Stay angry, my friend. Stay angry.
Stay ignorant, my friend. Stay ignorant.
CMC fnord!
SWIFT is just a tool being used, and was publicly recommended (warning: PDF file) for this purpose well before the NYT’s article.
Or maybe it wasn’t secret in the first place, since the administration itself is the one who talked about it years before. You’re starting to give osmium and iridium a run for their money.
Nice!
I apologise if i’m not getting your position; like I said, i’m not the best debater on here by a long shot, so if I don’t understand what you’re saying, please dumb it down for me. I assure you i’m really not misunderstanding you on purpose.
Yes.
Yes.
Yep.
Ah, I think you may have misunderstood. Yes, i’m entering the debate on whether the pictures are reasonable or not. I’m not entering the debate on the NYT and their story, or whether the program was secret or not. I’m not debating whether 9/11 is an appropriate topic or not. I’m debating the pictures. I don’t need to debate the picture issue with anyone else because everyone else seems to agree.
Right, because I thought my own opinion was relevant. I’m not debating whether mentioning 9/11 is legitimate or not, merely pointing out my own position on the matter so you understand where i’m coming from.
I am leaving the NYT story debate to others, the “was the program actually secret?” debate to others, and whether 9/11 is legitimate to mention to others. *I’m only debating whether the pictures are legitimate. *
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… - Alex Koppelman
Continue its oversight of the program? There’s never been any oversight of the program. The fact is that because there has never been any oversight of the program, there isn’t one person in this body, who will vote on this resolution, who can attest to this statement. They’re asking us to vote on something that we absolutely cannot attest to. Not any one of you can attest to this as a fact, because it isn’t a fact." … – Nancy Pelosi
Think of what we heard from leading Republicans over the past few days. They’ve called the disclosure of the swift anti-terrorist program a disgrace, they’ve accused a newspaper that first wrote it, the the new york times, of forcing its, arrogant elitist left-wing agenda on the rest of the country. If all of this is true, I have no choice but to conclude that our President, President bush himself, is a disgraceful, arrogant left-wing elitist, because it was Mr. Bush who leaked the story. - Louise Slaughter
They tell us that they’re protecting our civil liberties while they’re tapping our phones and spying in our libraries and looking into our bank accounts. They tell us to trust us on everything. They tell us to trust us on — trust them on everything because they’re protecting their civil liberties. Well, I don’t think I can trust this administration to protect my civil liberties and those of the people that I serve.” – John Dingell
The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals. Terrorist groups would have had to be fairly credulous not to suspect that they would be subject to scrutiny if they moved money around through international wire transfers. – NY Times
The media is guilty of publishing stories which might harm the political interests of the President, not which could harm the national security of the United States. But Bush supporters recognize no such distinction. – Glenn Greeenwald
Had the New York Times not published the two stories that led to this charge of treason and demand for criminal prosecution, it is not just the public that would not have been informed, it would have been the courts and the Congress who would not have been informed either. I will repeat this for emphasis: what the President in fact wants is not merely the power to keep information from the public, but the power to keep information from the courts and the Congress. When the President in fact wants is to have secret, unilateral and pre-emptive power to determine for himself, without judicial review, without Congressional oversight, without regards to Constitutional, statutory or international law exactly what it means to faithfully execute the laws of the land. What is at stake is this unprecedented grasp for unilateral power for one man, in one party, in one branch of government, alone, without knowledge or review by any other branch of government, to determine alone what it means for the leader of the free world to faithfully execute the laws. He presumes to put himself above Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams and more than two hundred years of American Presidents who never made claims so sweeping, secretive and contemptous of the first principles of our democracy. – Brent Budowski
That’s totally diiiiiiiiiferent! Dubya did it, therefore it’s good. When the Librul Media does something it’s by definition good. Haven’t you ever seen any of mgellin’s or duffy’s posts before?
-Joe
(Joe’s secretly placed a Folger’s Crystals Braincramp in the previous post - let’s see if anyone notices)
-Joe
(That’s why we give you that handy Preview button.)
Well, it seems it’s not “years” Not even two years. MOre important, we have two crucial unkowns:
- Just how effective was the program? I’ve heard claims that it had been fruitful, nothing to the contrary.
- Did the effectiveness of the program nose dive at any point? Does the effectivess curve over time look horizontal, go up, trend down, or drop percipitously at some particualar point?Perhaps after the puclication date of this article?
