As usual, Walter Russell Meade astutely notes the emerging Kurdish state in northeastern Syria:

Syria’s Kurds once waged a fruitless struggle with Damascus against discrimination and for basic rights like citizenship and official recognition of a distinct Kurdish language and culture. Now, however, the equation has changed, and large chunks of northeastern Syria are now under the sole control of the Kurds.

Back in July, Butcher Assad ceded the responsibility of governing and maintaining law and order in northeastern Syria to Kurdish leaders. In return they would keep out of the uprising. Syrian Kurdish leaders have taken this responsibility and run with it.

Of particular value is the accompanying map:

This illustrates the haphazard nature of current national boundaries in the Middle East, the result of post-World War I deals by the British and French.  Much of the conflict in the Middle East results from the incoherence of diverse ethnic groups arbitrarily compressed into a nation state.   As the Middle East continues to snowball into chaos and war, it may be that more sensible states will necessarily emerge.

Interestingly, Meade appears worried about the emergence (or re-emergence) of Kurdish nationalism in Syria and elsewhere, but from the viewpoint of U.S. national interests, the Kurds seem to be a natural ally of the U.S. in a critical part of the world where such allies are few and far between.

The Kurds are a distinct people group from the Arabs, Persians and Turks.   The Kurds in northern Iraq are one of the most pro-American populations in the entire Middle East and yet the Obama Administration has left them with little tangible support.   Syria presents an opportunity for the U.S. to establish a Kurdish enclave that can be a lever against an increasingly Islamist Turkey, as well as Iran, Iraq and whatever state emerges in the remainder of Syria.

The Kurds present an opportunity for the U.S. in Iraq as well.   After kicking ourselves out of Iraq last year, a new Romney Administration might take advantage of the autonomy of Kurds in Iraq to expand U.S. influence and presence there.  Iraq appears to be headed towards another civil war as the Shiite leadership in Baghdad increasingly excludes the Sunnis.   The U.S. could have a significant influence, through Iraqi Kurds, in curbing the excesses of the Shiite government or, failing that, to buttress the security and integrity of the Kudish region against pressure from the Baghdad government or Iran.

This is the kind of statecraft that the U.S. has seemingly forgotten.  We do not need infantry battalions on the ground nor billions of dollars in foreign aid to influence the direction of events in the Middle East.  The U.S. first needs to prove itself reliable as an ally (something that has suffered enormously under Obama).  Next, the U.S. must show the unique value it brings to vulnerable peoples like the Kurds:  expertise and training; economic development through private industry and trade; an unmatched (for now) diplomatic, military and humanitarian muscle available in times of need.   Like the Israelis, the Kurds have shown themselves to be fierce, independent, industrious, loyal and willing.   These are basic qualities necessary in an ally.   (Which is, perhaps, why, after 11 years, Afghanistan cannot be called an ally in any true sense of the word).

David Codrea has been at the forefront of Fast and Furious, along with Mike Vanderboegh, and one recent article on the Office of Inspector General’s report on Fast and Furious supplies ample evidence of his accuracy.

Spending a considerable portion of its analysis on the Operation Wide Receiver Bush-era firearms trafficking surveillance program, the Office of Inspector General’s massive report on Fast and Furious gunwalking released Wednesday corroborates much information presented to Gun Rights Examiner readers almost a full year ago.

“Operation Wide Receiver illustrated the failure of management in ATF’s Phoenix Field Division to alert ATF Headquarters to the use of these tactics,” the report documents, validating a claim made by Mike Detty, the confidential informant at the heart of the case, that “It had nothing to do with Bush or even DOJ.” This is significant, because House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Democrats and sympathetic media allies have made great hay conflating Wide Receiver with Fast and Furious and spreading a blame-transferring “Bush did it too” meme, with no less than Attorney General Eric Holder making a (since withdrawn with minimal fanfare) claim that a predecessor AG, Michael B. Mukasey, knew about the program and kept things quiet. Also of significance, Holder’s boss and executive privilege benefactor, President Obama, is still publicly conflating the operations, falsely telling Univision that Fast and Furious had “begun under the previous administration.”

Other Detty claims, published in this column in October, 2011, are also corroborated by the OIG report, including his account of the US Attorney telling him he refused to prosecute the case because of ATF lies. Another report filed later that month told of failed cooperation attempts with the Mexican government, also referred to by the IG. Other stories filed by Gun Rights Examiner, including one in November, 2011, relayed Detty’s account for phase known as Wide Receiver I and Wide Receiver II, also subjects of the OIG report, as well as attempts to smuggle receivers to Tijuana through San Diego.

The point being, these are but a few examples of innumerable reports filed in this column and at citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh’s Sipsey Street Irregulars blog that have since been proven through “official” sources, albeit, there is often a significant lag time between sourced claims and validation. It’s important to keep that in mind, particularly when reading claims from media sources that have done practically no original reporting on Fast and Furious except to weigh in on occasion with administration talking points, and absurd, wholly unjustified claims that the OIG report vindicates or exonerates anyone with the admission it has found no evidence.

