I just read a comment by a self-admitted "lifelong" conservative Republican SH, that to make an assertion that no one was killed by Nixon's "dirty tricks" related to Watergate ( as compared to Fast & Furious) is "not exactly true"...Agree or disagree?

Howler - there are tons of fake conservatives on soda - this is part of their strategy to work as agent provocateurs. They also infiltrate conservative groups and play mind games like excessive drama or sexual pandering - anything to distract, destroy or run real cons off soda. At least you figured this one out - many people don't and get caught up n the games they play. Good for you :)

I agree...These people are like Viet Cong online, lol...Many call themselves "moderates", many don't want a label...But, all are a disgrace.

So true! Moderates are already suspicious lol the ones that do the most damage are wearing the conservative badge publicly and are subtle in their ploys. I've found that especially many older people who are jumping into networking for the first time for political reasons are very naive about the games people play on line. I've seen many good cons hurt by these people here. At least you understand what the potential is behind every profile pic. A few years ago I traced one off soda and right to media matters. So there is nothing they won't do to support their cause.

It's usually a giveaway when after checking out their individual sodafeeds and comment history, one can easily see the bias via the poll questions they choose to be active on, along with the collective commentary they post across the site itself.

Cross-referencing is sometimes necessary too.

I tend to check out more of that stuff than I do anything else on the site.

After a while you can easily observe the political mindgame, and the subtle seeds they attempt to plant while trying their damned-est to not blow their cover.

There are so many of those types here! lol Another group doesn't so much try to sway opinion as much as they act like total asses and then engage people in long term ongoing dramas pitching one person against the other. It reminds me of high school and would be funny except that I can think of at least a dozen people who aren't here anymore because of their bs. They tried it on me - WRONG PERSON to screw with - I used it to track a bunch of them down and figure out their various strategies. They also friend you with one profile so they can follow and then send your posts to the hive so they can destroy you and push buttons so they can hope you lose it and then report you in mass. It's been going on for years like that.

So glad to see some commentary on this...Not many talk about it, or maybe I just don't see it.

Thanks.

I don't think many talk about it because they don't know it. Also, it is tricky to discuss without people wanting to know who - and I won't mention names. But I will talk about their strategies so that possibly people will recognize them in the future. & you are welcome - in fact my pleasure!

I appreciate you bringing up the "not-mentioning names" part.

It serves as a good reminder to me.

As long as you stick to your guns on that you should be able to avoid any problems

It did however make Hillary Clinton famous as the researcher for a law firm.

That poor individual has forgotten to take their medication again.

Not that was reported anyway.

While Nixon definitely had a "hit list" I am not aware of anyone dying as a result of the Watergate scandal! A lot of people went to jail, as should a lot more in the current administration. Fast & Furious is a far greater crime against Americans on both sides of the Mexican/U.S. border! This administration will be remembered as the most criminal in U.S. history.

If someone had been killed it would have come out before now.

Opps clicked on the wrong button.

THEY GUY IS A CLOSET LIBERAL!

It would be out by now!

Fast & Furious is the real attempt to undermine the "U.S. Process". Watergate was childs play.

What a bunch of horse crap, they just want to downplay the HORRIBLE thing Obama and his administration have done.

I cannot think of a single person killed due to Watergate. I don't think killing Gerry Ford's chances of re-election counts.

It remains to be seen. Watergate was about the cover up. When the documents that are being hidden from the investigators are finally reviewed, if there is a cover up of who knew what and when, then FF will be worse that watergate.

Name someone that was killed.

The nut who made such an assertion cannot do it.

So by your reasoning then the WORST crime committed in the White House ever was the WMD lie?

No excuse here, Fast and Furious was a blunder. But realize that somewhere around 150,000 firearms a year have been estimated to cross the border each year into Canada and Mexico because of our criminally lax gun laws. Canadian estimates are that these result in 200-300 Canadian murders each year. The Mexican total is estimated at around 10,000. Fast and furious committed fractionally more guns to that mix but to assume that the cartels would not be armed without the F&F; firearms is WAY OFF BASE.

Data for that number please?

Because as of April 2012, just 68,161 guns have been traced to the US since Jan 2007.

Just a little over a third of your "annual" number in five years.

Averaging that gives us about 13,500 US guns per year to Mexico.

In fact just 68% of the guns Mexico sends to the ATF to trace because they believe they are from the US are actually from the US.

Are you really claiming that about 135,000 guns are smuggled into Canada each year to make up the difference?

If that is your claim I have to wonder why 13,000 guns result in 10,000 deaths but 135,000 guns result in just 200-300 deaths.

