Make the backlash real 245
The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conspired with the Holy Land Foundation to fund Hamas, the death-cult terrorist organization that the Palestinians in Gaza have elected to govern them. As a result CAIR has been named a co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation which was found guilty of the crime, but CAIR remains “unindicted”. [Why?] It pretends to be the protector of American Muslims aganst a totally imaginary campaign of persecution which it dubs “Islamophobia”.
In fact, CAIR is a menacing organization dedicated to imposing oppressive sharia law on all Americans.
This is from American Thinker:
On June 5, 2012, a radical Islamic organization, CAIR-Florida, sent out a mass mailing with this message:
“CAIR Florida has been receiving an increase in complaints by law abiding American Muslims inappropriately targeted by law enforcement for questioning. This is a direct result of Islamophobic training CAIR has discovered many law enforcement officers in Florida are receiving. Join us this Saturday for an important program to learn how to protect yourself, your family, and your community against harassment by law enforcement or discrimination by businesses.”
Without verifiable proof of such “discrimination by businesses,” “Islamophobic training” or “inappropriate targeting by law enforcement”, this email appears to be a blatant slander of the tolerant American society and its legal system. The extensive influx of Muslim immigrants in recent years is the best evidence that they are treated better in the U.S.A. than in their own countries of origin.
So what motivates CAIR to besmirch their host country and stir discontent? The answer lies in the old playbook developed by the radical Left and now passed on to the new radical players: calculated fear mongering. Such messages are designed to keep American Muslims misinformed, scared, and running for CAIR’s protective cover.
In this example, CAIR was promoting its own so-called “Civil Liberties” Conference titled “Know Your Rights,” with the apparent purpose of encouraging Muslim immigrants to disobey American laws, resist law enforcement efforts, and game the system with frivolous lawsuits against local businesses and government agencies that result in more political power and personal enrichment – all under the aegis of CAIR.
The email included this flyer:
… CAIR’s faith-based protection racket is now working its way to replace all other means of social interaction for Muslim immigrants, aiming to become the only game in town for all American Muslims. By the rules of this game, in exchange for “protection,” they dare not assimilate and integrate into the larger society, accept American traditions and values, and – most importantly – dare not leave Islam.
The framework for such games has been inadvertently established by the fallacious multiculturalist doctrine. …
Omar M. Ahmad, founder of CAIR, once said: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant… The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” It is apparent that CAIR’s goal is not so much to contribute to the American society, but rather to replace our constitutional republic with an oppressive Islamic theocracy. Their efforts to set up the groundwork for this have been so far successful.
Freedom-loving Americans who oppose premeditated destruction of their cultural and political integrity are being silenced with lawsuits and the myth of “Islamophobia.” Their opponents have learned how to take advantage of democratic liberties, such as the right to free speech, free expression, free press, free assembly, freedom of religion, and equal protection before the law. But in a society the Islamists are planning for us, there will be no place for any of these individual freedoms, as evidenced by the Sharia-based totalitarian systems currently being implemented in the Middle East by the international Islamist alliance known as the Muslim Brotherhood.
All world cultures, Western and Muslim alike, share the same moral conviction, which is commonly reflected in their laws: those who show contempt for human life by committing remorseless, premeditated murder justly forfeit the right to their own life.
No. That is not true. Islam does not share the moral convictions of the West. It does not forbid its followers to murder, it only fobids them to murder fellow Muslims [eg. Koran 48:29]. And even that prohibition is honored more in the breach than the observance. Every single day Muslims are killed by other Muslims, in large numbers.
By this moral and legal standard, shouldn’t remorseless radical groups that profess contempt for our individual freedoms and actively promote their demise, forfeit their own right to enjoy these very individual freedoms? Shouldn’t their premeditated efforts to destroy the rule of law make them ineligible to be protected by these very laws? …
They should. But CAIR is favored, assisted, sustained, encouraged by the Obama administration:
The White House has recently admitted to having hundreds of behind-the-scenes meetings with CAIR …
When Eric Holder’s DOJ routinely steps in as muscle for CAIR’s ongoing litigation jihad; when Muslim employees are instigated to bring about unreasonable lawsuits against their employers; when American Muslims feel overwhelmed or bullied into silence by radical groups that claim to “represent” them, good and honest Americans must say “enough is enough” and, in the absence of government protection of their interests, resort to individual action and seek effective alternatives.
