Gunrunner: Letting grenades walk into Mexico
Just when you thought that the Gunrunner scandal couldn’t get any more startling or insidious than it already was, it does. According to this story the federal government released a man from jail who had confessed to building IED using components from hand grenades and selling them to known Mexican drug lords.
Federal authorities are probing why the U.S. in 2010 let go an Arizona man accused of supplying grenades to a Mexican drug cartel, a case that played a role in the ouster last week of the nation’s top firearms regulator and the U.S. attorney in Phoenix.
Kingery, who was arrested and released in June 2010, confessed to manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using grenade components from the U.S. He also admitted to helping the cartel convert semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Mexican criminal organizations are increasingly using these military-style weapons as the cartels escalate their wars against the government and one another.
Despite Kingery’s confession, and over loud protestations from the arresting ATF officers, the U.S. Attorney’s office let Kingery go within hours of his arrest.
You read that right; this man was arrested and confessed to building IEDs to sell to Mexican drug lords and yet he was released by the federal government, it really cannot get much worse than this, can it?
Here is what Darrell Issa had to say about this new revelation:
You don’t let guns walk. You don’t let explosives walk. That’s what’s wrong with Operation Fast and Furious. It’s what’s wrong in this whole grenade caper. You cannot allow these dangerous assets to fall into the wrong hands.
That really should go without saying, but it needs to be said because the federal government did just that; however, Darrel Issa needn’t fear because Eric Holder is looking into the matter, and is still claiming that nobody at the top levels of the Department of “Justice” knew anything about this scandal:
Citing an independent review by the Justice Department inspector general, Holder said, “We’ll certainly see, I think, at the end of that exactly who was involved, exactly who made the decisions in what was clearly, I think, a flawed enforcement effort. But the notion that somehow or other that this thing reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don’t think is supported by the facts. And I think as we examine and as all the facts are in fact revealed, we’ll see that that is not the case.”
At this point I really have nothing to add without running the risk of repeating what I have already said numerous times. If the government was actually trying to prevent Mexican drug violence at the border why would they have released a man they had in custody just hours after his arrest when this man was supplying IEDs to the drug lords unless, of course, the government was involved in this man’s dealings and were helping him along?
America's Watchtower 
Our government releases alot of people. Some that do something little and others that do something big. Maybe they can’t distinguish between little and big anymore. Just like they can’t distinguish right from wrong or good from bad. I don’t think our government can help itself anymore…it is an addiction, an illness. I know it is a stupid reason I just put….but can you come up with a sane reason for what they do? I can’t! I just can’t justify this administration’s actions. I’ve got nothing!
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I honestly cannot come up with any reason to justify what the Obama regime does, maybe you are right and they simply do not understand the difference between right and wrong.
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Just how many insane people do we have working in our government? If as Holder says, nobody in the upper levels of the DOJ were aware of what was going, is in itself a condemnation of the management of DOJ , including Holder. Is the entire DOJ nothing but rogue agents?
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Very true! Darrell Issa mentioned this about Holder as well, I just didn’t use that quote in this post but I probably should have.
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C on F, you are asking a question as if maybe there is a mature adult actually in charge at the DOJ. I really have a feeling this is not the case. What do you think?
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No doubt about it, it’s troubling. Sometimes facts are withheld from the public that turn outt to justify such actions. Let’s hope that this is one of those cases, and those facts, when they’re made public, justify the otherwise inexplicable action.
Take good care, and may God bless us all!
TGY
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I can’t think of any reason to withhold facts that could ever possibly justify the actions in this mess. They were playing with fire, people are dead and who knows how much other damage has been done. It was plain stupid, stupid, stupid! What bothers me is that someone supposedly “intelligent” made this decision to do this?? What do we have in office? What kind of people would knowingly do this? Didn’t someone do any planning ahead or just a “what-if” this or that happens, how will we handle it? Who was on the planning committee? These are the best of the best? Wow!
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There is no doubt that sometimes facts are withheld justifiably from the people while an investigation is ongoing, but the only reason I can see for letting this man walk is the hope that he would lead them to someone else. And we have already seen how letting people walk has worked out in this scandal.
