The Sunday Not-So-Funnies

Mark Steyn is good today on the subject of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:

The U.S. Supreme Court has now blown a hole in the animating principle behind the Geneva Conventions by choosing to elevate an enemy that disdains the laws of war in order to facilitate the bombing of civilian targets and the beheading of individuals. The argument made by Justice John Paul Stevens is an Alice-In-Jihadland ruling that stands the Conventions on their head in order to give words the precise opposite of their plain meaning and intent. The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad -- or, if you're a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman's right to Jews. (ed: emphasis mine)

“…a woman’s right to Jews.” The man can certainly turn a phrase, can’t he? It’s hard to fault his logic, too. After reading this piece one can’t help but wonder what was going through the Supreme Court majority’s collective mind when they ruled al Qaida, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the rest of their ilk deserve every protection and privilege afforded by the Geneva Conventions. If I read and interpret the outcome of Hamdan correctly, this means that if our armed forces apprehend an al Qaida operative on the battlefield and subject him to any sort of interrogation, our people are de facto guilty of a war crime. WE will be guilty of a war crime, simply by interrogating these inhuman sons of bitches! Got that? I’m sure the Salafists are pleased to hear they’re only obligated to provide “name, rank, and serial number.” Even though they don’t have either rank or serial number.

It’s been well-publicized that al Qaida training manuals instruct terrorists to claim long and loud to whoever will listen they’ve been tortured in captivity. Well, the tactic worked. The Supremes heard, and believed. And the Good Guys have lost another battle and must labor in the future under additional irresponsible and ill-considered restraints.

I’m beginning to wonder if we deserve to win this war. Certain highly respected institutions in our society appear to be doing everything they can to assure our enemies, and not us, emerge victorious from this conflict. It’s depressing.

More SWIFTies:

In London, meanwhile, a human rights group said Tuesday that it had filed complaints in 32 countries alleging that the banking consortium, known as Swift, violated European and Asian privacy laws by giving the United States access to its data.

Simon Davies, director of the group, Privacy International, said the scale of the American monitoring, involving millions of records, "places this disclosure in the realm of a fishing exercise rather than a legally authorized investigation."

The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has asked the Justice Ministry to investigate whether Swift violated Belgian law by allowing the United States government access to its data.

The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the program, and a Chicago lawyer, Steven E. Schwarz, filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Swift on Friday alleging that it had violated United States financial privacy statutes.

(ed: emphasis mine)

A common meme the Left uses about the revelation of SWIFT’s association and role in monitoring terrorist financial activity is to say “so, what? Bush said we were monitoring them. They knew! What harm’s been done?” Oh, I dunno. What possible harm could have been done, eh? I mean beyond providing evidence the US government absolutely, positively, cannot keep a secret. Beyond assuring foreign governments and businesses it’s in their interest to cooperate with us. Beyond removing the means to monitor global financial transfers between terrorists. What harm?

The above quotes come from an article in, of all places, the NYT.

Still More SWIFTies…The NYT ain’t taking this laying down. No, not even. Byron Calame, Public Editor of the NYT, publishes an extensive column in today’s paper defending the NYT’s decision to publish. Interestingly, he acknowledges that most people are really pissed about this:

The flood of reader e-mails reacting to the June 23 article has left hundreds of messages in various newsroom in-boxes at The Times. Roughly 1,000 e-mails have come to me, about 85 percent of them critical of the decision to publish the story and a large fraction venomous. It was time to take a close look at the handling of the article in search of answers.

Yet, as many, many people on the Right have pointed out, the majority apparently doesn’t have the good sense to understand how essential “outing” the program was. “The Great Unwashed” simply must be educated!

The most fundamental reason for publishing the article, of course, was the obligation of a free press to monitor government and other powerful institutions in our society. "Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate," Mr. Keller wrote in a letter to readers posted online last weekend, "and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough."

Reasonable people will disagree…vehemently. There are simply some things that shouldn’t be revealed. Especially when those “things” are (a) classified and (b) high level officials, both in and out of government repeatedly and forcefully asked (not demanded, but asked) the press NOT to reveal details about the program.

Mr. Calame’s column represents the reasoned and unemotional defense of the Times. Frank Rich, on the other hand, provides the unhinged Bush-bashing component of the defense we all need so badly. Unfortunately (depending on your point of view), his op-ed is walled off in the subscription-only area of the NYT. Fortunately, Editor and Publisher has provided an extended excerpt (among other things) of Mr. Rich’s rantings. Samples:

"No sooner were the flag burners hustled offstage than a new traitor was unveiled for the Fourth: the press. Public enemy No. 1 is The New York Times, which was accused of a 'disgraceful' compromise of national security (by President Bush) and treason (by Representative Peter King of New York and the Coulter amen chorus). The Times's offense was to publish a front-page article about a comprehensive American effort to track terrorists with the aid of a Belgian consortium, Swift, which serves as a clearinghouse for some 7,800 financial institutions in 200 countries.

[…]

"Such ravings make it hard not to think of the official assault on The Times and The Washington Post over the Pentagon Papers. In 1972, on the first anniversary of the publication of that classified Pentagon history of the Vietnam War, The Times's managing editor then, A. M. Rosenthal, reminisced in print about the hyperbolic predictions that had been made by the Nixon White House and its supporters: 'Codes would be broken. Military security endangered. Foreign governments would be afraid to deal with us. There would be nothing secret left.'

"None of that happened. What did happen was that Americans learned 'how secrecy had become a way of life' for a government whose clandestine policy decisions had fomented a disaster.

"The assault on a free press during our own wartime should be recognized for what it is: another desperate ploy by officials trying to hide their own lethal mistakes in the shadows. It's the antithesis of everything we celebrate with the blazing lights of Independence Day."

All too frickin’ predictable, especially the Viet Nam references. And Mr. Rich conveniently ignores the fall-out from the revelations and compromises of the Viet Nam era, specifically the Church Committee’s recommendations that led to the gutting of the US intelligence community during the late 70s and 80s. I’m not denying there were some excesses that were inexcusable during Viet Nam. I am saying the Congressional pendulum swung way too far in the opposite direction in attempting to remedy the excesses. Once again, it appears Mr. Rich and most, if not all, of the NYT think every war is Viet Nam and every Republican administration is modeled on that of Richard Nixon. Can you say WRONG? Sure you can… But the NYT can’t.