The Florida chapter of Stop Islamization of America has done just that. Calling CAIR-Florida’s flyer “offensive to our law enforcement officers and to Florida business owners,” they have created this counter flyer:
The advance of Islam must be resisted. Powerful, well-funded Islamic organizations can be frustrated. Stopping the creep takes organization, determination, thought, planning, tireless work, and much courage.
We at the American HQ of TAC are proud to announce that our British editor, Sam Westrop, wearing one or two of his several political activist hats, has chalked up a victory by all these means in London.
Two victories, in fact, as this press release reveals:
A report published by Stand For Peace exposing the extremist views and backgrounds of several foreign speakers invited to preach at a large conference in London has forced the cancellation of the event.
Organised by the Al-Muntada Trust, the ‘Month of Mercy’ was due to be held on 8th July at the Grand Connaught Rooms, but following numerous complaints and discussion with the police, the venue has stated that the conference will not go ahead.
Al-Muntada has an extensive history of hosting some of the UK’s worst hate preachers over many years. The views of the proposed speakers at the conference included justifying suicide bombings, glorifying jihad, promoting venomous homophobia, questioning criticism of female genital mutilation, spreading antisemitism, and encouraging reprehensible bigotry against Shia Muslims.
The report was compiled with research assistance from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, which monitors anti-democratic and illiberal forces abroad. It was then discussed with MPs, the Home Office and security services, and was published on the Stand for Peace website.
Concerns were initially dismissed by the venue hosting the event, with one senior member of management stating that the conference “didn’t bother me at all”. But after several anti-extremist blogs and websites picked up on the report, hundreds of people complained directly to the venue and lobbied their MPs, resulting in the cancellation. The venue cited “the safety and security” concerns when they cancelled the event, saying that they had engaged in “careful consideration and liaison with the local police force”.
Sam Westrop, Associate Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, said:
“The cancellation represents a victory for fair minded people of all faiths. By giving out the relevant information about extremist speakers, Stand for Peace was able to demystify the event’s purpose. Many people are intimidated by such events taking place around them, and lack the tools to investigate the true nature of what will be preached at them. By simply referring to public statements speakers have made in the past, members of the public were able to point out the worrying agenda that the event seemed to be pursuing. We commend the Connaught Rooms for changing their mind in the face of public concern.”
The Grand Connought Rooms cancellation follows a recent and similar warning about the activities of the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB). The PFB planned a ‘cultural’ event in Manchester, featuring speakers who have supported terrorism, including Azzam Tamimi and Saudi hate preacher Mohammed Al-Shareef. After StandforPeace and other campaigning organisations disseminated background information provided by the Institute, the hosting venue forced the PFB to cancel the speakers.
Notes for editors:
Stand For Peace is one of the UK’s leading anti-extremism organisations. It closely monitors and analyses extremist activity across the UK, thanks to its network of informers, and its expert researchers and analysts.
The Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy is a London-based think-tank which promotes better understanding of democratic and anti-democratic forces in the Middle East.
If it can be done there, it can be done here. It is being done here – in Florida, for instance. All it takes is organization, determination, thought, planning, tireless work, and much courage.
Do what he says, or else 32
The Constitution was carefully composed to protect Americans from tyranny; to keep them free. The Health Care law which has been upheld by the Supreme Court takes away their freedom. In the name of being true to it, the Court has nullified the Constitution. Its essential purpose has been discarded.
Neal Boortz, as much in anger as in sorrow it would seem, wants to be sure that Americans understand that this is what has happened.
He writes:
Do Americans – do you — really understand the gravity of what happened in the Supreme Court … ? Do you have any idea at all how the power of the Imperial Federal Government of the United States has been exponentially increased?