Read the rest of Codrea’s report and his update.  I want to focus on something a little more pedestrian concerning this report.  I have not read the IG’s report and do not intend to.  David can be relied upon for the “inside baseball” of this scandal.

But there are two things that keep floating their way to the top for me like so much flotsam and jetsam from the shipwreck of what we now know as Fast and Furious.  We continually hear about the “failed” operation, the “flawed” program, and the lack of oversight when the main stream media report on the scandal.

I’m not convinced that anything was flawed or that the operation failed.  I still believe that it accomplished the precise goal for which it was intended.  They just got caught.  Unlike previous operations such as “Wide Receiver,” there was never any plan to interdict weapons.  More importantly, there couldn’t have been.  Once they crossed the border there was no means to track them, no power to confiscate them, and not even a sure means to trace them back to point of origin (although publication of the point of origin was the intended purpose if I am right about the program).

I have previously discussed Project Gunrunner (yes, I understand that this isn’t precisely the same thing as Fast and Furious, predates it, and Fast and Furious is still a subset of Gunrunner if I’m correct), where the U.S. government allegedly provided the means and training for the electronic tracing of firearms for Mexican authorities.

Not enough of them were trained.  There weren’t enough assets to accomplish the mission.  There was no way to pull it off, and this wasn’t even on the front end of firearms usage – it was on the back end after they had already been used in crimes.

What I’m saying is that the assertion that Fast and Furious is simply a “botched” operation doesn’t comport with the facts on the ground.  There was never any possibility that it would yield any fruit, and its handlers knew this if they have only slightly higher ability to perform syllogistic reasoning than, say, my dog.

Second, and just as important, is to observe what’s happening as part of the political cycle.  Note that Codrea links an article by Jake Tapper where Jake explains that Obama made false assertions about Fast and Furious beginning under previous administrations.

Of course this is false, and the IG’s report is a failure in that it spent even one second discussion Wide Receiver (for me, that it discusses Wide Receiver is more evidence that it would be a waste of time to read it, and it only further exonerates my view that I can ignore it).  Let’s rehearse for a moment what we learned in November of 2011.

It was left to Republican Senators Charles Grassley and John Cornyn to lay bare some crucial distinctions between to two ATF operations. Wide Receiver actually involved not gun-walking but controlled delivery. Unlike gun-walking, which seems (for good reason) to have been unheard of until Fast & Furious, controlled delivery is a very common law enforcement tactic. Basically, the agents know the bad guys have negotiated a deal to acquire some commodity that is either illegal itself (e.g., heroin, child porn) or illegal for them to have/use (e.g., guns, corporate secrets). The agents allow the transfer to happen under circumstances where they are in control — i.e., they are on the scene conducting surveillance of the transfer, and sometimes even participating undercover in the transfer. As soon as the transfer takes place, they can descend on the suspects, make arrests, and seize the commodity in question — all of which makes for powerful evidence of guilt.

Senator Schumer’s drawing of an equivalence between “tracing” in a controlled-delivery situation and “tracing” in Fast & Furious is laughable. In a controlled delivery firearms case, guns are traced in the sense that agents closely and physically follow them — they don’t just note the serial numbers or other identifying markers. The agents are thus able to trace the precise path of the guns from, say, American dealers to straw purchasers to Mexican buyers.
To the contrary, Fast & Furious involved uncontrolled deliveries — of thousands of weapons. It was an utterly heedless program in which the feds allowed these guns to be sold to straw purchasers — often leaning on reluctant gun dealers to make the sales. The straw purchasers were not followed by close physical surveillance; they were freely permitted to bulk transfer the guns to, among others, Mexican drug gangs and other violent criminals — with no agents on hand to swoop in, make arrests, and grab the firearms. The inevitable result of this was that the guns have been used (and will continue to be used) in many crimes, including the murder of Brian Terry, a U.S. border patrol agent.

In sum, the Fast & Furious idea of “trace” is that, after violent crimes occur in Mexico, we can trace any guns the Mexican police are lucky enough to seize back to the sales to U.S. straw purchasers … who should never have been allowed to transfer them (or even buy them) in the first place. That is not law enforcement; that is abetting a criminal rampage.

As Sen. Cornyn pointed out, there is another major distinction between Wide Receiver and Fast & Furious. The former was actually a coordinated effort between American and Mexican authorities. Law enforcement agents in both countries kept each other apprised about suspected transactions and tried to work together to apprehend law-breakers. To the contrary, Fast & Furious was a unilateral, half-baked scheme cooked up by an agency of the Obama Justice Department — an agency that was coordinating with the Justice Department on the operation and that turned to Main Justice in order to get wiretapping authority.

By the time Cornyn was done drawing this stark contrast between Wide Receiver and Fast & Furious, Holder was reduced to conceding, “I’m not trying to equate the two.”

But Obama trotted this out as if most people have not heard of Wide Receiver, and if they have, they don’t know anything about the differences between it and Fast and Furious.

