The notion that Fast and Furious was actually designed to fail in order to promote a broader assault gun ban is nothing more than a RW fantasy. I think it is far more reasonable to believe that this was a sting that went wrong, rather than some nefarious liberal plot to take away guns from the people.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0623/What-conspiracy-lies-behind-Eric-Holder-and-Fast-and-Furious
Along with conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Issa suggested as late as April that Fast and Furious may have been part of a policy by the White House to flood the Mexican market with guns to foment violence, which would then put political pressure back on the US to curb its wide-open border gun bazaar and weaken Second Amendment rights.
That contention, liberals say, is on its face absurd. Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert summed up the extent of the alleged conspiracy on Friday, concluding Fast and Furious-spawned border violence was intended “to panic Americans in order to gin up support for a Draconian gun control measure Obama has never introduced. Complicated? Yes. The fevered ramblings of a syphilitic brain? Perhaps.”
But the “worse than Watergate” internet rumblings aside, last week’s Oversight Committee vote – which fell along partisan lines – to recommend Holder for a House vote on contempt and President Obama’s decision on the same day to invoke executive privilege to keep related documents secret did enliven debate about what’s really at stake with the investigation. To wit, whether the documents Congress wants and that the Administration won’t release may be able to confirm or put to rest suspicions that not just Holder, but Obama, had a policy hand in Fast and Furious.
In opening the contempt hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Issa contended that, “[The contempt hearing] is not about this investigation, it’s about a narrow subset of documents that this committee must ultimately receive.”
But in April, Issa gave an interview at the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis, in which he gave credence to suspicions held by many conservatives and gun owners about the program’s true intent.
“Could it be that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban?” Rep. Issa said. “Many think so. And [the administration] hasn’t come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree.”
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