Answer? No, you probably don’t. You really can’t be faulted for that, I guess. After all, our wonderful government school system was designed to educate you, but only to the point that you don’t become a threat to your political rulers. The American people are a product of those schools, and the American people are, by and large, acting in the manner proscribed by those who “educated” them. …
I think a lot of people are missing something here; missing something very important. The Court’s ruling on ObamaCare grants the Congress of the United States the power to command virtually any action – any action that would not in and of itself constitute a crime – of any individual in this country, and to demand compliance with that command or be penalized. The federal government can now regulate virtually any human activity in which you wish to engage, and to regulate whether or not you will be allowed to refuse to participate in that activity, so long as a penalty is attached to your noncompliance. …
This is a sad day indeed for our Constitution.
A sad day for the people of the United States.
Sit back now and try to imagine anything the federal government cannot require of you – just so long as there is a penalty if you say “no.”
Is there no hope then? Is liberty, in the land of the last best hope of mankind, irrecoverably lost?
Perhaps not irrecoverably. But a re-election of Obama in November would signify that a majority of Americans no longer want to be free.
One judge, two identities 19
Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust
Die eine will sich von der andern trennen
(Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast
The one would sever itself from the other)
– Goethe: Faust I.
We deplore the ruling of the Supreme Court, issued yesterday, that upholds Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).
Why did Chief Justice Roberts, whose vote decided whether the tyrannous law should stand or fall, vote to let it stand?
A plausible – but not consoling – explanation is offered by Charles Krauthammer.
He writes:
Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of ObamaCare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time.
He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against ObamaCare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law — and thus prevented the court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration.
Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities.
Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative.
Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the court’s legitimacy, reputation and stature.
As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration’s central argument that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce. That makes congressional power effectively unlimited. Mr. Jones is not a purchaser of health insurance. Mr. Jones has therefore manifestly not entered into any commerce. Yet Congress tells him he must buy health insurance — on the grounds that it is regulating commerce. If government can do that under the Commerce Clause, what can it not do?
But now government can do it not under the Commerce Clause, thanks to the ruling. Mr. Jones can be ordered to do anything, and be fined if he doesn’t, on the grounds that the fine is a tax.
“The Framers … gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it,” writes Roberts. Otherwise you “undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers.”
That’s Roberts, philosophical conservative.
But he lives in uneasy coexistence with Roberts, custodian of the court, acutely aware that the judiciary’s arrogation of power has eroded the esteem in which it was once held …
National health care has been a liberal dream for a hundred years. It is clearly the most significant piece of social legislation in decades. Roberts’ concern was that the court do everything it could to avoid being seen, rightly or wrongly, as high-handedly overturning sweeping legislation passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president.
How to reconcile the two imperatives — one philosophical and the other institutional? Assign yourself the task of writing the majority opinion. Find the ultimate finesse that manages to uphold the law, but only on the most narrow of grounds — interpreting the individual mandate as merely a tax, something generally within the power of Congress.
Result? The law stands, thus obviating any charge that a partisan court overturned duly passed legislation. And yet at the same time the Commerce Clause is reined in. By denying that it could justify the imposition of an individual mandate, Roberts draws the line against the inexorable decades-old expansion of congressional power under the Commerce Clause fig leaf.
Law upheld, Supreme Court’s reputation for neutrality maintained. Commerce Clause contained, constitutional principle of enumerated powers reaffirmed.
That’s not how I would have ruled. I think the “mandate is merely a tax” argument is a dodge, and a flimsy one at that. (The “tax” is obviously punitive, regulatory and intended to compel.) Perhaps that’s not how Roberts would have ruled had he been just an associate justice, and not the chief. But that’s how he did rule.
ObamaCare is now essentially upheld. There’s only one way it can be overturned. The same way it was passed — elect a new president and a new Congress.
So it is up to the voters to decide in November whether they want a government that is their master or their servant.
To choose between tyranny and freedom.
