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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
But see, ultimately, it all falls under the word, OPINION, which we are all entitled to. Your view of "facts" and my view of "facts" encompass different things at different times. Live and let live, if we all had the same beliefs and opinions, what a boring world this would be.
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Cynthetiq, it probably will come as no surprise to you that I could not disagree more with what you wrote in your last post.
If we all were willing to document and provide reference links to share what shapes and supports our beliefs and opinions, what a substantive and useful forum this could be!
My main problem is that you seem to dismiss, "out of hand", the damage that is done to opinion that most closely approximates the truth, when distortions are deliberately launched by leaders with "bully pulpits" (Bush and Cheney), who enjoy, but must responsibly shoulder, the privilege and the influence that having every word they utter publicly, end up in print and on broadcast news media.
Things these leaders say, when they are not true, (and they know it...or should be sure of the accuracy of their assertions before they state them....) or are deliberately mischaracterized and blown out of proportion, have a ripple effect. The republican noise machine picks up on Cheney accusing the NY Times of publishing "state secrets", and catapults the propaganda, as if it were fact, and some folks who post here are impressed by it, and they won't move away from it, no matter what documentation to the contrary is posted for them to "fact check".
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http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/arc...e_transcript_/
.....KING: Do you think we’re safe?
G. BUSH: I think we’re safer, but I’m — I’m worried about — worried about an enemy that wants to hit us again. And I’m comforted by the fact there’s a lot of people working hard on the issue.
KING: Have we stopped them? Have there been things that we don’t hear about that have been stopped?
G. BUSH: We’ve disrupted plots. And not only here but elsewhere. And it’s — you know, I’m worried about some of the tools we’re using being disclosed. I — I think it’s a huge mistake.
<b>KING: You blame The New York Times, but the L.A. Times also published that story about intercepting and also The Wall Street Journal printed it.
G. BUSH: Well, disclosure is disclosure. I don’t think I’ve blamed any paper by name — maybe I have.
KING: You did name The New York Times.
G. BUSH: I did? I don’t know if I did or didn’t</b> but anyway, let me put it this way. I am disturbed that people would feel comfortable enough going to newspapers with state secrets. It doesn’t make any sense to me to give the enemy — our — our game plan on how we’re going to deal with them …
KING: Isn’t that a ticklish line, though, a free press …
G. BUSH: I do support a free press strongly. I also want people to recognize that we’re at war and it’s just — it’s just — I just don’t understand. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.....
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Indeed, the leaders' propaganda is reinforced in some of our members' opinion forming processes, to the degree that hints of a consistantly observable extreme; where some here post undocumented assertions that they "feel" no need to support with any documentation to back their opinion, even in response to polite challenges and requests......leaving me to draw no other conclusion than that they believe that what they are posting, <b>"is just so..."</b>, ending a debate that never even got started, since only one side of an argument is debating, as the other side, "knows what they know", but won't post where they got the knowledge...so that it can be examined, dissected, and held up for comparison to the large body of other information that living in the year 2006 in a post industrial society affords us quick access to......
Here is an example of the potential for damage to the right of a free press to question the government: Accusations by Bush and Cheney against the NY Times decision to publish descriptions of the US government's "data mining" program of the Belgian based SWITCH financial transaction message, processing center influenced Sen. Jim Bunning (R- Kentucky) to demand prosecution of everyone involved in that disclosure at the NY Times for TREASON. There was an attempt by republicans to pass a non-binding congressional resolution to specifically condemn the Times for their "disclosure" of the "SWITCH" data mining "Op".
Six months ago, in my post linked here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=67
I shared my documented opinion of "Power Line" and John Hinderaker, one of the site's three principle "bloggers". True to form.....two days ago, instead of questioning whether those political leaders who are criticizing the NY Times are making justfied and accurate accusations, Hinderaker posted the following in an obvious attempt to dismiss the fact that the NY Times reported alledged "secrets", that were already in the public domain for several years:
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http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014619.php
July 06, 2006
Did the United Nations Expose the SWIFT Program?
A few days ago, we challenged liberals to provide us with evidence that the terrorists already knew about the administration's use of SWIFT to track terrorist financing, as the New York Times now claims, so that the Times' exposure of that program did not damage national security. The most coherent response we got was from Greg Sargent of New York Magazine, who writes at the American Prospect's media and politics blog:
I'd like to direct your attention to this report that was done by the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group in December of 2002. The report has long been readily accessible to the public at the UN's web site. You can read it here:
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/G...df?OpenElement
Paragraph 31 of this report says the following:
The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.
As you can see, this paragraph states quite clearly that the United States has "begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions," and that settlement of such transactions are handled through outfits "such as the SWIFT." <b>The suggestion of this paragraph is obvious: the United States has begun to monitor, or intends to start monitoring, transactions processed through SWIFT and other similar outfits. This report was completed in 2002.</b>.....
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John Hinderaker's comments seem reasonable...so far...he gives the impression that he is trying to obtain an accurate conclusion about whether the NY Times reporting was already in the public domain when they "disclosed" the "secret" SWIFT program.....but then he sets new hurdles intended to minimize the effect of the existence of the prior UN material on the web that described the U.S. role in the SWIFT program:
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Many other liberals have cited this U.N. report for the proposition that the SWIFT program was common knowledge before the Times exposed it. Let's examine that claim and see whether it can withstand scrutiny.
