Truth about Fast and Furious

The inspector general’s report on operation Fast and Furious clearly established responsibilities and criticized the Justice Department and its agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The House Oversight Committee, which has led the legislative inquiry into the case, said the report is an important step in clarifying the facts.

What Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the committee, did not say, is that the conclusions deny his own narrative of the operation. For months, Issa has claimed that this was a massive operation that, with the knowledge of the attorney general-and perhaps even the White House-sent guns to Mexico, putting the lives of Mexicans and Americans at risk, all with the goal of depriving people of the right to bear arms.

The reality was very different. This operation was planned in Phoenix and the majority of the 14 people named in the report are federal prosecutors or ATF agents. The responsibility went up to the chief of the Criminal Division, who did not inform Attorney General Eric Holder about what was happening.

However, we don’t know what is worse: what really happened or the exaggerations to earn political brownie points.

According to Issa, the Obama administration is the “most corrupt government in history,” a claim he tried to prove in this case. For that, he even found Holder in contempt, something that had never happened to an attorney general in U.S. history.

Needless to say, the report extended responsibility to the George W. Bush administration, during which the first gun sale program was put in place. The legislative committee ignored this fact in its fishing expedition for guilty parties inside the current government.

What must remain clear is that the operation that allowed the sale of guns to suspects of reselling them to Mexican cartels was a bad idea, despite resulting in 20 arrests and 14 convictions. And that people are fairly outraged that two of these weapons were found at the scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder. The firings, resignations and sanctions at the ATF and the Justice Department are justified.

There is no doubt that the report is a black eye for the Obama administration, which is ultimately responsible for the actions of the federal government. For the first time, there is a real perspective of what happened, which also reveals the brazen partisanship of Issa and his committee.