Cold civil war 130
We often hear it said that the coming election is as raw a clash of political philosophies as can be imagined — the most important election since 1860. And in a sense, that’s true. The national divide over the issue of slavery and its expansion into the rapidly settling territories was a constitutional crisis of the first order. It took the Civil War to sort out an issue that the Framers had partially punted, at a dreadful cost of lives and treasure. Now we are engaged in a great Cold Civil War.
So Michael Walsh writes at PJ Media.
The decision American voters will make in November is far more than merely an ideological clash about what the Constitution meant or means. For that supposes that both sides are playing by the same rules, and have a shared interest in the outcome. That presumes that both sides accept the foundational idea of the American experiment, and that the argument is over how best to adhere to it.
That is false.
For some, this is a difficult notion to grasp. … The idea that one party — and you know which one I mean — is actively working against its own country as it was founded seems unbelievable.
But that is true.
Don’t take it from me, take it from Barack Hussein Obama who famously said on the stump in 2008: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” …
“Fundamental transformation” is the Holy Grail of the modern Left — I do not say “American Left,” since much of its inspiration and sustenance is most definitely not American — and by “fundamental transformation” they mean the utter destruction of the founding principles of limited government, individual self-reliance and personal freedom. In their place, they bring the poisoned gifts of fascism, central planning and rule by a credentialed aristocracy of like-minded fellow travelers.
And when they say “by any means necessary,” you had better believe they mean it.
Election 2012 is not a clash of political parties but an existential struggle for the soul of America. To treat it as anything but that is both willful blindness and arrant foolishness.
We’ll accept the word “soul” in this context. He means the principles by which this nation lives. They must continue to be freedom and self-reliance, the principles on which this nation was founded, and which served it so well that it became the strongest and most prosperous in all history.
Until everyone on the Right fully grasps this, our country will remain under siege. It’s a siege that’s been ongoing, in one form or another, since the Wilson administration, with one side (and you know which one) “fundamentally” rejecting the Constitution — they’re getting bold enough to admit it now — and explicitly denigrating America’s history in order to prepare the way for their new progressive order.
The long march through the institutions has left a terrible trail of cultural destruction in its wake — which, of course, was precisely the intention.
This is why it’s crucial, when dealing with the Left, to reject the premises of their arguments, since those premises must necessarily posit that there is something “fundamentally” wrong with the American system, and that they are the cure.
By rejecting their premises, you do more than simply level the playing field: you also force them out of hiding and either cause them to flee or, more rarely, actually admit their true intentions — something that is almost impossible for them to do. For they [conceal] their destructive purposes under the rubrics of “Fairness,” “Tolerance,” “Compassion,” etc.
We think his description of the present intense clash between collectivism on the one side and liberty on the other as “cold civil war” is no exaggeration.
He concludes:
It’s a choice we have to make next November, and we’re only going to have one last chance to get it right.
Yes.
In the West at twilight 153
To say this is the funniest Mark Steyn column yet is not possible because so many of his columns are, so to speak, the funniest. But it is very funny. These samples should tempt you to read the whole column.
Courtesy of David Maraniss’ new book [Barack Obama: The Story], we now know that yet another key prop of Barack Obama’s identity is false: His Kenyan grandfather was not brutally tortured or even non-brutally detained by his British colonial masters. The composite gram’pa joins an ever-swelling cast of characters from Barack’s “memoir” who, to put it discreetly, differ somewhat in reality from their bit parts in the grand Obama narrative. The best friend at school portrayed in Obama’s autobiography as “a symbol of young blackness” was, in fact, half Japanese, and not a close friend. The white girlfriend he took to an off-Broadway play that prompted an angry post-show exchange about race never saw the play, dated Obama in an entirely different time zone, and had no such world-historically significant conversation with him. His Indonesian step-grandfather, supposedly killed by Dutch soldiers during his people’s valiant struggle against colonialism, met his actual demise when he “fell off a chair at his home while trying to hang drapes.” …
In recent years, the Left has turned the fake memoir into one of the most prestigious literary genres: Oprah’s Book Club recommended James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” hailed by Bret Easton Ellis as a “heartbreaking memoir” of “poetic honesty,” but subsequently revealed to be heavy on the “poetic” and rather light on the “honesty.” The “heartbreaking memoir” of a drug-addled street punk who got tossed in the slammer after brawling with cops while high on crack with his narco-hooker girlfriend proved to be the work of some suburban Pat Boone type with a couple of parking tickets. (I exaggerate, but not as much as he did.)
