions Holder On Tampa ATF Office Gunwalker Allegations

Gunrunner Comment of the Day

Tampa ATF Officer Gunrunner Coverup

Project Gunrunner Category

Richard Fairburn, writing at PoliceOne.com, gives us this remarkable portrait of his vision for the police state in America.

I saddled up my first patrol rifle, a Colt AR15, in a Chevrolet Blazer 4×4 patrol vehicle in 1985. The other two patrol deputies in my county had their own semi-auto rifles in locking racks, one carried a Beretta AR70 (also in 5.56mm caliber) while the other had a H&K Model 91 chambered for the much more powerful 7.62x51mm NATO round (.308 Winchester). While more than one potential human target saw the business end of our rifles over the years, no one ever challenged their authority.

Now we see patrol rifles in the hands of many U.S. police officers, generally a variation of the AR15/M16/M4 system. I have long believed a rifle is the long gun “answer” to most police shooting situations, now it seems most agencies agree. So, I’ll try to stay one step ahead by suggesting we now need to move a few of our officers “beyond the patrol rifle.”

The other dominant rifle form in U.S. police usage has been the sniper rifle, generally referred to as a counter-sniper rifle in its earliest days following the “Texas Tower” massacre committed by Charles Whitman in Austin, Texas on August 1, 1966. What I propose now is that we equip and train a percentage of our patrol officers to a capability midway between those equipped with a patrol rifle and snipers who generally only deploy as one element of a SWAT team. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps are fielding these intermediate-level marksmen in significant numbers and they are proving to be extremely effective in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military refers to them as “Designated Marksmen,” and I propose we adopt similar terminology and the same weaponry for perhaps one in 10 patrol officers.

In February 2009, only a few months after the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, PoliceOne ran my three-part series on how we should be training and preparing to counter terrorist teams of active shooters. In the development of that series of articles, I ran the drafts by LTC Dave Grossman, noted SWAT trainer Sgt. Ed Mohn, and a couple of military SpecOps dudes I know, adding their valuable input to the final product. I was more than a little gratified when I saw the Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York City police departments and the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) organize and train officers in ways that paralleled our early recommendations — the most common program being Multiple Attack Counter Terror Action Capabilities training, or MACTAC. It was in part three of that series that I first suggested the need for Designated Marksman (DM) capabilities when responding to a Mumbai-style attack.

The most simple and inexpensive way to improve on our existing patrol rifles is to upgrade existing 5.56mm carbines with low- to medium-power optical sights. This enhances the shooter’s ability to deliver precise fire at longer distances than we can generally muster with iron sights. In addition to optics, any 5.56mm DM rifle should be coupled with a heavy 5.56mm projectile like the 77gr MHP bullet in the Mk262 load. Most Army DMs are equipped with an M16 variant using a 4x optical sight and the Mk262 load. Many patrol rifle shooters can already quickly mount scopes or 3x magnifiers for low power optical sights.

But ideally, I think our Designated Marksmen should be equipped with a more powerful rifle to deal more effectively with both distance and light intervening cover. The AR15 platform can be upgraded to larger cartridges like the Remington .30 AR or the 6.8mm SPC, but stepping up even further makes more sense. The USMC Designated Riflemen generally shoot an updated M14 chambered for the 7.62x51mm (.308 Winchester). Our LE-type DMs should also opt for the 7.62mm/.308 round, but instead of firing the 168gr Match Hollow Point (MHP) round our snipers use, we should opt for a 150 grain expanding projectile. The sniper’s match hollow points are designed primarily for accuracy and give erratic terminal performance. Choosing a round like Federal Ammunition’s P308E, which uses a 150 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip bullet, or Black Hills Ammunition’s Black Hills Gold load that uses a Hornady 155 grain A-Max projectile, would provide devastating terminal performance and a reduced chance of over-penetration, coupled with the ability to switch interchangeably to military M80 Ball ammunition. The M80 Ball load is a trajectory match for a 150-155 grain expanding bullet and allows both reduced cost training as well as better penetration against barricaded targets.

The Marine Corp’s modified M14 DM rifle can be duplicated with an M1A rifle from Springfield Armory, their Scout Squad model is particularly handy. If you would prefer a semi-auto rifle with the same operating controls as your AR to simplify training, a number of AR makers offer a variation of the AR10 which is chambered for the 7.62mm round. A police DM rifle should be equipped with a scope sight of about 4x magnification (or a variable-power scope that will zoom up to at least 4x).

