Soldier Looking the Wrong Way
Here’s the heart of a letter sent by a soldier in Iraq to a right-wing blog, addressed to the New York Times, about the banking surveillance story:
You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion — or next time I feel it — I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.
Apparently, this soldier is unaware of the fact that the IEDs that are killing his comrades are not being supplied via international terrorist funds. Instead, they are made from the explosives stolen from Iraqi armories at the beginning of the war because Bush stupidly did not provide for the plainly obvious development of post-invasion looting.
Of course, since soldiers currently serving in the armed forces can be arrested and jailed for criticizing the president, maybe this guy just had no one else to blame. However, seeing as how he sent it to a right-wing blog and not the Times itself tells you something about his built-in bias, blaming the Times for something not even remotely connected to his own situation.
Next time a nuclear explosion goes off in an act of terror I will wonder if we could have stopped that bomb from going off had not President Bush and his cabal not exposed Valerie Plame and compromising her operation out in the field that was engaged in taking nuclear weapons off the black market by purchasing them through her undercover front organization. Once Plame was exposed, so was everything she was connected too.
Or maybe we could have stopped it if we had put a greater effort into border security. Or that Bush didn’t keep the focus on Al Quaida in Afghanistan – and instead – in closing the Bin Laden unit at the CIA gave Bin Laden a virtual pardon.
As for the soldier’s line of reasoning, the bulk of what the Times published had been bragging points of the Administration for over 4 years. So maybe your right, maybe it was a back handed slap at the Administration.
This “soldier” (if he truly exists) more than likely only has half the information.
The “news” that the troops are getting has been sanitized and leans strongly right. For example, Rush Limbaugh’s show goes to the troops but any left leaning radio talk show that asks for equal treatment (which, btw, is supposed to be occuring under the law) doesn’t get aired.
What this “soldier” and the rightwing blog either don’t know or don’t care to acknowledge, is that al Qaeda already knew about the banking surveillance. It’s a matter of public record and has been mentioned in speeches by members of the administration ever since 2001. Even the company out of Belgium has information on it that is readily available through a google search.
This is the most secretive administration ever. Even when the information has been public all along, they claim that someone has “leaked” secret information. The only thing that actually occured is that the administration didn’t “leak” the information on their own.