What's Behind the Assault on The Times by the Far Right?

Buzzflash says it's at least in part anti-Semitism (like them, I've sadly heard The Times reviled for - as one bright man put it to me, "its Jewishness", as if religion should matter in news reporting; America seems to be devolving rather than e-volving today).

Money Laundering has even more to say about the issue. Note, too, the poll on the right-hand sidebar.

From Money Laundering:

News of the Bush administration’s clandestine bank surveillance program stunned many Americans, but Washington insiders say it didn’t surprise them or the terrorists the program tails.

President Bush described last week’s media reports exposing the U.S. Treasury Department’s terrorist finance tracking program – covert scrutiny of international financial transactions through a Belgium-based cooperative known by its acronym SWIFT – as “disgraceful” and Republican Senator Jim Bunning accused the reporters who wrote the stories of “treason.”

“The rhetoric on this is way out of proportion on both sides,” said Victor Comras, a former State Department official and U.S. diplomat appointed by the United Nations Security Council to assess global anti-terrorist financing efforts. “The people who finance terrorism and launder money recognized long ago that these transactions can be traced.”

Since the New York Times and other media didn’t tell the public anything the terrorists didn’t already know and since banks already monitor suspicious transactions for the U.S. government, many question the probe’s usefulness. “It’s not a cost-effective way to deal with terrorism issues,” Comras said.