In fact, I fear that most people in America are watching sitcoms at night before bed.  Obama may be right, and he may pull off yet another misdirect on the American people, at least, the ones who don’t care.

From WSJ.

As Evan Perez reported in the WSJ last month, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been thinking about turning its unwieldy seven-word name into something a little snappier. At the time, he wrote that Violent Crime Bureau was a candidate.

Now, quietly, the name change has happened—at least a little bit. For a few days now, the bureau has featured the new name at the top of its home page (atf.gov), just below the old name. The site’s top banner reads, “Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives / The Violent Crime Bureau.”

The new name doesn’t have any legal status yet. Asked about changing names Wednesday, ATF acting director B. Todd Jones said, “That’s a concept that we batted around.” He added that the agency was focused on returning to its fundamental mission and said, “How it’s labeled is less important than what it does.”

The Violent Crime Bureau moniker reflects the agency’s ambition to take the lead in tackling violent-crime outbreaks in big cities such as Philadelphia that have seen an increase in murders and drug-related shootings. The agency’s current name is something of an anachronism because it brings fewer than a hundred alcohol and tobacco cases a year. And its reputation as a firearms regulator took a hit because of the Fast and Furious scandal …

So a name change has been “batted around” within the DOJ/ATF in order to save their battered reputation?  That’s how the new head is spending his time and energy?  My idea is somewhat different.  Leave firearms regulation entirely to the states, and hand ATF employess their pink slips.  All of them.  It would save money, and my bet is that it wouldn’t cause one iota of difference in crimes.

It would more closely comport with the doctrine of federalism so important to our founders, it would help to protect our constitutional rights, it would decrease federal meddling in the lives of U.S. citizens, and it would sweep yet another bloated and wasteful federal bureaucracy out of the way as we press towards streamlining of the system.  What’s not to like about it?

TCJ readers, listen up.   We have had a major, strategic breakthrough in the War against Islamofascism.

It is so unexpected and so unconventional, so inadvertent that it can only be considered something of a Divine intervention.

America has stumbled upon the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction against the Islamist foe:  cheezy, low-budget films with horrible production and grade-school dialogue launched via that irresistible weapons delivery system known as “YouTube.”

Yes, I am referring to that military masterpiece unleashed upon the unsuspecting Islamists called, The Innocence of Muslims.

Consider just this one example in al Jazeera of its destructive power:

At least one person has died as demonstrations against an anti-Islam video erupt across Pakistan, a day after protesters tried to storm the US embassy in the capital, Islamabad.

Angry demonstrators set fire to two cinemas in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police and witnesses said on Friday, as the country began a day of protests.

One protester was wounded when a cinema guard opened fire as crowds armed with clubs and bamboo poles converged on the Firdaus picture house, “smashing it up and setting furniture ablaze”, according to Gohar Ali, a police officer.

Witnesses said a separate rampaging crowd stormed the Shama cinema, notorious locally for showing films considered to be pornographic.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis were expected to take to the streets across the country after the government called an impromptu public holiday to let people protest.

****

Friday was designated a “day of expression of love for the prophet” by the government, which called for peaceful protests against the Innocence of Muslims video produced in the US.

All the major political parties and religious groups announced protests, as did many trade and transport organisations.

Large crowds were expected to turn out after Friday prayers.

The previous day, the US embassy became the latest target of protesters angry at the YouTube video. The total number of protesters touched 5,000 with the arrival of protesters carrying the flags of anti-American Islamist groups.

At least 50 people were injured as police fired tear gas and live rounds towards the crowds.

This New Secret Weapon, according to the article, has the mysterious ability to induce widespread madness in the Islamist population, compelling them to irrational behaviors like attacking porno theaters and embassies that are merely obscene for their obsequious behavior.

What’s more, the U.S. government is augmenting the frightful power of this new weapon with a psychological campaign of such cruel calculation that it is almost a crime against humanity.   It’s true.  The Islamist will soon be begging for the merciful Drone Strikes before too long.  Consider this diabolical game of deception and denial waged by the Administration as quoted in the al Jazeera article:

Against this tense backdrop, the US has bought time on Pakistani television stations to run a series of ads in an effort to assuage Muslim feelings of hurt.

The US hopes the ad would show that the country had no involvement with the controversial internet video.

The US embassy in Islamabad spent about $70,000 to run the announcement, which features clips of Barack Obama, the US president, and Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, underscoring US respect for religion and declaring the US government had nothing to do with the video.

Obama is shown saying: “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”

Clinton then says: “Let me state very clearly, the United States has absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its contents. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”

“In order to ensure we reached the largest number of Pakistanis, some 90 million as I understand it in this case with
these spots, it was the judgment that this was the best way to do it.”

Addressing a media briefing on the ad campaign, Victoria Nuland, state department spokeswoman, said the aim was “to make sure that the Pakistani people hear the president’s messages and the secretary’s messages”.

The announcement aired as the US asked its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Pakistan.

Oh the savagery!  Oh the mental ruin this will visit upon the poor, helpless Islamists!

