A Year and a Half of Lies and Obfuscation
By Michael Graham, Boston Herald
June 23, 2012
The two most important words in the current Obama administration scandal aren’t “Fast” or “Furious.” They are “Brian Terry.”
In December 2010, Brian Terry — a former Marine and police officer turned Border Patrol agent — was working in Arizona, 11 miles from the Mexican border. He was killed in a gunfight with Mexican drug runners, and two of the AK-47s found at the scene were linked to a then-unknown program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms called “Operation Fast and Furious.”
The name is perfect, because the president wants you furious — and fast.
He wants you focused on those mean ol’ House Republicans who, according to Department of Justice consultant Robert Raben, are just “doing the bidding of the National Rifle Association.” Obama wants you debating Bush-era gun programs vs. his own, the limits of presidential privilege — anything except the fact that yesterday brought us the highest four-week average of initial jobless claims for the year.
For Team Obama, this story is all about politics.
But for the family of Brian Terry, it’s the story of their son — murdered with guns given to killers by his own government. Yet many mainstream news consumers never heard of it until this week. According to Media Research Center, the first time NBC mentioned the story was last week.
For the Terry family, it has been a year and a half of lies, obfuscation and stonewalling. They just want to know what happened to their son — the kind of son who, before he died on Dec. 14, had already bought and mailed them Christmas gifts.
His brother-in-law tells the rest:
“We buried him not far from the house that he was raised in just prior to Christmas day. The gifts that Brian had picked out with such thought and care began to arrive in the mail that same week. With each delivery, we felt the indescribable pain of Brian’s death.”
Are Democrats like Raben right? Is finding the person responsible for arming Terry’s killers with government-issue guns really merely doing “the bidding of the NRA?” Why the hell isn’t it the “bidding” of the entire Justice Department? Of the whole White House? Instead, Democrats like our own Reps. Stephen Lynch and John Tierney have consistently voted against having Attorney General Eric Holder provide documents that could end this family’s pain. Ranking House Oversight Committee member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) famously pledged, “I will not rest” until justice is done for the Terry family.
But what did he and every other Democrat on the committee do this week?
They sided with Holder and voted against holding him in contempt.
Tierney demeaned the effort to get the documents as “partisan political theater.” Lynch went even further, offering an amendment calling for a review of the costs of the investigation and complaining that it had dragged on.
“I want to balance out the benefits of this investigation with costs being accrued,” Lynch complained.
“I would remind the member we’re talking about the death of an American border patrol agent,” replied Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.).
“Brian Terry’s family deserves every penny we have spent,” added Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
I agree. Lynch does not.
Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK. |
