The Best Kept Secret?

Check out this article which describes the daily diatribes of the Democrats about the war, this time they are crying that Gen. Casey’s plan is really their plan:

Senate Democrats reacted angrily yesterday to a report that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that the plan attributed to Gen. George W. Casey resembles the thinking of many Democrats who voted for a nonbinding resolution to begin a troop drawdown in December. That resolution was defeated Thursday on a largely party-line vote in the Senate.

“That means the only people who have fought us and fought us against the timetable, the only ones still saying there shouldn’t be a timetable really are the Republicans in the United States Senate and in the Congress,” Boxer said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Now it turns out we’re in sync with General Casey.”

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), one of the two sponsors of the nonbinding resolution, which offered no pace or completion date for a withdrawal, said the report is another sign of what he termed one of the “worst-kept secrets in town” — that the administration intends to pull out troops before the midterm elections in November.

“It shouldn’t be a political decision, but it is going to be with this administration,” Levin said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s as clear as your face, which is mighty clear, that before this election, this November, there’s going to be troop reductions in Iraq, and the president will then claim some kind of progress or victory.”

After getting to this paragraph I had to do a double take. Did he just say what I thought he did? I mean, I thought the whole premise of their outrage was that their plan was stolen by BushCo….

But then he say’s that Bush has been planning on bringing the troops home for the November elections, and everyone knows it.

So does this mean that the Democrats knew about this “worst kept secret” and decided to use this “secret” as their plan?

Another day in fairyland for the Democrats I suppose.

Blue Crab Boulevard is thinking along the same lines:

Let’s ask a question here that Levin seems to not understand. If this is “the worst kept secret in town”, doesn’t that mean that the Democrats were posturing? Ding! Time’s up! The correct answer is that if the Dems knew that the plan was already underway, then their activities this past week were all for show.

The Democrats planning their hysterics for show? Get outta here….never!

Then we have the Ex-Marine Murtha sounding as traitorous as usual:

American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to an audience of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.

If nothing else proves the point that Liberalism is a mental illness, this kind of thinking should seal it. I mean being a anti-war dummy is one thing, but saying that our presence is more harmful to the world then a nuclear armed North Korea or Iran is just plain lunacy…..

[…]Murtha also has publicly said that the shooting of 24 Iraqis in November at Haditha, a city in the Anbar province of western Iraq that has been plagued by insurgents, was wrongfully covered up.

Nevermind that the investigation General has come to a different conclusion:

The general charged with investigating whether Marines tried to cover up the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha has completed his report, finding that Marine officers failed to ask the right questions, an official close to the investigation said Friday.

Nothing in the report points to a “knowing cover-up” of the facts by the officers supervising the Marines involved in the November incident, the official said. Rather, he said, officers from the company level through the staff of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force in Baghdad failed to demand “a thorough explanation” of what happened in Haditha.

He is so willing to judge our Marines guilty, so ready to judge our Nation guilty, that he has become a shell of what may have been a good man. Who knows. Is he another Kerry who lied and hid his way through the war and received medals he didn’t deserve? The more I hear him spout this lunacy he spews the more I am able to believe that he is another coward like Kerry, another showboat like Kerry, and another loser like Kerry.

What am I saying…..I knew he was a loser from the beginning. Except for Lieberman, every single Democrat is a loser.

UPDATE

From President Bush’s press briefing this morning (06/26/06):

Q Sir, several news organizations have reported about a program that allows the administration to look into the bank records of certain suspected terrorists. My questions are twofold: One, why have you not gone to Congress to ask for authorization for this program, five years after it started? And two, with respect, if neither the courts, nor the legislature is allowed to know about these programs, how can you feel confident the checks and balances system works?

THE PRESIDENT: Congress was briefed. And what we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America. What we were doing was the right thing. Congress was aware of it, and we were within the law to do so.

The American people expect this government to protect our constitutional liberties and, at the same time, make sure we understand what the terrorists are trying to do. The 9/11 Commission recommended that the government be robust in tracing money. If you want to figure out what the terrorists are doing, you try to follow their money. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. And the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror.

UPDATE II

Patterico has done a transcript of a interview LA Times writer Pat Morrison had with the Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus. It’s a must read.

