Operation Fast and Furious: Who ordered this fiasco?

I've been following the unfolding Congressional investigation into the ATF operation known as "Fast and Furious". There is a post by Bob Owens at Pajamas Media that provides some great insight into who may be responsible.

Now that the debt ceiling debate is over and done, let’s turn our attention back to Operation Fast and Furious and its alleged sister operations. The multi-agency operation (or operations) of the U.S. government allowed thousands of guns to be supplied to Mexican drug cartels, while American federal law enforcement effectively provided the straw purchasers and smugglers with the cover to operate with impunity.

Despite the tens of thousands of words of outrage written about the Obama administration’s botched Operation Fast and Furious, most of the focus has been on the horrific impact of the program as measured by the number of firearms smuggled over the border and the number of lives lost. Some attention has been consequently paid to the potential political and criminal impact of the operation and cover-up within the Department of Justice.

Sadly, the media has focused very little attention on the probable origins of the plot, or why Gunwalker was created as an adjunct of the longer-running and more successful Gunrunner campaign.

Of course, that may not be entirely true. The crack investigative reporters of print, network, and cable news organizations may very well have done the research and followed the various clues about the origins of Gunwalker to their logical conclusion, and then simply decided that the most probable story was one they not dare tell.

The story is this: no competent federal law enforcement officer would ever have concocted an operation as obviously doomed to catastrophic failure as Operation Fast and Furious.

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If this does end up being a misguided political attempt to force gun restrictions, it's a far bigger scandal than Watergate, where no lives were lost. The blatant stone-walling by Justice Department officials toward Darrell Issa's Congressional inquiries is telling. EVERYTHING this administration does is politically motivated and, in this case, cost the life of one or our border patrol agents.