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Steve, any chance you could do a running chat on your blog so more could be discussed? I don’t have any idea how much it takes to set one up, but alot could be thrown out in a short time.
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That is an interesting idea that I will have to look into. I am hosted at wordpress.com and it is a free platform so I am bound by their rules and don’t know if I can do this. I’ll check it out.
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I just thought we could get a pretty good up to the minute discussion of what everyone might have read or was thinking about. Thanks for checking into it. Sometimes it is hard to flip back and forth between articles to make sure you read everything someone has commented on. There is so much knowledge in this group that it would be nice to really hash it out in the moment.
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It is a good idea and I hadn’t thought of it. I can tell that you are taking quite a bit of time reading all of the comments here and I appeciate the time you spend here.
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Why did this not come up at the debate? They discussed the border. Is Issa that alone in this investigation?
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A great question and I was hoping that at least one person brought it up but it didn’t happen.
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Steve, your blog is one of the best I have seen about current articles. Besides a few of the trolls that try and plant nonsense, most are well thought out objective comments from people that really want answers to what is going on. I look forward to seeing what is being posted each day, that is more than I can say for alot of the blogs. You seem to have a handle on the important issues and it is much appreciated. I hope what I post adds to your blog in a positive way.
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Thank you so much for the kind words, it isn’t always easy keeping up with the shenanigans of this administration. 🙂 I enjoy reading what you have to say as well, it helps to move to conversation forward and that vertainly is a good thing.
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I am afraid to think it, RJ, but I think he is “that alone”. I just think the majority of them would like it to go away, so as not to upset their day. This is big, really big and there just isn’t the outcry there should be.
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I reread this article again and have one more comment…how many times do we have to give the DOJ a pass on what they do because obviously they know best how to handle all the covert operations? Isn’t there a point where we just KNOW what they are doing was done on purpose and not something that went wrong? I know the media just wants us to believe that it went wrong, BUT not thru anyones fault at the DOJ or ATF or at the WH!!! How gullible do they think the American people are? At the local level we do “drills”, and practice senarios of disasters each year. They might be weather disasters or terrorist attacks or medical emergencies, but the whole county structure is involved.. We have a Command center set up with phone lines and have contact with those out in the field actually acting out on the senario. We fine tune them and we have people participating from medical, communications, police, EMA, IEMA and all the county officals actively involved with the drills. After the drill we sit down and see what actually took place and how to NOT repeat something again that might have not worked. Is this lacking at the upper levels? Did they not do a table top drill on this to see what could happen and how to prevent it? What are we missing here that is going on?
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There is more here than meets the eye. This is more than an operation that went wrong and we are learning the true scope of it everyday.
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I think you are very right, Steve… this is going to be BIG
Holder is almost certainly toast imho- he’s already appeared to have lied about it
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Yes he already has lied about it and if they don’t get him for his involvement I think they can get him for lying.
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We can only hope there is someone strong enough to stand up to the Administration. We know there are lies flying around all over the place, they are hoping this will die down. I have to wonder if all the involvement the president is doing with 9-11 is not only for photo ops, but to draw attention away from this! Since when has he been overly concerned with 9-11? I seem to remember back when he went out to the site a few years back, he just tossed his flower on the ground. It made it look like he really didn’t want to be there and it was just a necessary formality. There was no emotion to it, he just went thru the motions. That is what his whole presidency has been, just going thru the motions, hell bent on an end. Am I wrong?
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I think he is doing the 9-11 stuff for photo ops and he knew he couldn’t ignore the tenth anniversary without facing condemnation. If this helps to hide this scandal than that is a plus in his mind.
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I suppose now we’ll no longer be able to purchase hand grenades at gun stores.
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I am afraid so!
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Probably a safe bet on that, Toldya!
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The “catch and release” decisions are made on PC grounds not at all linked to the type of crime.Look all illeagle aliens have commited feolny’s. Then released no bond and told to come back in 6 months for a hearing. Wow gues what happens. This guy they released for grenades or IED infractions I am sure they do not want him in front of some court testifying who let him do what.
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Those grenades are probably meant as a force multiplier for the cartels – the Obama national security team is really on the ball protecting us….WM
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I’ve got a new post up on this issue now William.
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