Here are a few interesting snippets:

MORRISON: Now, ordinarily when you call up a public official, they have two options. They can comment or not comment. But this time, the Treasury Department engaged the decisionmaking process itself, about the story.

McMANUS: Well, that happens. It’s unusual, it’s rare, but it’s not unheard of, for, especially when we are reporting on something that is, uh, in some sense, secret, uh, for the government to say: “We don’t want you to write this story.” Sometimes they’ll say, of course, and in this case they did say: “Well, there’s no story here. Everybody knows we’re monitoring financial transactions.”

In some sense secret? What the flying eff? It’s classified information dummy….this should tell you much about the mode of thinking these people have. There is no “some sense”, it IS classified. Wow, just wow.

And check out this comment by McManus:

So, it’s — this is a broader issue than an individual operation. In any case, we take the question seriously of whether our disclosure of this policy change and this program will be to the disadvantage of legitimate government efforts against terrorism, and we have to weigh that against the legitimate public interest in knowing whether the government is changing the rules, knowing whether the government is operating within the law, um, knowing what the government is up to.”

As Patterico correctly notes:

Nobody elected you to be the guy doing that “weighing.”

He then goes on to skewer their whole reporting on this classified program. What a bang up job these reporters did in making themselves look foolish instead of heroes, as they wanted to be thought of.

In the comment section of Patterico’s post comes this comment by a lefty:

Nobody elected you to be the guy doing that “weighing.”

He didn’t have to get elected. There’s this thing called the Constitution that gives him the freedom to do what he did. Good day.

Which brought a great response by Bobber:

Lefty loopers are always citing what the Constitution “gives” when it’s convenient to the advancement of their silly political escapades. Elected officials have the authority under the Constitution to make laws and protect and advance the interests of the American people. The President has the authority and responsibility in cooperation with Congress to provide for the nation’s security. No citizen has the authority and certainly not the “right” to interfere or even participate in those duties assigned by the Constitution to duly elected officials. Stop this ridiculous wresting of constitutional “rights” to empower leftist political ops and demagoguery. To have contact with classified information – much less publishing it – is a crime on many levels, period. These rats are going to jail. Maybe the lefty moles at CIA also. Good day.

While I am not so certain that these rats will go to jail, I am certain that the papers release of classified information is not covered by the Constitution. If the operation is briefed to Congress and is legal then that’s the end of it. If someone felt it wasn’t legal they then follow the whistleblower act and get it looked at. Leaking to the papers, and the subsequent reporting of that leak serves no other purpose then to futher the careers of the reporters and to damage the Bush administration.

UPDATE III

Here is the letter John Snow, Secretary of the Department of Treasury, sent to the Editor of the New York Times:

Mr. Bill Keller, Managing Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Keller:

The New York Times’ decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails.

Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were “half-hearted” is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with the Times – from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, met in person or placed calls to the very highest levels of the Times urging the paper not to publish the story. Members of Congress, senior U.S. Government officials and well-respected legal authorities from both sides of the aisle also asked the paper not to publish or supported the legality and validity of the program.

Indeed, I invited you to my office for the explicit purpose of talking you out of publishing this story. And there was nothing “half-hearted” about that effort. I told you about the true value of the program in defeating terrorism and sought to impress upon you the harm that would occur from its disclosure. I stressed that the program is grounded on solid legal footing, had many built-in safeguards, and has been extremely valuable in the war against terror. Additionally, Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey met with the reporters and your senior editors to answer countless questions, laying out the legal framework and diligently outlining the multiple safeguards and protections that are in place.

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that “terror financiers know” our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.

Lastly, justifying this disclosure by citing the “public interest” in knowing information about this program means the paper has given itself free license to expose any covert activity that it happens to learn of – even those that are legally grounded, responsibly administered, independently overseen, and highly effective. Indeed, you have done so here.

What you’ve seemed to overlook is that it is also a matter of public interest that we use all means available – lawfully and responsibly – to help protect the American people from the deadly threats of terrorists. I am deeply disappointed in the New York Times.

Sincerely,

[signed]

John W. Snow, Secretary

U.S. Department of the Treasury

Nothing more needs to be said.

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