New York Times Aids Terror Networks

[kickabuck]

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"You reveal that the transactions are being monitored, Voila! the terrorist no longer uses that method of moving around money."

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I thought that was the point: making it hard for terrorists to move money.

Nearly every financial transaction has some sort of readable record. The administration made no secret that it was making strenuous efforts to discover and scrutinize financial transactions associated with terrorism. It's hard to imagine that a story about privacy intrusion somehow blew the cover of any antiterror effort. Your source probably hinted that terrrorists thought there was a safe haven, but now realize there isn't because of the Times. Read it again and try finding evidence instead of innuendo.

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You assume that the pre-War information was deliberately false and all part of the Bush propaganda machine to get us into Iraq.

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I'm not assuming anything. If the government wants me to support mass violence to accomplish its political goals, I might do so, but I require some minimal proof of justification. Proof of a war-justifying threat from Iraq never surfaced for the obvious and now undeniable reason that it never existed. At the same time, proof that the administration lied, exaggerated and distorted at every turn on this issue is overwhelming: the eyewitness insider accounts of Bush's long-standing determination to invade Iraq regardless of any threat, the Downing Stree memos (the White House admitting its intention to "fix the intelligence around the policy"), the forged Niger uranium documents and the undisclosed skepticism about "Curveball", the metting in Prague, the al-Libi confession and a whole host of Chalabi-related "intelligence." Not to mention to outright falsehoods about long-range drones, AIEA predictions of Iraq being nuclear in three years and Cheney's famous line about it having "reconstituted nuclear weapons." And of course the instant about-face from threat-justification to liberation-justification.

All anyone who cares whether their country and their troops are responsible for mass murder is type "Bush lied Iraq" into the Google search box and spend half an hour reading. Too many find this modest effort too much work because, I IMO, they're afraid that it will suggest that our political culture is dominated by sociopaths. It isn't just Bush, of course, it's the entire leadership and particularly the mass media.

BTW, the Times was opposed to the war but only on the grounds that the Security Council failed to authrorize it (as it must by law). The Times essentially endorsed Bush's claims about Iraqi "depection" about WMD. It also took the mainstream "good German" line that the war, that it should be encouraged and supported once it began regardless of justification. To my knowledge, it has yet to endorse a deadline for complete withdrawal. Still, it has been one of the better sources of stories about the occupation and has resoundly criticized Bush.

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It is not unreasonable for an individual to have been moving funds via this enterprise, thinking there is no reason for him to be monitored, so therefore he is 'flying under the radar.' The administration claims the Bali bombing mastermind used this enterprise, and the information was integral to his capture. I suppose you believe nothing the administration claims, but this does not seem so fantastic.

All means necessary to stop terror groups should be employed. Their funding is integral to their existence. I am not a lawyer nor a banker, but I suspect the journalists at the Times are not experts in these fields either. It may very well be that these broad administrative subpoenas are fine. You and the Times want to err on the side of the 'public's right to know' whereas in matters of life and death many choose to err on the side of 'let's hope the government can catch some of these bastards'.

[FlFishOn]

"How about common sense Chris?"

You ask way too much.

[FlFishOn]

" New York Congressman ... Peter King "

A lone voice in the wilderness. I've only heard him speak once and I was very impressed.

[Chris Alger]

Your analogy is absurdly inapposite because the Times story wasn't about new "technology," merely gaining access, without court approval, of information whose existence was already public knowledge. This is why you have to spin fantasy about secret weapons instead of dealing the facts, a pathology among so-called "conservatives."

[canis582]

All they understand are analogies.

[Copernicus]

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Your analogy is absurdly inapposite because the Times story wasn't about new "technology," merely gaining access, without court approval, of information whose existence was already public knowledge. This is why you have to spin fantasy about secret weapons instead of dealing the facts, a pathology among so-called "conservatives."

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1. Do you know that the technology they might have to sift through the transactions isnt new?

2. You do realize that there is nothing they have done that is remotely illegal and circumventing any court requirements?

Ignoring the facts, and not understanding that analogies reflect similarities not indentities or they would be analogies....a pathology amongst bigots parading as "liberals"

[Chris Alger]

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"Their [the terrorists'] funding is integral to their existence."

