CNN and others in MSM are now parroting the line that the SWIFT program was really not all that secret, given that the president himself had spoken publicly about efforts to track the finances of international terrorists.

It's not a very convincing case.

Speaking about general efforts to track terrorists via their finances, as the president has done, is quite a different matter from providing the terrorists a roadmap of the devices being used to track them, as the New York Times did last Friday.

Bill Keller's assertion that the New York Times did not provide the terrorists with any more information than they already had about the monitoring program, as a CNN correspondent just reported Keller said, is absurd. And the current media effort to diminish this treacherous act by the New York Times is even more absurd.

As expected:

IAF aircraft blew up a key strategic bridge in the northern Gaza Strip shortly before midnight on Tuesday. The army said that the operation was intended to keep Hamas from taking kidnapped soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit out of the Gaza Strip.

In addition, IDF tanks were amassing around Gaza, and were awaiting orders to begin a ground incursion into the strip. However, the the army denied an Israel Radio report that the armored forces had actually begun a ground incursion into the strip.

Earlier, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that "the clock is running out, and Israel is poised and ready for a military operation in the Gaza Strip."

Israel could hardly have been expected to sit idle as one of its soldiers was snatched, and is still being held by Palestinian kidnappers.

Yes, Bill Keller just is not that bright. And that is the problem, isn't it?

Keller digs himself, and the New York Times, into a further hole with his attempt to rationalize and justify the outrageous disclosure of the SWIFT program on the front page of last Friday's New York Times:

"Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.)"

Note to the New York Times: Get yourself a smarter and better editor - and try and climb that first step - on the very long journey-toward reestablishing yourself as the great newspaper that you once were.

Andy McCarthy writes:

National-security secrets? All fair game. If it’s about how we detain, or infiltrate, or defang the monsters pledged to kill us, the New York Times reserves the right to derail us any time it finds such matters … interesting.

But the media’s own sources? That, and that alone, is sacrosanct. Worth protecting above all else.

National-security secrets, after all, are merely the public treasure that keeps us alive. Press informants are the private preserve of the media.

And they’re just more important than you are.

Hugh Hewitt is calling for congressional condemnation of the Times.

Agreed.

President Bush himself has made a statement, and he was visibly slightly (and appropriately) red faced:

President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a secret anti-terrorism program that taps into an immense international database of confidential financial records. "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," he said.

"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror." ... "Congress was briefed and what we did was fully authorized under the law," Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in
Iraq.

"We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America," the president said. "What we were doing was the right thing."

Via Captain's Quarters, here is what the 9/11 Commission recommended, as part of the essential course of actions necessary to detect and prevent future terrorist attacks (emphasis mine):

Recommendation: Vigorous efforts to track terrorist financing must remain front and center in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The government has recognized that information about terrorist money helps us to understand their networks, search them out, and disrupt their operations. Intelligence and law enforcement have targeted the relatively small number of financial facilitators—individuals al Qaeda relied on for their ability to raise and deliver money—at the core of al Qaeda’s revenue stream. These efforts have worked. The death or capture of several important facilitators has decreased the amount of money available to al Qaeda and has increased its costs and difficulty in raising and moving that money. Captures have additionally provided a windfall of intelligence that can be used to continue the cycle of disruption.

Yes, those efforts have worked. But one of those imperative and effective programs has been "outed" by the New York Times. The New York Times has not provided a single shred of credible justification as to why it considered the outing of this program absolutely necessary. Instead, its editor has made arrogant statements about freedom of the press, and the right of the New York Times to do what it so irresponsibly did, while in ignoring the essential question of why it was more beneficial to expose this program, knowing that it would undoubtably be detrimental to our war on terror.

There is no question but that Al Qaeda will, if it has not already, become aware of this information that the New York Times has published. There is also no question that Al Qaeda, and any terrorist organization which would do America harm, will then adapt its methods accordingly to evade detection by the program. An effective United States weapon against the murderous and monstrous Al Qaeda has now been - knowingly and deliberately - neutralized by the New York Times during time of war.

Because of this it is not unreasonable to declare that the New York Times, with the publication of the existence and details of the SWIFT program, has not only aided and abetted Al Qaeda during time of war, but that it has committed an act that is treasonous.

*****

Update: Tony Snow:

"...the New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public’s right to know in some cases might override somebody’s right to live, and whether in fact the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans...."