Oprah was also smitten by “The Education of Little Tree” [by Asa Earl Carter under the pseudonym Forrest Carter], the heartwarmingly honest memoir of a Cherokee childhood which turned out to be concocted by a former Klansman whose only previous notable literary work was George Wallace’s “Segregation Forever” speech.
“Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood” is a heartbreakingly honest, poetically searing, searingly painful, painfully honest, etc., account of Binjamin Wilkomirski’s unimaginably horrific boyhood in the Jewish ghetto of Riga and the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. After his memoir won America’s respected National Jewish Book Award, Mr. Wilkomirski was inevitably discovered to have been born in Switzerland and spent the war in a prosperous neighborhood of Zurich being raised by a nice middle-class couple. … The “unimaginable” horror of his book turned out to be all too easily imagined.
Exploitation of the Holocaust for personal – or any – financial gain is especially repugnant.
Fake memoirs have won the Nobel Peace Prize and are taught at Ivy League schools to the scions of middle-class families who take on six-figure debts for the privilege (“I, Rigoberta Menchu”). They’re handed out by the Pentagon to senior officers embarking on a tour of Afghanistan (Greg Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea”) on the entirely reasonable grounds that a complete fantasy could hardly be less credible than current NATO strategy.
In such a world, it was surely only a matter of time before a fake memoirist got elected as president of the United States. …
You’ll notice that, in the examples listed above, the invention only goes one way. No Cherokee orphan, Holocaust survivor or recovering drug addict pretends to be George Wallace’s speechwriter. Instead, the beneficiaries of boring middle-class Western life seek to appropriate the narratives and thereby enjoy the electric frisson of fashionable victim groups.
And so it goes with public policy in the West at twilight.
Islam’s little helper in the White House 1
Niall Ferguson, the historian, is interviewed on MSNBC on the Egyptian revolution, before the recent elections brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. Ferguson predicts that very outcome, and criticizes Obama’s policy towards the Middle East. He sums up Obama’s foreign policy as “I’m not George W. Bush – love me”. Obama’s “touchy-feely speeches”, he says, are no substitute for a vision and a plan. The interviewers disagree with him, even seem quite shocked at Ferguson’s very well informed opinion. They say they think the Egyptian revolution is “going really well”.
We agree with Ferguson’s analysis. Our only point of disagreement with him is this: he says that what is happening in Egypt and elsewhere shows Obama’s policy to be a failure.
We think the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East, Iran’s progress towards nuclear capacity, and the greatly accelerated advance of Islam in the world as a whole since Obama was absurdly elected to the presidency of the United States, does not reflect a failure of his, but a success. These developments are bad for America, but they are victories for Islam; and Barack Obama wants Islam to triumph.
A bad idea, badly executed 181
To continue our discussion of the “Fast and Furious” scandal (see the two posts immediately below, one of them a video of Bill Whittle putting his argument), we now quote Paul Mirengoff’s opinion on what the operation was intended to achieve:
Bill Whittle is arguing that the Fast and Furious program was an effort by the Obama administration to increase bloodshed in Mexico and thereby lead to tougher gun control regulation in the U.S. … The theory cannot be ruled out. However, I don’t find it persuasive. …
Obama and Holder probably would not have believed that increased violence in Mexico could lead to tougher regulation of guns in the U.S. Americans simply don’t care enough about Mexico to alter domestic policy based on what occurs there, especially when it comes to an issue as passionately and endlessly argued as gun control. Americans view violence in Mexico the way they viewed violence in Colombia – unfortunate, typical, and not our problem at any fundamental level. …
Why, then, was the program implemented? As noted, considerable frustration existed over attempts to deal with gun running through interdiction at the point of sale because this form of enforcement resulted in the apprehension of only the small fry. Those who came up with Fast and Furious probably hoped that if guns followed their natural course into Mexico, they would lead to much more important players. Wire taps and other surveillance of Mexican cartel bosses would assist in nailing these players, or so the thinking went.