Analysis & Commentary

Despite his having invoked the U.S. Army, the classification of DM is primarily found in the U.S. Marine Corps (my son was a DM in his platoon).  The training for DM is much the same as the training for Marine Corps Scout Snipers, except for the stalking, evasion, and other things that make a sniper unique.

The writer invokes the memory of the shooter at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, but Charles Whitman was killed on the observation deck at close range by a police officer using a shotgun.  Furthermore, it was a basic lack of plant security that allowed Whitman to be there at all.  The next data point in his scare tactics to pressure the reader into accepting a militarized police is the Mumbai attacks in India.  But there isn’t any indication that long range standoff weapons were used in ending the Mumbai attacks.  In fact, the notion the writer promulgates is more one of a paramilitary style force.

He specifically alludes to the DM designation, with police officers envisioned as using long range standoff weapons such as a sniper rifle.  Make no mistake about it.  Mr. Fairburn is quite literally advocating a higher ratio of snipers / DMs for the police than we typically find in Marine Corps infantry units.

Given the horrible state of no-knock raids in America (see Jose Guerenna raid among many others), the proliferation of these military tactics across the law enforcement community (see Department of Education affiliated officers and the raid on Kenneth Wright), and the common practice used by felons of announcing themselves as police officers, there isn’t any prima facie reason to entrust the police with high power weapons used in a standoff fashion.

The track record of police offices behaving as military operators (as they wish to be called) isn’t very good.  They haven’t earned the title, they haven’t deployed on combat tours, and their job function is to be peace officers.  In my own hometown I have noticed an increasing inconsistency in uniform among police officers, from cargo pants and tee shirts to formal uniforms, from OWB handgun holsters to drop holsters with tactical belts, and on and on the list goes.

While there is a need for access to more than just side arms (and training to use them in limited circumstances), police departments needs to work more towards less militarization of tactics and uniforms, less use of no-knock raids, and certainly as limited use as possible of long range standoff weapons.

Mr. Fairburn is pressing towards the increased militarization of U.S. police, while the optimum goal should be the decreased militarization of tactics.  But the troubling thing  about Mr. Fairburn’s argument is its wide acceptance within the law enforcement community.  It’s not uncommon now to find this attitude within police departments.  It’s easy to understand the interest in the so-called “black guns” (ARs) with close to two decades of war flashed across our TV screens (I have one), and I am certainly a defender of the right to bear arms as my readers know.  I regularly engage in both open and concealed carry.

But interest in tactics, dress, weapons, and so on, isn’t the same thing as behaving like military operators around the public where innocent bystanders can be injured, and where we have the bill of rights to protect us from the state.  Mr. Fairburn should rethink his position, but common citizens should become engaged in their local communities to ensure that the police aren’t in fact becoming too autonomous.

Iran is increasing support for the Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

“Iran is very directly supporting extremist Shiite groups which are killing our troops,” said Adm. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “There is no question they are shipping high-tech weapons in there…that are killing our people. And the forensics prove that.”

Of course, we have known since the inception of Operation Iraqi Freedom that the Iranians were killing Americans in Iraq.  Now, we learn of strong supicions of Iranian snipers in Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the top Marine general in Afghanistan, told National Journal that the sniper threat was particularly acute in contested regions of Helmand like Sangin and Garesh, where NATO forces are battling Taliban fighters trying to reclaim some of their former strongholds. Despite a counter-offensive from insurgents, the military said coalition troops control most of Helmand and the level of violence there is declining.

Toolan, who runs NATO’s Regional Command Southwest, said many of the snipers attacking his troops speak Farsi or Arabic, meaning that the fighters likely come from Iran and other neighboring countries. Other U.S. officials in Afghanistan say Iran has significantly escalated its support for militants there, providing long-range rockets, money, and technical assistance. Tehran denies the charges, but Toolan said some of the snipers appear to have been trained outside of Afghanistan.

The military leaders have no problem saying that Iran is at war with America.  Why can’t our civilian leadership just simply admit and publicly state that they know that Iran has been at war with the United Stated for at least a quarter century?  Wouldn’t it do our civilian leaders some good to engage in a little truth telling – good for international relations, good for the American public, and good for their souls?

The answer, of course, is what I have advocated for several years.  No open war (just yet), no happy talk with the Iranians.  Engage in a campaign of targeted assassinations against military leaders, foment an insurgency within Iran, and support the Green movement.  An Iran that is worried about its own government being toppled hasn’t the time to waste causing trouble in the rest of the world.

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.

This remarkable report comes from The Telegraph.

British soldiers who spot Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs are told not to shoot them because they do not pose an immediate threat, the Ministry of Defence has admitted.

