perfidy

"Now, thanks to The New York Times, al-Qaida terrorists are aware that their phone calls can be monitored, and presumably have taken precautions."

And in response, American voice interceptors now declare that the phone calls are being monitored, but only to assure quality customer service:

Thank you for calling the United States. Due to a high volume of terroristic calling, you may experience a long wait. Current wait time for a JDAM is 11 minutes.

"skyrockets in flight- rrreeaarrr-afternoon delight...aaaaaa, aaa, afterno"

Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and a representative will help you.

[unintelligible Arabic muttering]

"Have you heard of great rates to resorts in Cuba and Eastern Europe? Ask your service representative about long-term lodging today!"

[Fuck...if I wanted to be in Eastern Europe I wouldn't have left Bosnia...]

"aaaa, aaaa, aaafternoon delight..."

[Allah save me from this insipid noise...]

Your call is important to us. We regret the wait, and hope you'll stay on the line for the next service representative.

[muttering...daughters of whores...unfit even to use as...]

"Hello, this is Pat, signals intercept operator 425. May I have your zipcode please?"

"Ah ...ah...I'm in Afguh...uh, I'm outside the United States right now."

"Nnnnoot a problem. Let's see...I show your cell signal originating in the vicinity of...Kabul, is that right?"

"My...signal...?"

"Alright, and what's your mother's maiden name?"

"My...mother...? Uhh, Busayr..."

"Busayr...OK. Alright, and is this Mustafa?"

"Whu..well, yes..."

"And how can I fuck you today, Mustafa?"

"Well, I...wait...what...?"

BLAMMO

I'm sorry, the talking points regarding the SWIFT program are no longer operational. If you'd like to email Ed Gillespie your new fax number, he can make sure you get the ones each Monday.

Phil,
It's not neccessarily a net good to assemble a series of facts from open sources, publicly available, in one place.

Take my current job for example. I spend all day researching people- what they like, what they give $$ to, including federal elections, where they went to school, how much they made last year, how much insider stock they have, what their house is worth, how much they sold their last house for, how much their private company is worth, what boards they're on, who else is on those boards that may be connected to other people of interest, who the parents are/were, and the existence of a family foundation, for starters. Then I do it again for their spouse.

All available publicly, most of it for free.

But that doesn't mean that when I assemble all that data into a report, everything neatly wrapped in the same document, that the person would want it on the front page of the New York Times. It's also why files are kept in locked cabinets behind a double-locked door in a locked building.

Oftentimes classified documents work the same way. Not neccessarily because any single sentence or paragraph needs to be protected, but a number of sensitive ones strung together in a single report ought to be.

I'm not saying that the NY Times ought to be prosecuted for treason. I'm not disagreeing that certain aspects of of the intelligence war against Al Qaeda are in the public domain. I'm just pointing out that "open source = good" is not always the case.

Before accusing me of being a sock puppet draped lovingly over the clenched fist of Ed Gillespie, you might notice that the primary focus of the post was not the Times' treasonous activities, or lack thereof, but Michael Barone's careless use of a phrase disturbingly close to our own "Why do they hate our freedom."

Why do you hate our freedom, Phil?

Btw, we robots no longer take our marching orders from 'ol Ed. He hasn't been RNC Chair since, what, January of last year? Our new peerless leader is Ken Mehlman.

Yeah, Buckethead, well, I mean . . . it's Michael Barone. I mean, it's quaint how in that first graf he vectors the amusing idea that conservatives are suddenly concerned with the welfare of homosexuals when it's a talking point in the War On Islamowhatever. And the idea that he -- and conservatives generally -- is suddenly concerned with "broadly written, but until recently, seldom enforced provisions of the Espionage Act" in the wake of the Plame thing is a real gut-buster. But still, the amusing appearance of a Perfidy bon mot in there aside, you did endorse it as "a good article," which it isn't.

His closer -- "Why do they hate us? Why does the Times print stories that put America more at risk of attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse, but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but theoretical." -- is a laugher. If there are two things I can state with certainty, it's that: 1) A prima facie declaration that these stories put America at greater risk of attack isn't going to cut it, as I think the Greenwald link makes clear; right now, that's quite theoretical, and 2) sorry, but the Bush administration has long since lost the benefit of the doubt as to whether they're going to FUBAR things. I take for granted that they will and am pleasantly surprised if they don't.

I mean, we've got two choices here pretty much:

a) The New York Times, and its editor and publisher, want the United States of America to be taken over by fundamentalist Islamic extremists and placed under sharia law, and are actively working to bring about this result.

b) Someone needs to lay off the White Lightning.

Anyway, I'm just sick of the way the word "treason" is being bandied about these days by people who goddamned well know better. If you genuinely think you've witnessed an act of treason, I'll be the first person to traipse down to the AG's office with you and ask for some US Marshalls to make some arrests. Otherwise, not so much.

I would pose to you two the same questions Greenwald asks:

"What, specifically, would a terrorist have been willing to do on June 22 [the day before the banking story was published] that he would not do on June 23 as a result of the Times' article?

What, specifically, would a terrorist have been willing to do on December 15 [the day before the NSA story was published] that he would not do on December 16 as a result of the Times article?"

Be imaginative! Speculate! But give me something, something more than this "the NYT hates freedom" shit.

Sorry Phil - your list of choices above is incomplete.

The NY Times doesn't want the US to be taken over by fundamentalists, because they don't think such a thing is possible. They're also under the mistaken impression that the approach they take, contra to whatever the current administration decides, is just the perfect balm required to soothe the tensions with the extremists, ignoring the fact that the extremists hate them as much as or more than, and for the same reasons as, they hate the rest of western civilization.

So I agree - people should consider no longer calling it treason. I haven't. I prefer to call it their effort to be an independent, unelected, unaccountable organ of government policy. Alternately, they've simply taken their remit too far, in this and many other cases, by trying to be the opposition to whatever the administration does, on any level, on any topic.

Fuck that - that's what we've got the Democrats for. And the Democrats suck at it, which is unfortunate. We truly need an effective opposition, no matter who's in power, but it's got to be someone who can put forth ideas and be allowed to either implement them or be turned out of office for those ideas being worthless. The Times, you see, fails the requirements to be an effective opposition, and thus should, if anything, simply remind people of how government works, rather than telling people, directly or indirectly, how THEY think the government should act.

I'd prefer that they dedicate everything but their op-ed page to simply reporting the fucking news, and stop exposing secrets so blithely. I also think they should get a smarter op-ed page, and while they're at it, make it larger, so that the wanna-be politicians on their staff can have a place to print their "non-news". Whether you think it mattered or not, the government told them what they were about to report was classified. And they aggressively didn't care.

Separate point: In all seriousness, I'm offended by your comment about "the amusing idea that conservatives are suddenly concerned with the welfare of homosexuals".

Be imaginative! Speculate! But don't regurgitate "made up assertions that political affiliation has anything to do with Americans' views on homosexuality" shit.

Oh, and back to B's point - Barone crossed a line on stealing our tag line. Or would have, if it were actually ours.