LTTE & My reponse

Helping the terrorists

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, we all learned that the hijackers were in this country illegally. They held no real jobs, yet were able to draw upon a bottomless budget for their beachfront condominiums and strip club bar tabs with all the reckless unaccountability of a Dallas school district bureaucrat.

We all then recognized that identifying the al Qaeda money trail would lead to their paymasters. Financial transactions were the dots we would then be able to connect and hopefully prevent the future loss of innocent American lives.

Now I read where the big media barons took it upon themselves to disclose our Treasury Department's attempt to follow the money from overseas terrorism paymasters to domestic recipients. To no one's surprise, a few days later the blogosphere reported that al Qaeda operatives reacted as anyone would: They have changed their method of routing money. We helped them move their dots.

BRAD O'BRIEN

brad.obrien@us.army.mil

Response

Poor BRAD O'BRIEN is confused! I hope I can help him and others like him out. Brad tells us "The big media barons took it upon themselves to disclose our Treasury Department's attempt to follow the money from overseas terrorism paymasters to domestic recipients". Actually, on September 24, 2001 Bush told the world he created a “foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks". On September 26, 2001, Bush tells the terrorists, “We’re fighting them on a financial front... We will be relentless as we pursue their sources of financing.“ On October 10, 2001, Bush himself states NATO nations are “sharing intelligence, coordinating law enforcement and cracking down on the financing of terrorist organizations.”

Now these were just a few of the earliest, but by no means the only, public mentions of the SWIFT program, which was never a secret. Incidentally, the same story was published at the same time by the Wall Street Journal, but that is a Conservative paper, so that is perfectly acceptable, right Brad? You cannot have it both ways, is the President helping the terrorists? Is the WSJ guilty of treason, too? I think we need some clarification from all the good Bushistas out there!

Wonderful Way we support our troops.
It was recently revealed that over 200,000 American Veterans are homeless-50% from The Iraq War I and II and Viet Nam,the other 50% are unassigned.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-veterans05.html

What a shameful way to treat these brave men and women.Recently,the Bush Administration pushed a $4.3 billion cut in treatment of PTSD.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/2093/1/127
The Bush Administration has pushed a $350 million cut in Veterans Nursing home care. http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/19/dems.radio/
The Bush administration has changed the rules for Veterans of certain income levels-rendering many ineligible for any veterans benefits,and raising copays for all but the most destitute of veterans.
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/At_a_time_of_war_how_041303.htm
This is the Bush administration’s way of showing they “support the troops”?Is it any wonder that recruitment is down?How many die-hard Bush supporters would send their children to fight,knowing this is how the warrior is valued when he comes home?My son is now entangled in this octopus known as the VA.Thank God he has me to fall back on.How many soldiers don’t?Does this bother you?Then vote for candidates in November who favor funding for our Veterans-not the private contractors who are milking our budget dry.

http://thedailylight.com/articles/2006/07/10/dailylight/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/03_letters.txt

(they must have summer interns at my paper-the font is all screwed up)

The Professor

Yes, very good job! Two thumbs up!