The Enemy Among Us

In our "Post 9/11" world, the enemy is diffuse, using our "freedoms" against us in order to threaten our safety and undermine our way of life.  This is why the New York Times must be stopped!

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration yesterday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) cited the New York Times in particular for publishing a report last week saying that the Treasury Department is working with the CIA to examine an international database of money-transfer records.

King said he will write Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times -- the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King said...

Reports about the money-monitoring program appeared last week in other leading newspapers. King said they should also be investigated.

When the Times published its report, it quoted the executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened to the government's arguments but thought it was "a matter of public interest."

In a letter printed yesterday on the Times Web site, Keller said the administration argued "in a half-hearted way."

He noted that after the report was published, the Treasury Department "trumpeted . . . that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash."

In case there was any doubt as to the motives of the New York Times, Congrssman King told Chris Matthews yesterday on MS-NBC, "the New York Times is putting its own arrogant elitist left wing agenda before the interests of the American people..." Thank God we now know who the true enemy is.

Comments

[NN]

Unfogged

[cynic librarian]

Gabriel, Several points: 1) The Supreme Court seems to assert that the notion of "illegal combtatant" does not apply to the prisoners at Guantanamo; 2) if the articles I cite are correct, over 50 percent of those at Guantanmo were not combatants of any kind; 3) Even the illegal combatants are covered by the Geneva Conventions.

If any one of the above is true, the Bush admin. could be accused of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, I believe. That they won't, one assumes, does not mean they could not be.

[Matt]

Cliopatria

More juridical resistance to Bush Co :sigh: better late than never.

Maybe keep an eye on this one (via Bitch Ph.D)

This shit just needs to stop!

[Sexy Back]

comment deleted for dull inappropriateness