Imagine the Islamists, weary from the YouTube Bomb-induced fury against porn theaters and embassies, seeking some solace in their television re-runs of “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” only to be bombarded– yes! bombarded!– with relentless messages from Barack Hussein Obama that the U.S. loves and respects all faiths, especially ones that do not have a crucifix that can be plunged into urine or a virgin mother that can be smeared with elephant feces.

This, my friends, is the ultimate in psychological whiplash!  A veritable jiu-jitsu of mental pain!  Surely, the Islamists will think, the President of the United States has the power to stop this horrible YouTube Bomb if he chooses.  But he does not!  Instead he claims respect for Islam while insulting its Prophet!  And, to add injury to insult, he allows the horrible Clinton woman– a woman of all things— to deliver the one-two punch:  the U.S. had nothing to do with the video (when it clearly did) and America believes in “religious tolerance” (when those very words are a red-hot poker in the Islamist soul).

But you may well be asking, How can we be sure that the normally spineless suck-ups in the Obama Administration and the Pentagon will find the courage to continue using a weapon of such fearsome, destructive power?  There is evidence of more bombs in the making.

The U.S. government cleverly brought in the filmmaker for “questioning” based upon “parole violations.” Uh huh.   Wink, wink.  Nudge, nudge.   That ought to throw the Islamists off the scent, eh?  No one suspects (but we know better) that this was a clever ruse for the government to plan and coordinate the next series of YouTube Bombs that will continue to drive the Islamists over the cliff.

Victory is at hand, friends!  All the U.S. need do now is just let the YouTube Bombs wreak their radioactive havoc upon the Islamists until their societies are so riven with mad self-destruction that they collapse in upon themselves like a laptop computer placed upon a wet, cardboard box.  Yes, we here in the U.S. may be called upon to make sacrifices: exposure to these YouTube Bombs has been known to cause fits of derisive laughter and mild nausea in infidels, but we must not shrink back from even these sufferings.

Instead, let us console ourselves with the magnificence of this new Wonder Weapon.   This is the evil genius of the United States of America at its finest.  Stand in awe and fearful amaze.

Well, well… here is a nice little report from The Financial Times on the economics of global oil production and pricing:

Saudi Arabia has offered its main customers in the US, Europe and Asia extra oil supplies through the end of the year, a sign the world’s largest exporter is worried about the impact of rising prices on the global economy.

The Group of Seven finance ministers last month called on oil exporters to expand production. Saudi Arabia initially reacted coolly to the request, saying that global supply and demand were balanced. But the kingdom has recently taken steps to bring down prices, consulting with large refiners and offering them extra oil.

“The current price is too high,” a senior Gulf-based oil official told the Financial Times. “We would like to see oil prices back to $100 a barrel.”

The price of Brent, the global oil benchmark, has risen 33 per cent from mid-June to a peak of $117.95 a barrel on Friday. On Monday it plunged almost $4 in just four minutes, but later recovered.

Saudi Arabia last launched a similar round of consultations with major oil refiners in March, weeks before it boosted its production to a 30-year high of 10m barrels a day. Riyadh is now evaluating the response from refiners.

The nation last month produced 9.9m b/d, but the senior official said that Riyadh was now again pumping around 10m b/d. “We are consulting our clients about their oil needs and telling them we are ready to supply more,” the senior official said.

Opec delegates said Riyadh was trying to bring prices down. “The Saudis are actively managing the market,” added another senior oil official from an African Opec nation. “They supplied a little less when prices dropped to $90 over the summer and they will supply more now that prices are above $115.”

The signal from Riyadh comes as rising energy prices emerge as a contentious political issue in the US presidential race. Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, has accused President Barack Obama of not doing enough to bring gasoline prices down.

The cost of regular gasoline surged in the US last week to $3.878 per gallon, the highest level ever for this period of the year. US retail gasoline prices reached an all-time high of $4.114 per gallon in early July 2008.

The White House last month dusted off plans to use the strategic petroleum reserve to bring prices down. But so far Mr Obama has not authorised a release, in part because opposition from allies such as Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

Hmmmm….I seem to remember that El Presidente said something to the effect that higher production of oil will not affect gas prices.  Oh yes, here are his remarks from March 2012:

The recent spike in gas prices has been another painful reminder of why we have to invest in this technology.   As usual, politicians have been rolling out their three-point plans for two-dollar gas: drill, drill, and drill some more.  Well, my response is, we have been drilling.  Under my Administration, oil production in America is at an eight-year high.  We’ve quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs, and opened up millions of acres for drilling.

But you and I both know that with only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices – not when consume 20 percent of the world’s oil. We need an all-of-the-above strategy that relies less on foreign oil and more on American-made energy – solar, wind, natural gas, biofuels, and more.

That’s right.  We “can’t drill our way to lower gas prices…”   Because, El Presidente says, the United States only has “2% of the world’s oil reserves.”   But we all know this is an outdated deception aimed at the gullible.  In fact, the Congressional Research Service reported several years ago that the U.S. has more oil and gas reserves (as that term is generally understood in the world oil industry) than any, other country on earth.   In fact, the U.S. has more oil and gas than Saudia Arabia, Venezuela and Candada combined.

