Straw Men

As mentioned below, the current diversionary hoopla streaming from Dear Leader concerns the traitorous act of the New York Pravda to remind us of what he'd already told us.

It's posted on the White House website.

The whole methodology behind it, including the use of the SWIFT database, is outlined in an unclassified report to the United Nations [.pdf format].

Nevertheless, Dear Leader is now making statements like this:

"Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn...

Bu$hie'd brand 'em and burn 'em at the stake, too, if he could. If he wasn't a-skeered of fire. Anything for the spectacle for his base. Anything to push up his own polls.

Koppelman has it right:

Today, the Republicans will reportedly introduce a resolution condeming the New York Times for revealing the existence of a "secret" program to monitor international banking transactions. Sen. Jim Bunning is even calling for a grand jury to consider charges of treason. (Left out of the resolution and the call for indictment, of course, will be the reliably conservative Wall Street Journal, which published a story the same day as the Times -- consistency is not, after all, the hallmark of this attack. The narrative demands that the traitorous journalists must be effete atheistic Manhattan liberals who are, you know, in league with religious extremists who target Manhattan, and the Journal simply doesn't fit. )

The Republicans are following the siren call of their right-wing media base, who, like the National Review, are calling for sanctions against the Times. The cry is always the same: the Times (though again, not the Journal) has harmed our national security by the disclosure of this double super secret program.

Well, then. If that's their argument, let's use the word the mainstream press is so scared to apply: liars.

From now on, remember this: anyone who tries to claim that the Times exposed a secret program and helped the terrorists (I'd mention the Journal, but hey, they won't) is a liar.

From today's Boston Globe:

"A search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.

'There have been public references to SWIFT before,' said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. 'The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before.'

From Victor Comras, a counterterrorism expert formerly with the State Department and United Nations:

Reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:

'The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.'

This isn't about whether the Times (but, uh, not the Journal) violated national security, not really. It's about changing the subject, about diverting attention, once again, from an administration that has systematically been bending and breaking the law and the Constitution in order to assemble ever more information about all of us.

If the main$tream only had a brain, you might think they'd remember. But it's not a case of forgetfullness. It's not like no one remembers what they've already said.

It's denial, and lies, and manipulation of the data for the Faithful.

It's about their own justification for the draconian days ahead they're planning on.