Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious Direct Commercial Sales update

We may need to retire the series after this.

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Why let U.S.-purchased guns made by straw buyers walk back across the border and into the hands of Mexican drug cartels when you can cut out that middle-man and let the Mexican government purchase them directly with a 26% chance they will still wind up in the hands of the drug cartels?

Wholesaling drug/gun violence, anybody?

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico - then diverted to violent cartels - is becoming more urgent. That's because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through "direct commercial sales." It's a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

Here's how it works: A foreign government fills out an application to buy weapons from private gun manufacturers in the U.S. Then the State Department decides whether to approve.

And it did approve 2,476 guns to be sold to Mexico in 2006. In 2009, that number was up nearly 10 times, to 18,709. The State Department has since stopped disclosing numbers of guns it approves, and wouldn't give CBS News figures for 2010 or 2011.

With Mexico in a virtual state of war with its cartels, nobody's tracking how many U.S. guns are ending up with the enemy.

(emphasis, ours)

There's some more of that famous Obama administration tranparency.

The State Department audits only a tiny sample - less than 1 percent of sales - but the results are disturbing: In 2009, more than a quarter (26 percent) of the guns sold to the region that includes Mexico were "diverted" into the wrong hands, or had other "unfavorable" results.

That works out to nearly 4,900 guns for just 2009 alone, far more than the 2,000 guns Fast and Furious allowed to fall into, uhh, "unfavorable" hands.

We understand the theory of allowing foreign governments to purchase our weaponry in order to fight their domestic bad guys, especially when taking out those same bad guys is in the best national security interests of both countries. But how can anybody with a straight face, knowing that in a single year alone, almost 4,900 guns wound up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, in large part because 150,000 Mexican troops have defected to those cartels over the past few years, tell us that it's good for our national security?

The State Department's silence and failure to disclose in this matter speaks volumes.

And to think that Fast and Furious may have merely been a distraction to avert our eyes from the real travesty.




P.S. CBS News goes to lengths to emphasize that this gun purchasing program (DCS) is completely legal. Why? To draw a distinction between DCS and the entirely dubious nature of Fast and Furous? Or possibly to illustrate the absolute absurdity of this apparently above-the-board program? As always, your thoughts are welcome in the comment section.


P.P.S. Props to CBS News and reporter Sharyl Attkisson who was the first legacy media member to break Fast and Furious and who now appears to be out in front of this story. You may recall, back in October, Attkisson told of being yelled and screamed at by Justice and White House officials for being "unfair" in her reporting of Fast and Furious. Heh. Wonder what their reaction will be to her reporting of this?



H/T: Hot Air