According to this Investor’s Business Daily report based on a Congressional testimony by the Government Accounting Office:

Energy: The Government Accountability Office tells Congress the Green River Formation out West contains an “amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.” So why are we keeping it locked up on federal lands?

Exploding the Big Lie pushed by President Obama that we can’t drill our way out of high gas prices because we have but 2% of the world’s proven oil reserves, Anu Mittal, GAO director of natural resources and environment, testified before Congress last week that just one small part of the U.S. is capable of outproducing the rest of the planet.

That small part is known as the Green River Formation, the world’s largest oil shale deposit, and is located in a largely vacant region of mostly federal land on the western edge of the Rocky Mountains that includes portions of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.

As we have written in our “Oil And Gas/Fact And Fiction” series, the Green River Formation has been dubbed our Persia on the Plains, an area with technically recoverable oil in an amount estimated at four times the proven resources of Saudi Arabia.

Given that current U.S. daily oil consumption is running at 19.5 million barrels, the staggering amount of Green River reserves would by itself supply domestic oil consumption for more than 200 years. That sure blows the heck out of the “peak oil” theory that the world is running out of oil.

According to Mittal’s testimony before the House science subcommittee on energy and the environment, the U.S. Geological Survey “estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions.”

According to the president’s bizarre formulation, this oil does not count as a “proven” reserve because little drilling has been done. There is a reason for that. As Mittal testified: “The federal government is in a unique position to influence the development of oil shale because 72% of the oil shale within the Green River Formation lies beneath federal lands managed by BLM (Bureau of Land Management).”

(Emphasis Added)

In any event, Obama does not believe what he says, as usual.   While he pontificates about not being able to “drill our way out” of our energy problems, the Financial Times article reports that he has “dusted off plans to use the strategic petroleum reserve to bring prices down.”   If more drilling won’t solve the problem of high prices, then tapping the strategic reserve is useless.  Just one more example of El Presidente’s contempt for the American people.

Furthermore, even if it was true that the U.S. has “only” 2% of the world’s oil reserves, pricing is not determined by how much oil is in the ground.   Pricing is determined by how much is pumped out of the ground.   According to the CIA world fact book, as of 2010, the U.S. was producing an average of 9.688 million barrels of oil per day.   This already exceeds the production of Saudi Arabia when it wants to maintain stable pricing.    As the Financial Times article shows, however, when Saudi Arabia wants to bring down the price of oil, it ramps up its production to something around 10 million barrels per day.   If Saudi Arabia can affect world oil prices by simply putting an extra million or so barrels of oil per day onto the oil market, it is axiomatic that the U.S. can similarly affect the price of oil by getting production to over 10 million barrels or more per day.  In fact, some experts have said that the U.S. has the resources and capability to be producing over 15 million barrels of oil per day if we so choose.

One, other aspect of this subject that needs to be touched upon is the effect of Ben Bernanke’s federal monetary policy on oil prices.  Since Bernanke has decided to unleash another round of printing money and since oil prices are denominated in U.S. dollars, we will see the price of oil rise concomitant with the increase in the U.S. money supply.   In effect, then, the Saudis are underwriting our money printing by increasing oil production to offset to some degree the rise of oil prices that will naturally ensue because of the rising volume of dollars.

Take this one step further:  if the U.S. wants to recover from the Federal Reserve’s monetary inflation policy, producing increasing amounts of domestic oil is one effective way to do it.   Oil is real wealth.  Just like gold is real wealth (or, for that matter, all those incredibly valuable rare earth minerals the U.S. is sitting on but cannot develop due to ridiculous bureaucratic obstacles).  When the U.S. produces lots of oil, the wealth of the world comes to the U.S. rather than flowing to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or Russia.   Oil, in a sense, is perhaps our greatest strategic weapon because it is one resource that the world cannot do without and it changes the balance of power globally.    In a crude sense, he who has the most oil wins.  We have it.  It’s time to start using it.

It’s time to renew that popular phrase:  Drill Baby, Drill.

You know my view.  The Department of Homeland Security should not exist.  Furthermore, they and the TSA are helping to turn the U.S. into a police state.  But as I have followed this story it becomes more troubling each time it is updated.

Following controversy over its purchase of around 1.2 billion bullets in the last six months alone, the Department of Homeland Security has put out a new solicitation for over 200 million more rounds of ammunition, some of which are designated to be used by snipers.

A series of new solicitations posted on the FedBizOpps website show that the DHS is looking to purchase 200 million rounds of .223 rifle ammunition over the next four years, as well as 176,000 rounds of .308 caliber 168 grain hollow point boat tail (HPBT) rounds in addition to 25,000 rounds of blank .308 caliber bullets.

As James Smith over at the Prepper Podcast website highlights, “It is the type of ammunition and not necessarily the quantity that is troubling.”

Smith points out that the DHS’ acquisition of .308 rounds is of concern because they are set to be used by well-trained snipers.

