Is President Obama an accessory to the crime of murder?

Readers will be familiar with 'Operation Fast And Furious', the gunrunning scandal which we've covered in these pages on several previous occasions.  The evidence thus far made available suggests that the ATF and possibly other Federal law enforcement agencies (certainly including senior figures in the Department of Justice, up to and including Attorney General Eric Holder) were fully familiar with this scheme.

I was therefore astonished when President Obama yesterday asserted executive privilege to help Mr. Holder avoid having to provide a number of potentially incriminating documents to Congressional investigators looking into the scandal.  This is explosive stuff, because we're talking about an operation that has demonstrably and provably contributed to the deaths of two US Federal law enforcement officers and several hundred Mexican nationals.  This isn't just burglary, or cheating, or corruption:  it's wholesale murder!

Executive privilege has historically only been asserted for documents and information directly relating to presidential briefings and decision-making.  Therefore, if President Obama is asserting it in this case, it can only be legal if he was briefed about and/or made executive decisions concerning Operation Fast And Furious and/or related issues.  If that is the case, it would directly implicate the office of the President - and President Obama himself - in the murders that resulted from this scandal.  On the other hand, if it's not the case and President Obama was neither briefed about nor made decisions concerning this operation, then he can't assert executive privilege over the documents concerned.  It's as clear-cut as that.

I can't understand why the mainstream media are so silent about a scandal that might make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison!  (Larry Correia describes its implications very well on his blog.  Go read.)  Any and all right-thinking Americans, of any and all political persuasions, should be profoundly concerned about this.  It's not about Republicans or Democrats, but about the rule of law and the murder of US law enforcement officers.  Surely that should rise above political disagreement?  Those who are trying to portray it as mere political dissent are showing themselves to be contemptuous of both the law and their own oaths of office (not to mention the [lack of] intelligence with which they credit the electorate).

I can only hope that the truth will come out, and swiftly.  If this scandal reaches into the Oval Office (which is not yet proven), we need to know in good time before the November elections.  We daren't elect someone who could so casually approve an operation that would kill so many innocent people.

Peter