They are instead being ordered to just observe insurgents and record their position to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

The controversial policy emerged at an inquest into the death of Sgt Peter Rayner, 34, a soldier from the 2nd Batallion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment who was killed in October last year by an improvised explosive device as he led a patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Wendy Rayner, 40, disclosed that in the days leading up to his death her husband been told that it was not his job to attack insurgents laying bombs.

Mrs Rayner, who lives with their young son in Bradford, told the inquest that the insurgents were being allowed to get away with the murder of British troops.

She said: “They are not allowed to fire on these terrorists. If they can see people leaving these IEDs, why can’t they take them out? One officer even told him ‘I am an army Captain and you will do your job’.

“We have lost too many men out there, they had seen people planting IEDs yet could not open fire or make contact with them. I believe strongly if people had taken on board what he was saying more he might have been here today.”

Under the Geneva Convention and the nationally administered Rules of Engagement the 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan are told they can only attack if there is an immediate threat to life.

A key part of the MoD’s counter-insurgency theory holds that it is more important to win over civilians by not killing innocent people than it is to eliminate every potential insurgent.

Analysis & Commentary

The penultimate paragraph is total crap, and the MoD knows it.  IED emplacers are combatants, and the British Soldiers no more have to wait for a gun to be pointed at their heads than a sniper has to wait for the same thing from a Taliban fighter 1000 yards away.

So that excuse is just a ruse.  The final paragraph outlines the real reason for the problem.  The British military doctrines for counterinsurgency, taken primarily from their experience in Northern Ireland, includes almost at every step of the process the de-escalation of violence no matter what the cost.

It not only loses counterinsurgencies, but it loses the support of the public (and in part, the later causes the former).  It’s what the British did in Basra, and it’s what they did in Musa Qala.  The enlisted men in the British Army are brave and well-trained, and the U.S. Marines have the utmost respect for the British Royal Marines.  But there is a doctrinal sickness in the officer corps of the British Army.  Not the British public, and not the British enlisted man.  The officer corps.  The officer corps of the British Army needs a gut check before it ever attempts another war of any kind, conventional, hybrid or counterinsurgency.

Prior: True Confessions of British Counterinsurgency

David Codrea is reporting that Congressman Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) wrote a letter today to Attorney General Eric Holder and Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Kenneth Melson, expressing deep concerns over the allegations of release of guns to MS-13 from the Tampa ATF office.

“These reports,” Bilirakis writes, “raise troubling questions about the motives, intentions, and competency of the ATF and DOJ.”

“In recent days,” he notes, “it has come to light that the ATF and DOJ may have participated in the act of ‘gun walking’ beyond the acts conducted within the scope of “Operation Fast and Furious’…and that similar programs included the possible trafficking of arms to dangerous criminal gangs in Honduras with the knowledge of the ATF’s Tampa Field Division.”

The complete list of questions is as follows:

1. Can you confirm whether or not the ATF Tampa Field Division and/or the Department of Justice’s Middle District of Florida participated in a “gun walking” scheme that allowed weapons to be trafficked to Honduras?

2. If so, does the ATF or the DOJ have knowledge of any of these firearms ending up in the possession of the notorious MS-13 gang?

3. How many guns have been allowed to pass into Honduras and how many have since been accounted for?

4. Were trafficked weapons subject to any special monitoring processes once they left the United States?

5. Has “Operation Castaway” been terminated? If not, does the DOJ or ATF plan to terminate this program or urge its termination?

6. Has the DOJ or the ATF established any criteria or guidance pertaining to what is admissible for future operations aimed at preventing firearms from being obtained and used by dangerous foreign criminal organizations in crimes similar to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry?

David Codrea enters a detailed discussion about whether this facet of the scandal is subdivided into “Operation Castaway.”  I think that this is unimportant, and the important thing to follow is David’s reporting on the events and people.  Don’t miss what’s happening here.  It has been said that “Fast and Furious” was separate from Project Gunrunner (or at least, a subset of it).  “Operation Castaway” is supposed to be another subset of Project Gunrunner.  These details will all come to light in the coming days if Congress probes deeply enough, but the important thing now is that their own reporting claims that there is coherence and consistency of effort, a common strategy, and approval of the project – taken as a whole – from the very top levels of the administration.  The subdivided operation at the field offices under which each illegality falls is not currently important.

The scandal deepens and widens, and the depth and extent of the illegalities is only beginning to emerge.  Perhaps Congressman Bilirakis can get to the ATF before they shred all of the pertinent documents.

Prior: Project Gunrunner category