“All of the sniper grade ammunition is being used by trained, or in-the-process-of-being-trained snipers,” writes Smith, noting that the math adds up to 135,384 potential kills for the snipers to make, using the 176,000 rounds of ammunition, basing the figures on the fact that United States Army and Marine Corps snipers in the Vietnam War expended 1.3 rounds of ammunition for each claimed and verified kill.

[ … ]

The DHS’ decision back in March to purchase of 450 million rounds of .40-caliber hollow point bullets that are designed to expand upon entry and cause maximum organ damage prompted questions as to why the federal agency required such powerful bullets and in such large quantities merely for training purposes.

So there are a couple of problems that need to be pointed out here.  First, personal defense rounds (hollow point, jacketed hollow point of any brand, e.g., Gold Dot, Hydrashock, etc.), are not used for range time.  They are too expensive.  You use FMJ or metal case rounds.  Second, you need to watch this video of Travis Haley (former Recon Marine, Blackwater, now on to greater things) in al Najaf fighting the Mahdi Army.

Travis Haley is a legitimate bad ass.  The DHS doesn’t have anyone like him, a point I will readily concede.  Nonetheless, he is using a 5.56 rifle with good glass to take out fighters at 800 meters.  No one in DHS needs to shoot targets at this distance or anywhere near it.

The DHS doesn’t need .308 rounds for any legitimate purpose.

One would think that the answer to this question is fairly straight forward after the change in federal law allowing firearms to be carried into National Parks saved its first backpackers.  But there was a proliferation of stupid articles about a gun being no protection against bears, articles such as this one.

A well placed bullet might stop an aggressive grizzly, but not shooting could be just as effective in protecting yourself in bear country, according to a new study by Brigham Young University wildlife biologists.

Longtime bear biologist Tom Smith and colleagues analyzed 269 incidents of close-quarter bear-human conflict in Alaska between 1883 and 2009 in which a firearm was involved. They found the gun made no statistical difference in the outcome of these encounters, which resulted in 151 human injuries and 172 bear fatalities

“It really isn’t about the kind of gun you carry. It’s about how you carry yourself,” said Smith, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

“Guns are great, but for a gun to be great you have to be very, very good. No one ever practices on a 500-pound animal charging at you through the brush at 10 meters. They practice on paper targets,” he added. “That’s a big, big difference from being in the moment of stress.”

One commenter noted how bad studies like this are, observing that:

For any study to be valid, controls must be in place to make certain that conditions are identical for the options being tested.  That is patently false in this scenario and for a very simple reason:  Bear spray is carried with the full purpose of using it on a bear.  That may seem like a simple premise, but let me continue.   A firearm may be carried for any one of several reasons; small game hunting, bird shooting, etc.  In other words, the bear spray examples they give are all in preparation for those specific situations, the firearm examples may be anything from someone carrying a 12 gauge loaded with OOO buckshot, strictly on the concern for meeting up with B’rer Bruin, to a squirrel hunter armed only with a .22.  Likewise would be the case of shotgunner, out for birds and carrying only birdshot.

For this study to be valid, it would have to compare those using bear spray for protection with those carrying heavy enough firearms for the specific intent of protecting the carrier from bears.

Well, yes, but things that seem intuitive to us (e.g., that the presence of a man-killing animal requires protection) get buried by biased “researchers.”  Fortunately we have other writers who aren’t so stolid.

A predatory black bear attack on a camper in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness area illustrates why guns–not bear spray–are sometimes the best tool for self-defense.

A five-year old, 185 pound male black bear jumped on the camper’s tent at 7:30 in the morning. The bear then ripped through the tent and mauled the man in what Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials describe as a predatory attack.

The camper–who has chosen not to be identified or talk to the media–used bear spray to deter the bear, however, the bruin did not leave the area.

Since the man was out of bear spray, he was helpless. That would not be the case if he had a pistol, rifle, or shotgun because most of these firearms hold five or more rounds. The man could have killed the bear.

Incredibly, a U.S. Forest Service trail crew employee came upon the injured man just outside his camp. The Great Falls Tribune said the Forest Service employee “chased off the bear,” but no explanation was offered on how this was accomplished.

The Forest Service employee then radioed for help. A helicopter arrived, and the injured man was taken to the Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

Later that afternoon, Montana FWP sent a team to dispatch the bear. The bear was killed just 70 yards from the campsite. It was in the process of moving closer to the tent.

The bruin had bear spray on its fur. It had blood on its claws. A necropsy showed that after the initial attack, the bear had been able to get into food at the campsite. Its stomach contents included bits of Ziplock bags, dried pasta, and other food.

If there’s such a thing as a typical predatory black bear, this bear “fits the mold.” A recent study shows that 92% of all predatory black bears in the past century have been males. This bear was healthy, and that too is typical.

In the 2nd edition of Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, biologist Stephen Herrero writes that “If predation is the motive for an attack, the attack typically continues until the bear is forced to back down, or the person gets away, or the bear gets its prey.” (p.106)

Better to have a minimum of five or six shots from a firearm, than one 5-8 second burst of bear spray.

