partisanship and the war on terror, part 19

Yesterday's House resolution criticizing the New York Times for publishing a story about the de facto Administration checking international financial transactions is another example of the utter cynicism the GOP shows in the war on terror. Once again, as Mad Dog Cheney and George aWol Bush did earlier, Republicans acted as if the Times' "revelation" had disrupted anti-terror activities and meant that terrorists would be bombing the Gateway Arch in St. Louis any day now.

That's a load of crap. The international banking system and governments have monitored large international financial transactions for thirty years looking for criminal and later terror-related shifts of money, as former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke pointed out in the New York Times today. That is why terrorists rely on other methods to move money around.

This wasn't news, just like the news that we've been listening in on terrorists' phone calls was not news and did not surprise any self-respecting terrorist with two-thirds of a brain. As Clarke asks, how stupid does the de facto Administration think we are.