“a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”

In the shadow of the ATF program to fast track illegal weapons into Mexico, (for supposed subsequent tracking,) America and the ATF have been made to look not only incompetent, but also complicit it the furthering of criminal activity in Mexico.

When queried concerning the US government operation, president Obama basically claimed ignorance of the White House and the Justice Department.

Obama says he didn’t inform Mexico of U.S. gun smuggling operation because he didn’t know about it

Posted on 03/24/2011 by Richard Dunham, Bureau Chief

Under fire for an operation that allowed smuggling of U.S. weapons across the nation’s border with Mexico, President Obama said in an interview that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious.”
The Mexican government has complained that it didn’t know about the U.S. operation that allowed guns to illegally cross the southwestern border so they could track the weapons.

AP photo

Obama told Univision‘s Jorge Ramos that President Felipe Calderon wasn’t informed of the operation because he — the president of the United States — wasn’t informed either. When asked whether he knew of the weapon smuggling plan, Obama responded that it is “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”

The investigation into the program comes after it was connected to two weapons that were found at the scene of a border shootout that killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December. Likewise, a gun smuggled from the U.S. were used to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Jamie Zapata, but it has not been determined if it was part of “Fast and Furious.”

When President Calderon came to visit Washington recently, the two presidents came together on a policy to stop drug and weapon smuggling across the border.
“Our policy is to ram up the interdiction of guns flowing south because that’s contributing to some of the security problems that are taking place in Mexico and what we’re doing is trying to build the kind of cooperation between Mexico and the United States that we haven’t seen before,” Obama told Univision.

The president said his attorney general has been “very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and but them into jail.”

If memory serves, there once was quite a debacle involving illegal weapons going to a group called the Sandinistas in Latin America. Something called the "Iran Contra affair?"

I wonder how the champions of investigative reporting will look upon our own contemporary scandal of a similar magnitude. Involving our beloved democrat and first ever elected black president.

I am curious. Is the crime and culpability lesser or greater, when the American government provides weapons directly to criminals as opposed to freedom fighters or those involved directly in insurgent revolutionary operations?

I suppose we can glean some ideas from the current goings on in Libya also. Seeing as America is supporting the present people's revolution against Momar Gadaffi and seeing as how US military power is being used to support the revolutionary goals of those in opposition to Gadaffi.

And meanwhile, Gadaffi is dumping small arms and infantry weapons systems by the tons into the general Libyan population of supposed supporters for his regime. Which means? Shortly these weapons will be turning up in the hands of Al Qaeda forces in Libya and being used against American and western forces.

I wonder if the president or the Justice Department or the ATF have a plan to track those weapons also.