Indeed!

And Treasury's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence directly contradicts Bill Keller during an interview with Hugh Hewitt. A transcript will be up at Radioblogger later today.

The disclosure in this morning’s New York Times of the existence of the SWIFT program is arguably treacherous, and unarguably unwise, imprudent and dangerously harmful to America’s continuing efforts to effectively prevent terrorist attacks on our country, and to eradicate fanatical Islamist terrorists who would plan those attacks before they reach the operational stage.

The CounterterrorismBlog (via Hugh) had this to say:

This morning, media reports disclosed the U.S. Government’s use of the SWIFT network in furtherance of its terrorist financing initiative. My initial reaction is one of pride and despair. As a former government official, I was involved in this program. On one hand, I’m proud of the notable work performed and what has been accomplished. On the other hand, I’m disappointed and concerned that the media felt compelled to run another story that undermines National Security in the fight on terrorism by disrupting and diminishing an important investigative tool.

Here are examples of successes of the program that the New York Times has now outed:

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.

In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.

The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.

Now those who would do our country and its people great harm are alerted, and will have the chance to alter their methods accordingly.

And what was the compelling reason to run the story, when it has the potential to so clearly undermine our effort at dispatching fanatical Islamists who would harm Americans? What was the overriding interest? Why would the New York Times ignore the unambiguous requests of agents of our government, requesting that it not run the story? Does the New York Times so hate the Bush administration that it is clearly willing to – with full apparent intent – pursue a course of action that is damaging to our national security? For what purpose? To what end?

Scott over at Powerline notes:

The Times and its likeminded media colleagues will undoubtedly continue to undermine and betray the national security of the United States until they are taught that they are subject to the same laws that govern the conduct of ordinary citizens, or until an enraged citizenry decides, like Bill Keller, to take the law into its own hands and express its disagreement some other way.

And "betray" is not too strong a word for this outrage by the Times.
Fair minded Americans cannot help to come to the visceral conclusion that the Times, in this instance, has just gone too far.

The publishers of the New York Times have an obligation to all Americans, regardless of whether they regularly read the New York Times, to explain their rationale for printing the story. The American people have a right to know why the New York Times published the story, apparently ignoring the obvious damage it would do to our war effort. If the Times did not ignore the potential damage this story would do outright, then we have a right to know precisely why the editors of the Times believed they had no alternative but to publish information about the SWIFT program.

Right Wing News:

29) Pinch Sulzberger (6)
29) Pat Robertson (6)
29) George Clooney (6)
28) Barbra Streisand (7)
27) Ted Rall (7)
26) Fred Phelps (7)
25) Natalie Maines (7)
23) Paul Krugman (8)
23) Barbara Boxer (8)
22) Dan Rather (9)
21) Ward Churchill (10)
18) Al Sharpton (11)
18) Harry Reid (11)
18) Al Franken (11)
17) Keith Olbermann (12)
16) Cynthia McKinney (13)
13) Howard Dean (15)
13) Noam Chomsky (15)
13) Jimmy Carter (15)
12) Bill Clinton (16)
10) Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (18)
10) Jesse Jackson (18)
9) George Soros (19)
7) Nancy Pelosi (22)
7) John Murtha (22)
5) John Kerry (23)
5) Al Gore (23)
4) Cindy Sheehan (26)
3) Hillary Clinton (27)
2) Ted Kennedy (28)
1) Michael Moore (36)

Olbermann should have made it higher on the list. He really is an annoying twit. He might have a halfway decent program if he didn't spend so much time endlessly obsessing with Bill O'Reilly.

The U.S. has found hundreds of chemical weapons shells in Iraq. The mainstream media is largely ignoring the story. The Bush Administration apparently kept this low profile so as not to embarass Russia, China and France.

I agree with Hugh:

What we have right now if a very confused picture, and the Adminsitration simply cannot expect the public to be satisfied with the announcement today and the declassified summary provided by Director Negroponte. At a minimum, if more cannot be disclosed, an explanation must be given as to why that is the case.

See Hugh's interview with Rick Santorum on this over at Radioblogger.

And stay tuned...this is a big development, with more details to follow promptly I suspect.

Update: Mainstream media, of course, is largely ignoring this story. The Post put it on page A10.