You can keep your bear mace.  I’ll carry my XDm .45 or some similar gun, thank you.

I’ve previously documented how an AR can be useful for entertainment and the study of the science of firearms, defining it this way.

While ATF lawyers might disagree, for something to have a “sporting purpose” means nothing more than it can be taken to the range and operated by the owner to his or her entertainment or training.  The shooting skills – whether for official competitions such as IDPA or 3-Gun, or for unofficial activities such as regular range visits for the purpose of betterment at the science of firearms operation – are sports.  All of them.  Period.  This is non-negotiable.  If it is a firearm, it has a sporting purpose.

Then again, ARs are useful for hunting as I’ve also shown.  I’ve also documented two-, three-, four- and five-man home invasions in which an AR was either used or could have been in self defense.

But that isn’t all.  Feral hogs have become a blight on the landscape and terrain of much of America.

What do wild hogs do that’s so bad?

Oh, not much. They just eat the eggs of the sea turtle, an endangered species, on barrier islands off the East Coast, and root up rare and diverse species of plants all over, and contribute to the replacement of those plants by weedy, invasive species, and promote erosion, and undermine roadbeds and bridges with their rooting, and push expensive horses away from food stations in pastures in Georgia, and inflict tusk marks on the legs of these horses, and eat eggs of game birds like quail and grouse, and run off game species like deer and wild turkeys, and eat food plots planted specially for those animals, and root up the hurricane levee in Bayou Sauvage, Louisiana, that kept Lake Pontchartrain from flooding the eastern part of New Orleans, and chase a woman in Itasca, Texas, and root up lawns of condominiums in Silicon Valley, and kill lambs and calves, and eat them so thoroughly that no evidence of the attack can be found.

And eat red-cheeked salamanders and short-tailed shrews and red-back voles and other dwellers in the leaf litter in the Great Smoky Mountains, and destroy a yard that had previously won two “‘Yard of the Month” awards on Robins Air Force Base, in central Georgia, and knock over glass patio tables in suburban Houston, and muddy pristine brook-trout streams by wallowing in them, and play hell with native flora and fauna in Hawaii, and contribute to the near-extinction of the island fox on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California, and root up American Indian historic sites and burial grounds, and root up a replanting of native vegetation along the banks of the Sacramento River, and root up peanut fields in Georgia, and root up sweet-potato fields in Texas, and dig big holes by rooting in wheat fields irrigated by motorized central-pivot irrigation pipes, and, as the nine-hundred-foot-long pipe advances automatically on its wheeled supports, one set of wheels hangs up in a hog-rooted hole, and meanwhile the rest of the pipe keeps on going and begins to pivot around the stuck wheels, and it continues and continues on its hog-altered course until the whole seventy-five-thousand-dollar system is hopelessly pretzeled and ruined.

They have run farmers in Georgia and Texas completely out of business and threatened men, women and children with injury and loss of income.  But now comes an account of the use of ARs to address the problem.

Quite simply, what used to be vast tracks of empty land has filled up with people. The wilds where hunters once roamed now sport tract housing and double wides. It’s a big reason gun ownership is declining in America — down 40 percent since 1977.

But here on Campbell’s big farm is a little piece of what once was. And like many of his peers who came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, Campbell saw no reason for his daughters to be excluded from the rituals he grew up with.

[ … ]

At his farmhouse, Campbell goes to his gun safe.

“It will hold about 40 guns, and I’ve got about 25 in there. But I’ve got some really neat guns,” Campbell says. “I’ve got my grandfather’s .22. I have an STW. I have an AR-15. I have a Smith & Wesson .22-250.”

Some of the rifles are for deer. Campbell has many beautiful shotguns because he is an avid duck hunter. He uses the AR-15, which is essentially the military’s M16, to hunt feral hogs. We go out back, and the judge lets fly with the semiautomatic.

“I’ve got a night vision scope on it. And the hogs only come out at 2 o’clock in the morning. There are certain spots they come out at. I drive up very quietly. I’m normally only 200 yards out, and I turn on my little trusty night vision scope and I smoke ’em. All of ’em,” Campbell says. “I can shoot 30 shots in eight seconds, and I’ve killed as many as 26 out of 30 shots at night with that gun.”

As for any willingness to compromise on something like limiting the size of ammunition clips, Campbell says if Democrats could be trusted not to ask for more and more, he’d consider it. But he says you can’t trust Democrats in general, and you certainly can’t trust Obama. And he says liberals mistake gun owners’ enmity toward the president for something it’s not.

“It’s not a black thing, it’s a liberal thing,” Campbell says.

Well, first in order to correct some misconceptions, it is simply a farce to claim that gun ownership is declining in America.  Second – and let me be clear about this – magazine capacity is a non-negotiable.  But third, note the use of the AR to save the terrain, protect indigenous species, protect the plant life, prevent erosion, and save the farmers.

It’s like the health benefits of red wine or coffee.  Is there anything an AR can’t do?

UPDATE #1: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the attention!

UPDATE #2: Thanks to David Codrea for the attention!

