Re: Obama evades ‘Fast and Furious’ questions from Latino media
- From: "An independent old cuss" <cuss@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:48:00 -0500
"Jim_Higgins" <gordian238@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:j62og9$s5t$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 9/29/11 5:32 PM, Sordo wrote:Obama evades ‘Fast and Furious’ questions from Latino media
By Matthew Boyle
http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/28/obama-evades-fast-and-furious-questions-from-latino-media/?print=1
4:14 PM 09/28/2011
During a White House roundtable with three Spanish-language media
outlets on Wednesday, President Barack Obama skated around questions
about Operation Fast and Furious.
“We’re working very hard to have a much more effective interdiction
effort … we are checking southbound transit … to capture illegal guns,
illegal cash transfers to cartels,” he said at the morning event with
representatives from Yahoo!, MSN Latino, and AOL Latino/Huffington
Post Latino Voices. “It is something we’ve been building … it’s not
yet finished, and there’s more work to do,” he said.
Conservative Action Fund treasurer Shaun McCutcheon told The Daily
Caller that Obama’s inability to answer basic questions about
Operation Fast and Furious suggests the administration is covering up
even more about the controversial program.
“The more that comes out about this Fast and Furious scandal, the more
we realize that there are very real dangers in a government that is
too big to monitor itself,” McCutcheon said in an email. “The Obama
administration refuses to take responsibility for the deaths of
Americans and Mexicans alike under their watch because of their
program.”
Obama blamed budget problems, in part, for what some see as ATF’s
incompetence. “Part of the problem is budgetary [and] … we are going
to have to figure out ways to operate smarter and more efficiently in
investigations without a huge expansion of resources because those
resources are aren’t there.”
No reporters at the roundtable pressed Obama further on the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program. Operation Fast and
Furious was an Obama administration program in which ATF agents
facilitated the sale of firearms to Mexican drug cartels via “straw
purchasers” who could legally purchases guns in the United States, but
were doing so with the intention of trafficking them into Mexico.
House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck
Grassley have pursued a congressional investigation into the ATF
operation over the past several months, and that has led to at least a
few high-ranking Obama administration resignations. Their
investigations have also revealed that White House officials were
aware of Fast and Furious and the ATF tactics the program employed.
Conservative groups are unlikely to let this scandal die down without
greater accountability.
“This Fast and Furious scandal reminds us that cronyism is murderous
and its politics are dangerous,” Ali Akbar, a political consultant for
the conservative Vice and Victory told TheDC. “I’m talking with other
conservative groups and we’re not letting this go. We applaud Chairman
Issa for pursuing this national tragedy that looks like it trickles
all the way up to the top.”
UPDATE 5:21 p.m.
From the White House press office, here’s the full transcript of
Obama’s Fast and Furious exchange on Wednesday:
MR. [JOSE] SIADE [of Yahoo! Espanol]: Mr. President, this question
comes from Karina in Ohio: Mr. President, what is your strategy to
stop the flow of weapons bought with drug money in the U.S. and then
sent to Mexico, especially after what happened in Operation Fast and
Furious?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, this is a great challenge, and I’ve been the
first one to admit — I’ve said this publicly in bilateral meetings
with President Calderón that there’s a two-way street in terms of the
problems of transnational drug operations. The Mexican government I
think has been very courageous in taking on these cartels, at great
cost, obviously, with respect to violence in Mexico. That’s the right
thing to do.
We have to be a more effective partner in both reducing demand for
drugs here in the United States and for stemming the flow of weapons
and cash that help to finance and facilitate these cartels. So we’re
working very hard to have a much more effective interdiction effort of
south to north — or north to south traffic than we have in the past,
so we are checking southbound transit to try to capture illegal guns,
illegal cash transfers to drug cartels. It is something that we have
been building over the last couple of years; it’s not yet finished.
And there’s going to be more work to do.
Part of the issue here, obviously, is budgetary. At a time when the
federal government is looking for ways to save money, we’re going to
have to figure out ways to operate smarter and more effective in our
investigations without a huge expansion of resources because those
resources aren’t there.
MR. SIADE: And in terms of the demand here in the U.S., what kind of
efforts –
THE PRESIDENT: With respect to the demand in the U.S., our drug czar
here in the United States I think has done a very good job working
with schools and local communities, working with local law enforcement
to try and continue to reduce drug demand. One of the things that I’ve
always believed is that — and this is reflective in my
administration’s policy — is that we can’t just think about this as a
law enforcement issue; we also have to think of it as a public health
issue.
If you think about the enormous changes that have been made in terms
of people’s use of tobacco, for example, that wasn’t because they were
arrested. It was also because young people were taught that smoking
was bad for your health, it didn’t make you cool — public service
announcements. So I think taking a comprehensive approach that
includes interdiction and law enforcement, but also takes into account
public health strategies, treatment.
A lot of cities around the country, if you decide that you want to rid
yourself of drugs, you may have to wait three months, six months, to
get into a local treatment program. Well, that’s not going to be
particularly effective. So what we’ve been trying to see is can we
get more resources into treatment, more resources into a public health
approach, even as we continue to target the cartels, the drug
kingpins, those who are really responsible for perpetrating the drug
trade in communities across the country.
TheDC’s Neil Munro contributed reporting for this story.
Read more:
http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/28/obama-evades-fast-and-furious-questions-from-latino-media/#ixzz1ZNamxFUL
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and Randian to the core!
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