His addiction to dirty tricks, coupled with his constant, unprecedented abuse of a war as a partisan battering ram, make a magnifying glass superfluous in identifying Karl Rove's fingerprints on the finance tracking "outrage" du jour. The inability to recognize his handiwork is akin to blindly accepting Rush Limbaugh's latest explanation as to why he has once again been caught carrying drugs that he's not supposed to be carrying. At the risk of repeating myself: Rove is on campaign mode, and it's a particularly vicious one this season.
As some of you might remember (as our President does not) the organization that attacked us on 9/11 was al Qaeda, and it's commander in chief, was, and still is, Osama bin Laden. He is part of a family that does four to five billion dollars in business annually. In Egypt alone, they have 40,000 employees. They have been awarded the contract to rebuild downtown Beirut. They have interests in banks, in The Carlyle Group, as well as in high-tech Boston companies. Osama's eldest son is a graduate of Harvard Law, a part of Harvard University, to which the bin Laden family has given over two million dollars. This is not some unsophisticated guy.
He knows that when Bush announced on September 24, 2001 that we are "working with our allies around the world to tackle the financial underpinnings of terrorism. We are working through the G-8 and the United Nations," that meant SWIFT. His family surely does several transactions via SWIFT everyday. SWIFT is one of the most frequently used, if not the most frequently used, means of transferring money in the world. It operates in 200 countries, and works with 7,800 financial institutions. Eleven million transfers a day. (The United Nations only operates in 191 countries) The language of International Finance changes slowly, but in my experience, phrases like "International Wire Transfer" or "T.T" (Telegraphic Transfer) usually mean SWIFT.
In November of 2002, the U.S. Navy Post-Graduate School's magazine discussed the "Treasury Department's new Foreign Asset Tracking Center" and the "Paris based Financial Action Task Force [which] is helping coordinate the tracking of terrorist funds through the global banking system." To anyone experienced in international transfers - this means SWIFT. It is not possible to talk of the "global banking system" without talking of SWIFT. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden is very experienced at international finance, and he knows SWIFT.
No "secrets" were leaked. There were no "details" exposed by the Times. When Bush said that "great harm" was done to the "United States of America," he lied.
It's not like they haven't lied like this before. A little over six months ago the outrage was over the NSA spying revelations. Did they hire a special prosecutor? Has anyone read any indictments of the leakers? Anyone heard of any grand jury hearings? Have you seen a shred of evidence, of any kind, as to how that revelation harmed our security?
They're lying. Again.
Part II will be posted tomorrow.
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