“Was a type of “Fast and Furious” all over the Bush Admin?”
Somewhat, but not really close.
The Bush operation was named, “Wide Receiver.” The idea was to provide straw buyers with guns that had implanted tracking devices and trace the weapons into Mexico to their ultimate buyers. Agents followed the guns after they were sold and U.S. authorities coordinated with Mexican officials. The operation failed when some of the tracking devices failed, aircraft used to follow the traffickers ran out of fuel and didn’t have backup, and some of the tracking devices were found by the traffickers. All of these foul ups allowed some of the guns to get across the border. Hence, the Bush administration terminated Wide Receiver about two years before Obama implemented Fast and Furious.
Fast and Furious differed profoundly from Wide Receiver in that: 1) no tracking devices were installed in the guns that were walked; 2) NO effort was made to track the straw purchasers after they picked up the guns; and 3) the Regime made NO effort either to inform or coordinate with the Mexican authorities. IOW Wide Receiver was a fouled up good faith effort to run down gun trafficking conspirators while Fast and Furious was simply an operation to send guns across the border to be used in crimes and use those crimes to support attacks on the Second Amendment.
The Bush boys even shared intel with the corrupt in the Mexican government, knowing damn well many of whom had direct ties to the cartels.
Exactly! The minute WR appeared to go south it was ended,entirely different mentality.