That's based on the guns confiscated by police - you're assuming a 100% effectiveness for police confiscating illegal guns? Maybe we should outsource our enforcement to the Mexican Police! Even if that were true then 2000 guns is a small percentage of the guns that enter Mexico.

I never claimed that was the total figure, but your 150,000 a year number is nothing more than a random guess that you are trying to pass off as fact.

The Cartels buy foreign made AK-47 machine guns in lots of 1000 for less than $100 per gun. They buy heavy machine guns, Grenades, and Rocket launchers from Military armories all through central and south america.

They get the vast majority of the weapons they use from those sources and use smugglers in the US to get things they have trouble getting from other sources.

They buy ammo for the full auto ak & M16 rifles in the US, and they buy 9mm, 357 mag, and 45acp handguns that are banned in Mexico.

They also buy the FN 5.7 pistols and then steal or buy from the Mexican Military the armor piercing ammo banned in the US.

I've seen a number of estimates and based this on those although you are right, I didn't research and cite a specific study.... Brookings Institute says 2000 per day go into Mexico. I know I've seen Canadian estimates of around 5000 year but I can't find that again. The Point wasn't to cite an exact number but simply to point out that regardless of what the number is, it's a damn sight over 2000 and it's not like 2000 guns is a huge surge of additional weapons into the mix.

The issue isn't that 2000 more guns made it to Mexico.

It's that our Government handed 2000 guns to known criminal with absolutely no plans in place to track them.

Previous attempts with just a few hundred guns using tracking devices and authorities waiting in Mexico in case guns crossed the border, were complete failures.

What does it say about the competence of DOJ that they tried it with more than 3 times as many guns, no trackers, and no back up in Mexico?

Agree---this was an incompetent operation? Companies, People and Governments sometimes are incompetent. That's known and not as rare as it should be. You learn from it and do better in the future. Notwithstanding, this is among the biggest blunders made by the US Government under any administration - hardly comes close to comparing to the WMD mistake, the Iran Contra Affair, Monika Lewinsky, or Bay of Pigs.... And it's unlikely that Officer Terry would be alive if those guns were not available because there's a full smörgåsbord of illegal weapons available in Mexico.

But this goes far beyond just incompetence.

Fast and Furious is like circus star who repeatedly fell trying to juggle 3 balls on the high wire, deciding the best way to learn the stunt is to remove the safety net and try to juggle 6 burning torches.

The part I cannot get past is they ordered the agents tracking the guns to let them cross into Mexico, knowing the had absolutely no ability to track them on that side of the border.

Their claimed goal of identifying the heads of the smuggling groups was simply impossible to achieve and I can't believe any of them could possibly be stupid enough to think it could.

Their operation consisted of get guns to smugglers, watch them enter Mexico, pick up guns from murder sites.

There is no way the goal was to identify leaders of the smuggling rings, because they chose not to watch only point in the gun's path where those leaders might be in contact with them.

That leaves me wondering if the actual goal of the operation wasn't something completely different.

'Something completely different' - If you're getting at the paranoid theory of this being some type of setup conspiracy for US gun laws than the political incompetence is even greater than the law enforcement incompetence. Just some JV investigators playing in a varsity game.

Your JV in a varsity game analogy doesn't quite cover it.

Even a JV player would understand Basketball is played on both sides of the court.



And no I don't think this is a set up for gun laws.

I think it was an attempt to have guns they could point to.

When this operation started many in the Government were parroting that 90% of crime guns come from US gun shops BS.

But then the Department of Homeland Security and a few others that actually looked at the data stepped up and proved the claim to be false.

The Fast & Furious guns were something they could point to and say look, the guns used in this crime came from the US, we weren't wrong when we said the cartel guns come from here.

That said emails between agents prove they were planning to mention these guns while pushing for their multiple long gun purchase form regulation. That lends some weight to the paranoid theories.

At the very least they were planning to use the lost guns as evidence supporting the need for their new regulation.

Perhaps it's criminally lax border security that allows drugs and guns through our borders. And maybe it's the fault of our criminally lax public education that didn't teach you the difference between a lie and faulty intelligence. And I think you may have been listening to too much of the criminally lax media that have under reported / incorrectly reported Fast and Furious. How else could you possibly justify purposeful funneling of weapons to drug dealers? Are progressives really that heartless and cold?

Insanity of liberals. Whoever stated this claiming to be conservative is obviously also delusional.

I agree...I believe, and always have that he is a political shill for the Democrat Party.