DHS Secretary: "Mistakes were made" on Fast and Furious

From his perch at the National Press Club, where Janet Napolitano was speaking earlier today, The Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering brought readers a disgruntling, callous quote from the Department of Homeland Security secretary. A reporter asked her how the United States has or will work with Mexico to suppress Mexican drug cartels. Napolitano responded with this:

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“Obviously I think if the question is referring to things like Fast and Furious, I think everyone has acknowledged that mistakes, serious mistakes, were made there,” Napolitano replied, “The key question [is] to make sure that those mistakes, from my standpoint, are never again repeated.”

Mistakes? To suggest that Fast and Furious was not a program that was intentionally designed to funnel firearms to straw purchasers is disingenuous and to use the mild word “mistake” to color over a program that led to the death of a U.S. border patrol agent and more than 200 Mexicans is irresponsible. While it’s encouraging that Napolitano wants to ensure that administration officials never design such a foolish and lethal program again, her language seems too calculated to also create the impression that administration officials have no possible culpability here. In her mind, it was all just a series of “mistakes” from which to learn and move forward — but, again, even if the operation was intended to lead to a different ending — to the prosecution of the biggest fish within Mexican drug cartels — the sale of the weapons to straw purchasers in the first place was not a mistake. It was that tactic that was and is and will continue to be controversial — and Napolitano’s comments should reflect that the tactic should never have been used in the first place.

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While the congressional investigation into Fast and Furious is far from over and while those of us who are strongly suspicious of DOJ higher-ups have to fight not to ascribe to them the worst of ulterior motives until those motives are established by the evidence, administration officials should at the very least express a stronger sense of the inexcusable facts of Fast and Furious.

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