gun dealers came to ATF and told them they had straw-buyers, told them they had suspicious buyers, and turned them on to the very people.  And one of these people bought over 700 weapons, just one straw-buyer. So it's very clear the system was working, where ATF was getting information voluntarily from licensed gun dealers.  They don't need the additional reporting, but they got it anyway, and they used gun violence to the border and this operation as part of it.  So I think when you look at the chicken or egg, there's proof that they certainly were opportunist. Holder's orders might be a chicken-egg issue as well.  After the scandal broke, the DoJ may have wanted a way to frame the issue as one of gun control rather than incompetence.  As Issa says, the entire structure of the ATF operation was so poor that it's hard to see how anyone could have expected to get convictions in court from the results.  Is that more incompetence, or an indication that the DoJ wasn't really interested in convictions?  That's the big question, and one that Issa wants answered -- from the documents that Obama is currently hiding behind a very weak claim of executive privilege. Bill Whittle argued passionately that the only rational motive for Operation Fast and Furious was to push gun control, but Paul Mirengoff at Power Line is a little skeptical, too: First, Fast and Furious does not appear to have been the brainchild of President Obama or