It was a very bad idea, poorly executed. But, as conservatives should understand better than most, the government frequently implements very bad ideas and does so incompetently.
Yes. Whatever government does, it does badly.
In any case, trying to apprehend cartel bosses through Fast and Furious strikes me as less foolish than intentionally increasing shootings in Mexico to enhance the cause of gun control in the U.S.
But what about the cover-up, including the assertion of a weak executive privilege claim? Bill Whittle says that to understand it, we should follow the ideology. In reality, cover-ups typically stem from a quintessentially non-ideological motive – the desire to escape blame and stay out of trouble.
What kind of trouble? The administration may be motivated by the desire to cover up evidence that the Attorney General knowingly and deliberately lied to Congress. It may want to cover up evidence that Holder knew plenty about Fast and Furious and/or that Obama did too.
Bill Whittle is right anyway that Obama and Holder are evil men.
Two evil men 145
Bill Whittle gives his answer to the question we ask in the post immediately below.
He calls Obama and Holder evil men – and explains precisely why he calls them that.
Why? 229
The mainstream media tried to ignore the “Fast and Furious” scandal, but can do so no longer. A Congressional panel has recommended that the House of Representatives cite Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for contempt of Congress, and President Obama has asserted executive privilege to shield Justice Department documents from disclosure.
This summary of the dire results of the nefarious activity authorized by the Department of Justice comes from Investor’s Business Daily:
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010 at the hands of an illegal immigrant working for the Sinaloa Cartel just 10 miles from the Mexico border near Nogales, Ariz. Two AK-47 assault rifles found at the site of the Terry shooting were traced back to a straw buyer allowed to smuggle guns into Mexico with the blessing of the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] and Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.
In addition to Agent Terry, Immigration Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was also killed [February 2011] in a separate incident by a weapon allowed to “walk” into Mexico from the U.S. as part of the administration’s third-rate alleged attempt to track and catch gun traffickers. Let us not forget the hundreds of Mexican nationals who have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) tried to get information from the DOJ and the ATF about the operation dubbed “Fast and Furious”.
They were lied to. The DOJ claimed that allegations of sales of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then took them to Mexico were false. President Obama declared on TV that neither he nor the Attorney General, Eric Holder, had authorized Fast and Furious. In May 2011 Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee that he didn’t know who had approved the operation but now it was being investigated. He said he’d only heard about it in “the last few weeks”. But in October 2011 documents surfaced revealing that he had known about it since July 2010. Holder then hastened to say that he had misunderstood the question. (“When did you first know about …” is a difficult question to understand?) In November 2011 he admitted that “gunwalking” had in fact been done in Fast and Furious, and explained that his earlier denials had been unintentional. But he still insisted that he personally had been unaware that “gunwalking” tactics had been used. On June 7 2012 Holder again testified at a Congressional hearing (his seventh on this issue), and again denied knowing anything about his department ordering “gunwalking”. His department had provided only 7,000 documents, about 5% of the number Congress had asked for. Now Congress asked for 1,300 documents in addition to the 7,000. Holder refused to hand them over. On June 20 2012 President Obama invoked “executive privilege” to keep the documents from Congress under his personal orders. On the same day, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform cited Holder for contempt. The House of Representatives will vote on the issue next week.
Can anyone explain, or plausibly conjecture, why Fast and Furious was launched? What the real motive was for the operation, just what the DOJ hoped to accomplish, and exactly how?
The aim stated when the operation was finally admitted to, was to track the firearms to the bosses of Mexican drug cartels, who would then be arrested so that the cartels could be destroyed. Without the co-operation of the Mexican government – which was not even informed about it – how might that have been managed?
Some say it was to help the Obama administration make a case against the Second Amendment rights of US citizens to carry arms. How might that case be argued?
Answers are invited.



