Continue reading "Those South Dakotans Get Everything "

The state of South Dakota is paying a veterans bonus of up to $500 to certain military personnel who were legal residents of the state for no less than six months immediately preceding entry into the Armed Forces, who are currently on active duty or were honorably discharged from the Armed Forces, and who served on active duty during one, or both of the following periods.

For service between the dates of Jan. 1, 1993 through Sept. 10, 2001 payment will be made only to those who served overseas and were awarded the Armed Forces Expeditionary medal, Southwest Asia Service medal, Kosovo campaign medal or any other United States campaign or service medal awarded for participation in combat operations against hostile forces.

All active duty between the dates of Sept. 11, 2001 through a date to be determined, qualifies for a bonus payment.

Guess this helps make up for that whole "being from South Dakota" thing. ;-) All done!

Continue reading "A War of Their Own "

I give Jacoby a lot of credit. His describes the trouble these disclosures of national security secrets are having for the Times and other media, and makes clear where he stands on the issue:

Once upon a time, mainstream journalists would have been aghast at the revelation of national security secrets in wartime. Apparently only some of us still feel that way.

TF Boggs echoes a sentiment I've expressed myself, having had a few of my own personal run-ins with news media. When Newsweek created their firestorm about an falsified Koran flushing incident, I declared, "You Don't Support Us."

All done!

Continue reading "Security and Secrecy "

“As most of our readers know, there is a large wall between the news and opinion operations of this paper.” Close readers of the last decade of Times reporting must find this claim the most outrageous at all.

Is this meant to harken back to Jamie Gorelick’s infamous “wall of separation,” or is it just high irony? Isn’t this the editorial (and all too often, news section A) version of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” game the Times has been playing throughout the global war on terror?

When doing post mortems on 9/11 and the response of our Intelligence and terror fighting services, it’s “why didn’t they connect the dots?” “By God, they had seven scraps of intercept that allude to the big attack!” (Out of millions.) “Here, a disgruntled and underappreciated CIA analyst warned them Bin Laden wanted to attack the US, how come nobody was looking for it?”

There were few commentators as shrill with 20/20 hindsight as the editors of the Times.

Then comes evidence of a muscular and proactive assault on terror making organizations and individuals, using multiple avenues and methods, and the Times is screaming about violations of civil liberties, attacks on privacy (although usually more speculative or postulated than actually in evidence), and extreme violations of “long established” checks and balances of powers of the three branches of government.

Which has translated thus, for the Times of the past 15 years: when in Democratic hands, a strengthened Executive is preferred; when GOP, maintain that the Executive has become Imperial. This, despite evidence that both Clinton and Bush administrations argued for and in many cases, attempted to draw the lines, in exactly the same spots.

If it weren’t revelatory of a grave threat to public support for what will be a multi-Administration (and likely multi-generational) fight against radical Islamic terrorism, watching the Times Editorial Board spin in logical circles might be amusing.

So the Times remains ever vigilant to reveal those state secrets, which Bill Keller in his exalted wisdom as non-elected and self-appointed arbiter of all things trustworthy, deems worthy of public (and therefore Hirabah) scrutiny. (Thanks, John.)

Even that would be tolerable in an Open Society, were it not for the fact that, so far, the New York Times has never met a secret that wouldn’t benefit from full public disclosure. Because, you see, this most recent story looks to the Times “like part of an alarming pattern.”

Forgive us skeptics, Mr. Keller, if we think the continued disclosures of national security secrets by James Risen and his Times fellow conspirators look “like part of an alarming pattern.” Something closer to treason than public service.

Those lingering supporters of the Rosenbergs not dissuaded by revelations tied to VENONA, depict them as well-intentioned if misguided idealists, who felt the immense power of the atomic bomb needed to be shared among super powers, rather than the sole property of one.

The Times wants to make the case that the Bush Administration operates in the throes of hysteria, notably reminiscent of the Cold War:

Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

Forget being stuck on Vietnam, the Editors at the Times are still stuck on the Cold War. Thus all the Cold War rhetoric and allusions. Can it be that the Times retains the illusion that there was no real Cold War threat or justification for rooting out domestic spies, or aggressively countering Soviet hegemony abroad?

You think I exaggerate? How else to interpret the cryptic reference that concludes the Times latest argument for self-defense, emphasis mine:

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.

“Easy to err on the side of security and secrecy.” Easy? Not if the Editors at the Times have anything to say about it, and you can bet they do.

One might have made another observation about the Cold War, and the necessity to maintain both security and secrecy. Not just the easiest thing to do, but the safest and wisest, as well.

(Cross-posted at Dadmanly, with links to other commentary.)

All done!