Jose de la Isla: The 'Fast and Furious' gun fiasco: Deadly, deliberately crazy.

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

Mexico's presidential election, coming up a year from now, could easily have the U.S. gun policy known as "Fast and Furious" at the center of public debate.

Revelations about how the policy was implemented and its consequences are still developing, but the bullhorn of new disclosures tends to show it was crazy from the start.

"Fast and Furious," as it now seems, was one phase of a plan managed out of Phoenix involving arms purchases destined for Mexican drug cartel members. The buys were known to U.S. government officials who were attempting to identify higher-ups in the cartels. More than 2,000 guns were sold, including those linked to the ambush killings of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.

ABC News reported in early July that Fast and Furious weapons were used in several crimes committed in Arizona.

But the "higher-ups," who authorities were attempting to identify through the operation, were already known to other investigative agencies and may even have been paid informants. Kenneth Melson, acting director of the federal agency Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the others included the FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency, which kept his agency in the dark and he would not be the fall guy now that disclosures show what a deadly fiasco they were all engaged in. Had he known, Melson claimed, the ATF could have had a material impact on the Fast and Furious investigation as far back as late 2009 or early 2010.

The arms were allowed to slip by AFT agents into presumed organized-crime hands. One disgruntled agent was said to have reported that only 20 arms traffickers were detected during 14 months of the operation and no cartel was dismantled because of it.

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