Captain Ed notes:

Critics of the war may find themselves undercut by their continuing insistence that the WMD finds are insubstantial, either in quantity or threat. First, we know undoubtedly that they existed, and the unclassified amount, in the wrong hands, could have killed thousands. Second and more importantly, the classified portion of the intel report speaks to a larger context -- and the only reason to keep that quiet would be to either avoid a threat or to avoid some diplomatic embarrassment.

Hugh notes:

If it was one cache of old and useless weapons, buried and forgotten, then the intelligence agency that insists on the classification of the report is not competent.

AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces on Tuesday recovered the bodies of two American soldiers reported captured by insurgents last week. An Iraqi defense ministry official said the men were tortured and "killed in a barbaric way." Al-Qaida in
Iraq claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers, and said the successor to terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had "slaughtered" them.

The claim was made in a Web statement that could not be authenticated. The language in the statement suggested the men were beheaded.

U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the remains were believed to be those of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.

While not new, and unfortunately hardly surprising, this monstrous act by Al Qaeda should be a reminder to all in the civilized world of the true nature of radical Islamic jihadist fundamentalism.

Michael Barone:

It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election--a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.

Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available to gloat over American setbacks or our allies' defeat, as the leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam did.

Third, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that he would not seek an indictment of Karl Rove. The leftward blogosphere had Mr. Rove pegged for the role of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Theories were spun about plea bargains that would implicate Vice President Dick Cheney. Talk of impeachment was in the air. But it turns out that history doesn't repeat itself. George W. Bush, whether you like it or not, is not a second Richard Nixon.

Try telling that to the Democrats. I rather doubt they will be influenced to come back to reality.

He's out. It was going to be by Fall, and now it may be as early as next week. CBS is washing its hands, which is not surprising after Rather created so much controversy and damaged the network's credibility with his attack on George W. Bush using forged documents. They couldn't fire Rather outright, as they did others connected with the disgrace, so they eased him out of the anchor chair, with plans to dispense with him as soon as practically possible afterward.

Democrats are in complete disagreement with each other on how best to formulate an Iraq stategy, and John Kerry's timing - in introducing a resolution calling for the withdrawl of U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of the year - is as bad as ever.

With his brilliant surprise visit to Iraq a day ago, and with the successes last week in Iraq, it is clear that the momentum on Iraq has shifted back to the President. The Democrats can try as they will, but one suspects that they will yet again fail to develop a coherant, credible policy to present to the American people with regard to Iraq, and will - as they have all along - sit on the sidelines and snipe criticism at Mr. Bush, while never presenting their vision (because they aren't even close to having one) of Iraq's future.

And that is not likely to bring them great electoral success this November.

Which is very good for the President, and even better for the Lefty blogs who will most certainly begin the spreading of conspiracy theories, as Hugh notes.

Well, now we know what that meeting in Camp David was really about!

Michael Barone:

It comes down to this: A substantial part of the Democratic Party, some of its politicians and many of its loudest supporters do not want America to succeed in Iraq. So vitriolic and all-consuming is their hatred for George W. Bush that they skip right over the worthy goals we have been, with some considerable success, seeking there -- a democratic government, with guaranteed liberties for all, a vibrant free economy, respect for women -- and call this a war for oil, or for Halliburton.

Successes are discounted, setbacks are trumpeted, the level of American casualties is treated as if it were comparable to those in Vietnam or World War II. Allegations of American misdeeds are repeated over and over; the work of reconstruction and aid of American military personnel and civilians is ignored.

In all this they have been aided and abetted by large elements of the press. ***

All of this does not go unnoticed by America's voters. The persistence of violence in Iraq has done grave damage to George W. Bush's job rating, and polls show that his fellow Republicans are in trouble. Yet when people actually vote, those numbers don't seem to translate into gains for the Democrats. In 2004, John Kerry got 44 percent of the votes in the 50th district of California. In the April 2006 special primary, Democrat Francine Busby got 44 percent of the votes there. In the runoff last week, she got 45 percent and lost to Republican Brian Bilbray.

The angry Democratic left and its aiders and abettors in the press seem to have succeeded in souring public opinion, but they haven't succeeded in producing victory margins for the Democrats. Maybe they're doing just the opposite.

Oops! Looks like Al Gore should have been a bit more thorough in his research.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has chosen Abu Zarqawi's successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. May the bombs began falling, and may he soon meet the fate of his predecessor.