I have to tip my hat to the reference. I’ve been saving a similar one for a particular poster. So, nice. It would have been better if it was delivered when it was clear that someone (I) was not understanding your point or stubbornly holding on to one without presenting a counter-argument. Still, nice. You’re getting better at this.
Oops, could someone please fix the coding in my last post.
And for what it’s worth:
I watched Chris Matthews last night. In his “Hardbrawl” segment with Kate O’Beirne, Tom Oliphant, Michael Smerconish, Eugene Robinson, Matthews asked the four if they would have made the decision the NY Times did and published the info. Three of the four said that would NOT have. Chris Mathews said he would NOT have. The only one who said he would have was Oliphant. But even he admitted that those who would not have a very strong position.
I bring this up only to demonstrate that the position against the NY Times is not some extreme, Kool-aid drinking, sycophantic, Bush ball-licking position that many on these boards have tried to portray it as. Another testament to the SD’s ideological bent, which only surprises me in degree. And no, that is not meant as a slam in any way.
I would recommend Matthews’ book, American; Beyond our Grandest Notions. I bought it right after I saw Matthews come on the Phil Donahue show and give him a world-class smackdown.
Too busy! No time for two clicks! I’m late, late for a very important date!
-Jope
Actually, Robinson did NOT say what you think he said.
From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13632311/
I found his abbreviated statement to be ambivalent at best.
So, I’m shocked, shocked! (Sorry, Claude). An intelligent talk show host would have suppressed the story, and the editor of the National Review would have suppressed the story.
A former newspaper journalist would have printed the story and an assistant editor at the Washington Post would (probably) have printed the story.
magellan I don’t mean this post to indicate that you are a fringe opinion, just that Matthews’ program didn’t really indicate what you might have intended.
Yeah, I looked at the transcript and it’s not there. I watched the show and thought he answered “no” among some cross-talk. That impression was reinforced when Oliphant said “Minority view” as a preamble to his answer. Now, he might have meant minority as in 3-2. But I’m pretty sure I heard Robinson say “no”, which makes Oliphant’s offeriing of hjis preamble make even more sense. I tried to check out the video for the show, but I don’t have the right software (IE 6) and can’t load it on my Mac from the Microsoft site). Maybe someone can check. I do recall that Robinson was hesitant, which spurred Matthews to volunteer his answer.
I think his answer was in some crosstalk at about this point:
I stiil think it is interesting that Matthews would not have run the story.I don’t think anyone can label him as a right-wing automaton.
The fucking terrorists have known since at least 1991 that their international banking transactions were being tracked and monitored, when, after Senator John Kerry launched an investigation into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, their banking activities were exposed to the world and their bank was shut down entirely.
No one could possibly be so stupid as to think that all that could go down and the terrorists, including future al Qaeda leaders who had accounts there (including Osama bin Laden, ftr), would even remotely, possibly not have a fucking clue that their bank activity was being closely scrutinized. Get. Real.
The subcommittee’s Legislative Recommendations have been published since 1992 for Og’s sake!
And it was in part due to the press exposing the abominable lack of action or follow-through on the part of the Justice Department (along with pressure from the New York District Attorney’s office), that finally forced the government into actually doing something about it.
Yes, but did that include using SWIFT? My understanding is that while there were efforts to track money, that some money was able to moved without notice, and that by tapping into SWIFT post 9/11, we were able to see things that were previously off the radar. Does anyone have concrete evidence showing that is not the case? Or “is” the case?
sigh I love Keith Olbermann. Anderson who?
Kinda hard to keep the program secret when it has its own magazine, eh magellan01?
:rolleyes:
It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. The OP pitted the NYT for exposing a secret that wasn’t a secret at all. If the program was effective, it was in spite of the terrorists having knowledge of it. If it sucked big donkey balls, then it was a waste of time.
It was delivered to the appropriate target at the appropriate time, and osmium has since conceded, but iridium foolishly thinks it has a chance.
Oh, and mods, can you please fix magellan01’s coding in post 290? I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m the source of that twaddle.
Sure it matters. The “secret” was not the existence of SWIFT, but that starting in 2001 we were tapped into it.
And while the terorist organization going back to probably the first WTC attack, knew that we were looking to track money, we didn’t utiize SWIFT to 2001. So, it was a new, unannounced aspect of the financial surveillance the governement was doing. That, at least, is what makes the most sense to ma based on the incomplete information we have.