Quote Originally Posted by Eclectic
Because the NY Times has a partisan politcal agenda. And my point is not how Bush is treated, but how the NY Times has played politics and is basically a self-serving liberal elite paper that is willing to sacrifice American security for political points. They were clearly trying to capitalize on the NSA story and show how evil and imperialistic the big scary Bush war machine is.
So...

The New York Times with it's "partisan political agenda" "sacrifices American security" by publishing a story called "Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror" about SWIFT on June 22, 2006. How dare they!

Interestingly, that very same day, the Wall Street Journal published a similar article called "U.S. Treasury Tracks Financial Data In Secret Program" about the very same program with almost exactly the same details.

The Los Angeles Times published a story called "Secret U.S. Program Tracks Global Bank Transfers" about the exact same program on the same day as well.

Oddly, I don't see any calls for the Wall Street Journal or the LA Times to be prosecuted for revealing "secrets" of national security. I don't see the Wall Street Journal being accused of partisan politics, even though they published the same story on the same day as the NYT.

Oh, and the financial tracking program? This so-called top secret national security program? All it does is access the database of SWIFT - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It's based in Belgium. SWIFT is no secret. They have a nice informative web site, detailing exactly how they track financial information. They publish a magazine! There have been stories in the media about how we were using SWIFT to track terrorists financial data going all the way back to 2001, not long after 9/11. In fact, the person who has talked, in public, about the program the most - is none other than George W. Bush himself.

But, oh no, the New York Times "violated" national security talking about a program which is neither secret, nor in part even a US program! And they "violated" that national security on the same day as two other newspapers including the oh so liberal Bush-Hating Wall Street Journal ran nearly identical stories. Hmm...

Kind of makes me wonder just exactly who is playing partisan politics.