UPDATE #3: My friend Joey MacRae, one of the premier quarter horse trainers in America, hunts feral hogs a different way down around Anderson, S.C.  He releases his bay dogs to bay up the pigs.  When they do he releases his strike dogs, and when the strike dogs get the pig, Joey goes in with a long knife and kills the pig himself with a strike to the heart.  Thanks, but if I go hog hunting I’ll stick to a gun.

UPDATE #4: Thanks to New Jovian Thunderbolt for the attention!  Maybe Benjamin wants to loan me his M-14 for a while?  I’m cool with that too.

UPDATE #5: Thanks to Michael Bane for the attention!

UPDATE #6: Thanks to Bill Quick for the attention!

UPDATE #7: Thanks to Say Uncle for the attention!

UPDATE #8: Thanks to Ace for the attention!

Prior:

Happy Assault Weapons Ban Sunset Provision Day!

No One Needs ARs For Self Defense Or Hunting?

Do We Have A Constitutional Right To Own An AR?

A fascinating interview by Fox News provides an infuriating look into all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy and the so-called “war on terror.”

Fox News claims to have gained access to Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who cooperated with the CIA in verifying the location of Osama bin Laden in 2011.   The magnitude of Afridi’s statements have both the Pakistani government, the ISI and prison officials all denying that the interview took place.   Even Afridi’s lawyers deny that Afridi spoke to Fox News.  On the other hand, this BBC news account raises the possibility that the interview could have taken place using a cell phone secretly passed to Afridi by relatives.   The denials are, at any rate, less than categorical.   Speculation posits that Dr. Afridi may be making a desperate bid to generate news and sympathy in the U.S. for his plight in the hope that he will be released or the prison term reduced.

According to the Fox News story:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan –  Pakistan’s powerful spy agency regards America as its “worst enemy,” and the government’s claims that it is cooperating with the US are a sham to extract billions of dollars in American aid, according to the CIA informant jailed for his role in hunting down Usama bin Laden.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Shakil Afridi, the medical doctor who helped pinpoint bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound before last year’s raid by SEAL Team 6, described brutal torture at the hands of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, and said the agency is openly hostile to the U.S.

“They said ‘The Americans are our worst enemies, worse than the Indians,’” Afridi, who spoke from inside Peshawar Central Jail, said as he recalled the brutal interrogation and torture he suffered after he was initially detained.

***

The ISI, Afridi said, helps fund the Haqqani network, the North Waziristan-based militant group that was last week designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The agency also works against the U.S. by preventing the CIA from interrogating militants captured by Pakistan, who are routinely released to return to Afghanistan to continue attacks on NATO forces there.

“It is now indisputable that militancy in Pakistan is supported by the ISI […] Pakistan’s fight against militancy is bogus. It’s just to extract money from America,” Afridi said, referring to the $23 billion Pakistan has received largely in military aid since 9/11.

TCJ readers will not find any of Afridi’s statements surprising.   Pakistan’s duplicity is well documented over the years since the 9/11 attacks.   Nonetheless, the Afridi interview serves to highlight the futility of fighting a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan while allowing both Iran and Pakistan to actively support the insurgents.    Moreover, the U.S. government goes out of its way to curry favor with Pakistan, providing billions of dollars in aid while they assist our enemies.   This is simply immoral and an insult to the families who have lost loved ones in the Afghanistan theater of operations.

Finally, compare the treatment of Pakistan and their barely concealed contempt for the U.S. with the treatment given to Israel.  Setting aside any considerations of cultural or religious ties to Israel, from a national interest perspective, Israel is an irreplaceable ally in the heart of the Middle East.   Israel provides the U.S. with intelligence of all kinds that is otherwise unavailable (given our severe lack of human resources).   Israel effectively ties down the military assets of Egypt, Syria and the quasi-states of Gaza and Hezbollah-stan in Lebanon.   The Obama Administration is simply throwing Israel under the bus when it comes to a nuclear Iran.  Israel has sensibly asked for some “red lines” to be set in an attempt to stop the Iranian rush to obtain nuclear weapons.    Obama refuses.   More than that, Obama undercuts efforts by Israel to act on its own to protect itself from an Iranian threat that is catastrophic.

This insanity cannot continue.  It is hard to imagine that President Obama could have brought the U.S. to the brink of irrelevance in the Middle East in just four, short years, but, as U.S. embassies and consulates are attacked with impunity throughout the region, we are witnessing the first bitter fruits of what promises to be a horrific harvest to come.

Over the weekend we visited Jones Gap State Park in South Carolina, 6000 acres of mountainous wilderness.  It must have been a new moon, and upon nightfall we couldn’t see our hands in front of our face.  The critters stayed away, and although we were told to expect bear activity, we didn’t have any.  My son did almost get bitten by a Copperhead.

Here I am attempting to cure my insatiable appetite for caffeine by use of my Isobutane stove.  Mornings are tough without coffee.  My one man tent is in the background.  It was home for Heidi and me this weekend.  My trekking poles are on the ground to the right under the log.

This is the river down below us that sang us to sleep.