POAC VI

Next in the queu from the "Counterspin" tomfoolery at People for an Old American Century (get it? Yuk-yuk-yuk) is this bit of silliness:

The talking point
The New York Times disclosed vital secrets in the War on Terror™ by publishing an article on the gov't secretly monitoring financial transactions without a warrant.
(POAC)

"[V]ital secrets," eh?
I tried googling that term in connection with the New York Times, since it was the main paper criticized with respect to the monetary transaction leak.
I was a bit surprised to find a likely hit on the second page of results--only it turned out to be a liberal blog.
Ordinarily I don't interrupt the sludgy flow of thought, but as a reader of conservative blogs (as well as the liberal bloghopping I enjoy), the claim just didn't look familiar. The blogs I frequent didn't use that kind of language. More on that later.

The facts
Not only has the administration been bragging about their funds transfer tracking system, they've been publicly giving our far more details than the NYT

Two things real quick.
1) This response fits the form of the "tu quoque" ("You, too!") fallacy. The fallacy consists of evading responsibility for an action because somebody else engaged in the same action. However ...
2) The link leads to an article that discussed a completely different program--a domestic program rather than an international program.

The main complaint against the New York Times (and the LA Times) has been that they are publishing classified information, however, not that the specific information relating to foreign financial transactions was "vital" in any strong sense. That information was "vital" in that the publication in a major daily may well lead to casualties as some terrorists might escape capture because of greater caution.

It's fair to criticize the government's disclosures on the same basis--but the government made the judgment that some information about government response to terrorism should be published--and they certainly put some thought into how much to divulge.
In this case, the government made a determination that certain information was to remain secret in order to catch more terrorists and the New York times arrogated to itself the responsibility for divulging the government's secret once it had been illegally leaked (against the express advice of the government.

That's a big difference, and it is completely ignored in the POAC version of "the facts."

This is an amazing streak. How long can POAC keep it up?