NY TIMES Reveals Another US State Secret

Why would the New York Times divulge information that could prove harmful to the national security of the United States? Is it so consumed is it by hatred of anything outside their left wing agenda that the paper actually wants America to lose the war on terror. One case in point was an article the Times published on June 30, 2008, Amid U.S. Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan, which quoted from a "highly-classified Pentagon order" describing internal disputes at the Pentagon over plans to capture Osama Bin Laden and defeat al Qaeda.

In June 2006, both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times published a story based on a leak regarding the government's pressure on SWIFT — a Brussels-based clearinghouse that exchanges transactional information between international banks — to give up information on private bank transactions as part of U.S. global anti-terror efforts.The stories drew immediate fire from the White House and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y, then-chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who called the leak and subsequent publishing of the program's details treasonous.

Now they reveled another US state secret.

Yesterday the NYTimes told the world about the air war against high value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using drones. Those drones are being armed by Blackwarter, government contractors, more then that, they revealed  the secret location of the base from which these drones are launched:

Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard says:

The C.I.A. has for several years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan, but has secretly added a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, several current and former government and company officials said. The existence of the Predator base in Jalalabad has not previously been reported.

What possible value does this information have to readers of the New York Times that would justify the increased risk to the military personnel and contractors that man that base? Meanwhile, the Times does its best to indict the work of those contractors with little anecdotes about combat mishaps like this:


They said that Blackwater’s direct role in these operations had sometimes led to disputes with the C.I.A. Sometimes when a Predator misses a target, agency employees accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly, they said. In one instance last year recounted by the employees, a 500-pound bomb dropped off a Predator before it hit the target, leading to a frantic search for the unexploded bomb in the remote Afghan-Pakistani border region. It was eventually found about 100 yards from the original target.

A bomb fell 100 yards from its intended target and we are supposed to infer from this that contractors are not up to the job? Uniform personnel are also capable of dropping bombs far from their intended targets. There was the hydrogen bomb the Air Force accidentally dropped off the coast of Georgia 40 years ago. There was another lost off the coast of Spain around the same time. More recently we had the CIA targeting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade -- of course that might not have been an accident at all -- and the accidental transport of six nuclear missiles across the continental United States just two years ago. Missing your mark by 100 yards in a combat situation hardly seems like a major screw-up.

Why should the American people care who is arming these drones as long as this program remains the most effective element of the Obama administration's war on terror. If the Boy Scouts were doing the job we shouldn't have any concern but to make sure they'd all gotten their merit badges. Now our only concern should be making sure that the Jalalabad base so needlessly identified by the New York Times remains secure enough to continue the important work of the contractors, CIA, and uniformed personnel who are currently stationed there.

 Its incredible, despite years of losing money, the NY Times continues to sink into wretchedness.