Earlier Al mentioned the latest ignoble entry in the NYT’s Traitors ‘R’ Us sweepstakes, and I just wanted to note some other folks’ two cents’ worth, in addition. Stephen Spruill puts it nicely:

According to the NYT’s own reporting, the program is legal. The program is helping us catch terrorists. The administration has briefed the appropriate members of Congress. The program has built-in safeguards to prevent abuse. And yet, with nothing more than a vague appeal to the “public interest” (which apparently is not outweighed in this case by the public’s interest in apprehending terrorists), the NYT disregards all that and publishes intimate, classified details about the program. Keller and his team really do believe they are above the law.

The arrogance is surely stunning, but there’s more to it than just arrogance. Captain Ed says:

Excuse me, but no one voted to put Bill Keller in charge of our national security, and the laws covering classification of materials does not have an option for journalists to invalidate their clearance level. The continuing arrogance of Keller and his two reporters has damaged our national security, and in this case on a ridiculously laughable story that tells us absolutely nothing we didn’t already know in concept. They keep pretending to offer news to their readers, but instead all they do is blow our national-security programs for profit.

The administration has told us on many occasions that one of the main fronts in the war on terror would be the financial systems. We have seen plenty of coverage on how the US has pressured various banking systems into revealing their records in order for us to freeze terrorist assets. If anyone wondered whether our efforts had any effect, all they needed to read was the stories of Hamas officials having to smuggle cash in valises in order to get spot funding for the Palestinian Authority. Their neighboring Arab nations pledged upwards of $150 million in direct aid, which banks would not transfer lest the US discover the transactions and lock them out of the global banking system.

Did no one read that and understand that the US has an extensive surveillance system on financial transactions around the world? Perhaps Keller, Lichtblau, and Risen need facts spelled out for them using crayon and words of two syllables and less, but the thinking world already understood that American intelligence had thoroughly penetrated global finance — exactly like we said we would do in the wake of 9/11.

This story is only good for one thing, and that is an attempt to blow the program and stop our ability to follow the money. The New York Times apparently wants to stage itself as a publication written by traitors for an audience of idiots.

Well, of course. But who among us didn’t already know that?

Okay, all smart-assery aside, these people aren’t just antiwar; they’re objectively, actively on the other side, as Reynolds has long maintained — although it isn’t quite so simple as just agreeing with the aims of the Islamists and seeking to help them achieve final victory over Western civilization. Even the most virulent antiwar liberals, even as they commit acts that indeniably boost enemy morale and render them aid, wouldn’t — couldn’t — admit that, to themselves or anyone else. Rather, the attitude is more along the lines of being willing to countenance the prospect of a US defeat in order to thwart a larger enemy — and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes. Speaking of Glenn, he observes:

What’s interesting to me is that when you talk about military force, we’re supposed to use law-enforcement and intelligence methods instead. But if you use law-enforcement and intelligence methods, people shout “Big Brother” and the Times runs stories exposing them.

And let’s not forget the complete lack of similar outrage when Clinton did many of the same things Bush has done, either. And see, this right here is where several different trails meet.

Yesterday, in the comments to my post on the latest discovery of more WMDs in Iraq, Al and Mikey both mentioned the fact that nobody on the Left is going to care in the slightest. They were right, and of course I knew it when I wrote the post. I said before we ever went into Iraq that for Lefties, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference if Saddam personally drove a truck full of sarin right into their living rooms, spat in their faces, raped their wives, and shot their dogs; they were never going to approve of any war conceived of and run by the Bushies. And as inflexible and closed-minded as progressivists tend to be, no discovery in Iraq of any kind will ever cause them to reconsider.

For the antiwarriors, any and all gambits in opposition to the war are appropriate and just, and for the exact same reason that the NYT feels it has a right to provide direct aid and comfort to our enemies by revealing classified information harmful to the war effort: because the main enemy for the Left is and always has been Bush, and the main focus of their efforts is crippling and destroying the Bush presidency.

“Putting party before country” isn’t just something guys like me have been saying all along for the hell of it, you know.

Update! Jeff has a slightly different idea, albeit one that doesn’t necessarily conflict with mine: they’re all monomaniacal brats!

Scandal-mongering is all that’s left to folks like the Huffington crowd, who (ironically) have even taken to banning their own whistleblowers, even as they celebrate those who leak classified information on legal programs meant to protect us from real threats (Hambali, the mastermind of the Bali bombings, was nabbed using this program, for instance).

And all because they are petulant children who desire power above all else—and will do anything they can to regain it. If that means creating a constant atmosphere of scandal and hoping to pin it to the President, well, then that’s what they’ll do.

National security? Feh.

Sounds about right to me, disgusting though it is.

Updated update! Patterico is pissed.

I’ll say only this: it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the people at the New York Times are not just biased media folks whose antics can be laughed off. They are actually dangerous.

And of course he says plenty more than “only” that. Just keep scrolling.

Update to the updated update! Think I’m maybe exaggerating with that “Bush is the main enemy” stuff, or just hyperbolizing to demonize our political opponents? Well, think again:

In the same week that two Democratic resolutions forced the Bush and the GOP into the defensive by focusing attention on their incompetent management of the Iraq war, can we at least not be skeptical that this (the Florida sting operation and yesterday’s related arrests – ed) isn’t an attempt by the Bush Administration to to change the focus away from Iraq?

Don’t get me wrong, those kids – use your common sense – could’ve hurt somebody and needed attention, BUT they didn’t need the damn FBI.

The real danger is the Bush Administration and Alberto Gonzales.

Boldface his, although what makes the author think such an utterly vacuous statement worthy of emphasis I’m sure I don’t know. And he even gets in a bleeding-heart plea for “understanding.” For Islamofascist terrorists.

Ladies and gents, I give you the modern American Left, in all its putrid ignominy.