First, in order to show that the Times' report was "old news" that could not have damaged national security, <h3>liberals would have to demonstrate that the terrorists knew three things: 1) that SWIFT's international headquarters in Brussels maintains a database that includes information on the vast majority of all international banking transactions; 2) that the United States had persuaded the foreign bankers who operate SWIFT's Brussels headquarters (and perhaps their governments) to give the U.S. access to that database; and 3) that the nature of the records in the SWIFT database is such as to allow terrorists and their financiers to be tracked and identified.
</h3>
Does the U.N. report, which can be accessed here, satisfy these elements? Clearly not, for a number of reasons.
<h3>First, there is no evidence whatsoever that any terrorist--let alone all terrorists--ever read the U.N. report. </h3>The fact that the report was on the U.N.'s web site where it could be found, after the fact, by liberals searching for information about SWIFT does not demonstrate that any terrorists knew about it. So on its face, the suggested "proof" is inadequate.
<h3>Second, if we're going to assume the terrorists read that particular U.N. report, let's assume they read it carefully. Paragraph 31 does not say that the United States had gained access to the data maintained by SWIFT's international headquarters in Brussels.</h3> On the contrary, the paragraph refers specifically to "systems in the United States of America" which were being monitored by the U.S. These systems included Fedwire, which is operated by the Federal Reserve Board, CHIPS, an American bank-owned alternative to Fedwire, and the SWIFT operation "in the United States," which is located in New York. Paragraph 31 nowhere hints that SWIFT's Brussels headquarters had a massive database of international money transfers, or that the U.S. had gotten access to it.
This is perhaps why the government of Belgium--which is much more apt than a group of terrorists to read United Nations reports--had no idea, prior to the Times' report, that SWIFT's Brussels headquarters had allowed the U.S. government access to its database. When the Belgian government learned that last month, it launched an investigation,
<h3>Third, let's assume the terrorists read not just paragraph 31, but the entire U.N. report. If they did so, they would find no indication that SWIFT's headquarters contained the mother lode of international financial data, to which the U.S. had already gained access.</h3> On the contrary, paragraph 90 of the report says that "it has become more difficult to trace and identify [al Qaeda's] assets." If the terrorists actually read the report, which is highly unlikely, they would have gained false comfort from it.
Fourth, we know for sure that U.N. report of December 2002 didn't blow the secrecy of the SWIFT program, because that program achieved its most notable success eight months later with the capture of Hambali. Further, we know that even as of last month the program's cover hadn't been blown, because it was described as instrumental in several investigations that were ongoing when the Times printed the illegally leaked information about the program. So as of last month, the terrorists hadn't yet changed whatever behavior allowed them to be tracked by SWIFT. Now that they know how we've been tracking them, they can investigate the SWIFT system, reverse-engineer the transactions that led to the capture of Hambali and other terrorists, and, in all likelihood, negate the benefits of this highly successful program.
<b>Liberals' reliance on the 2002 U.N. report is typical of how they so often argue: seize on a word here and a phrase there, make wild assumptions, ignore the obvious, and assert the incredible in the face of all evidence to the contrary.</b>
Posted by John at 08:27 PM
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John Hinderaker certainly showed us "liberals", a thing or two, didn't he?
He did not count on a "wildcard", like ole "host" on TFP politics, reacting to the republican attacks on the NY Times and the "take it on faith" attitudes of some of the posters who do not support a major newspaper erring on the side of public disclosure in an "alleged" close call, editorial decision to publish news of the SWIFT monitoring program.
I was inspired to silence this noise machine "Op", and I think that I've done it via my own investigating. I've posted the following already, I've seen it cited no where else, and it seems to me that it destroys enough of Hinderaker's debunking of the UN report, and his contention that al Qaeda doesn't read reports like that, and would still not know that "SWIFT" was based in Belgium, if not for the reckless "wartime" reporting of the NY Times.....
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http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...us&ct=clnk&cd=
September 21, 2001......Funding on that scale would not necessarily have required large international bank transfers of the kind often seen in cases involving drug cartels or corrupt regimes. That could limit <b>the ability of the National Security Agency to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions, which are carried out by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), headquartered in Belgium.........</b>
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Cynthetiq, there are plenty of other places at TFP where it is appropriate to post undocumented opinions. Are you in favor of most participants consistantly posting in an off the cuff manor like that, here at the politics forum, too, even to the point where they ignore requests that they support what they've posted, by directing the rest of us to the sources that influenced their conclusions?
Is it your opinion that John Hinderaker and I have made equally persuasive or accurate presentations? I look forward to reading any attempt to make an argument that the Dec. 2002 UN reference to SWIFT and the Sept. 21, 2001 Baltimore Sun reporting are insufficient to support a conclusion that the SWIFT data monitoring program was already in the public domain for years before the Times reported on it on June 22. The most troubling issue to me is that the POTUS and the VPOTUS either knowingly attempted to falsely attack legitimate news reporting by describing it as revealing "secret" "sources and methods for collecting intelligence", or they genuinely did not know that SWIFT details were in the public domain for years, and didn't even make the effort to check if they were publicly available details before the launched their coordinated "treason" noise barrage.
Pathetically speaking, it would raise my confidence in the competence of Bush/Cheney if we were to find out that the U.S. government was mining data from SWIFT for five years for some other inappropriate, intrusive reason, than that they genuinely were unaware, as John Hinderaker seems to be, that all al Qaeda had to do to become informed about and avoid SWIFT monitoring, was to read the Sept., 21, 2001 Baltimore Sun article, publicly available on the web for almost five years!