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No it isn't. Terrorists need very little money. A couple of years ago the NY Times estimated that the average Palestinian suicide bomber spent about $250 in hardware store items. The 9/11 hijackers were armed with plane tickets and less than $500 in pepper spray and box cutters. Throw in another $150,000 in flying lessons and you have all the money you need to perform the most spectacular act of non-state terror in history. (Cost to the U.S. > $350 billion, according to Rumsfeld; indirect costs will total more than a trillion). Ammonium nitrate costs about $200 per metric ton; McVeigh used two tons. For the price of a gallon of deisel and a bag of fertilizer, anyone can become a world class terrorist. And terrorists can also easily move what little money they need through black markets and other underground networks.

Tracing so-called terrorist financing is important for connecting the dots of who's related to whom. Given the extremely broad definitions of "link" and "terror," the real intended effect is to discourage individuals and institutions from financial activity of those the U.S. government deems politically incorrect.

Efforts to impede "terrorist" funding are mostly about freezing assets of charities and countries the U.S. doesn't like. Virtually none of these assets have anything to do with terrorism. For example, according to the Treasury Department, the U.S. has in the name of anti-terrorism blocked the about $146 million in bank accounts owned by Cuba. It also includes $23 million in U.S. domestic real estate --"principally diplomatic properties" -- owned by Iran and frozen for more than 25 years.

Again, you can't find a shred of evidence that this invasive program saved a single life. The Bali nightclub bombing? Riduan Isamuddin was a known al Qaeda associate two years before that event, having been taped by the CIA and Malaysian authorities at the so-called al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. That the White House needed warrantless domestic surveillance to catch someone they suspected at the outset is another Bush administration yarn.

[Chris Alger]

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"1. Do you know that the technology they might have to sift through the transactions isnt new?"

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Because it involves searching a financial message database and there is no hint of any new technology in the Times story or in the objections made to it. This secret weapon stuff is a fignment of your imagination.

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2. You do realize that there is nothing they have done that is remotely illegal and circumventing any court requirements?

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You are making up facts again because the legality of the program is far from clear. According to the Times, the cooperating Swift officials wanted to withdraw from the program becuase of their "potential legal liability" Their cooperation was secured only "after top officials, including Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened," and when "new controls were introduced." The Times story also notes that "at the outset of the operation, Treasury and Justice Department lawyers debated whether the program had to comply with such laws before concluding that it did not, people with knowledge of the debate said. Several outside banking experts, however, say that financial privacy laws are murky and sometimes contradictory and that the program raises difficult legal and public policy questions." The White House even took the extra step of having an outside auditor monitor its activities to limit the possibility of abuse, one person having been removed from the program for abusing it.

So the program has an arguable potential for legal liability and and admitted potential for abuse. To contend that nothing in it is even "remotely illegal" is self-degredation in service to the White House PR machine.

[Zygote]

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The New York Times yesterday outed the monitoring of the financial transactions of the international banking institution called Swift. The administration and two members of the 9/11 commission pleaded with the Times to spike the story, they refused. There have apparently been some successes, including the capture of al Queda operative Riduan Isamussin the mastermind of the Bali bombing. The Times hatred of this administration has gone too far, this is a huge blow to the tracking of terrorist financing. The only people who should be pleased are Al Queda, the only beneficiaries of the information.

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what we should is put the government in charge of the media so this will never happen again... right?

[hmkpoker]

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No it isn't. Terrorists need very little money. A couple of years ago the NY Times estimated that the average Palestinian suicide bomber spent about $250 in hardware store items. The 9/11 hijackers were armed with plane tickets and less than $500 in pepper spray and box cutters. Throw in another $150,000 in flying lessons and you have all the money you need to perform the most spectacular act of non-state terror in history. (Cost to the U.S. > $350 billion, according to Rumsfeld; indirect costs will total more than a trillion). Ammonium nitrate costs about $200 per metric ton; McVeigh used two tons. For the price of a gallon of deisel and a bag of fertilizer, anyone can become a world class terrorist. And terrorists can also easily move what little money they need through black markets and other underground networks.

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Bingo.

Any literate American with a triple digit IQ over the age of 15 could very easily figure out how to contruct a bomb out of simple ingredients, acquire them at a hardware store, and cause pandemonium at the local Starbucks.

Killing people isn't even that complicated. I mean, how hard would it be to just gash someone's jugular while they're not expecting it?

I'm physically capable of executing terrorism, yet somehow, no one's really worried about it. Why is that?