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36 out of 67 is not much of a most.
And we have no idea how many of them are coming from Putin-sympathizers.
We do know the Amash/Paul coalition is all over the internet .
Right On! While we're at it, I think we should force U.S. troops to hold a trial with a jury of native Afghani's and convict each individual Taliban before they shoot back during firefights. It's their right, after all.
Spying and large scale data mining is not only legitimate in the international areana. It would be irresponsible to neglect it.
People on the left don't support having a secret government that makes major foreign policy decisions without the consent of our legislators. People on the left support the Bill of Rights, including the right to be free from search and seizure without a warrant or probable cause. People on the left believe in respecting the basic human rights of everyone in the world, not just the residents of the USA. People on the left don't support war and violent covert action for the purpose of increasing the profits of mega-corporations. Informed people on the left are well aware of CointelPro and the Hoover-era's FBI spying on people and sabotaging groups because of their political views (which happened under both Democrats and Republicans). Informed people on the left are aware that J.E. Hoover amassed a huge amount of power and influence by blackmailing and threatening other officials. Informed people on the left are aware of the thousands of people murdered by death quads and military dictatorships as a direct result of the USA's covert actions. Informed people on the left know that many of our current problems of oppressive governments, war and terrorism are blowback from covert operations to kill and overthrow democratically elected leaders and governments.
I have seen no evidence that he gave any information to the Russia, China or any other government. I haven't heard of any information being released that will make it more likely that some "kid will get blown to bits by an IED." That was already happening before Manning or Snowden. Snowden did a lot of good by allowing the people of the USA, for the first time in a long time, to be informed and involved in the policy discussions regarding how much we are willing to sacrifice our freedom and privacy for safety.
Shooting back at people on a battlefield is legitimate and legal per international law. Assassinations away from the battlefield are not. I don't have a problem with a handful of assassinations under very limited circumstances such as a strong evidence of an imminent threat and impossibility of capture without excessive collateral damage. Drones have made assassinations too easy and they are being used excessively. The blowback will probably be greater than any advantage.
Joe Sixpack is We the People. I trust the people, when sufficiently informed, more than bureaucrats, a small handful of selected politicians*, generals, contractors and vendors to make major policy decisions about whether we are entitled to privacy, whether we should respect the autonomy or privacy of the people of other nations, whether we should engage in a cyber sabotage war with other nations, and whether we should be allowed to kill anyone, anywhere without due process.
*like Sen Feinstein who had no problem with spying on us until the spies turned on her own staff
It's obvious the secret information gathering is out-of-control.I haven't seen a single defense of Putin in any thread on this forum.
I also haven't seen any evidence that Snowden gave Putin or the Chinese any information that wasn't previously made public, just lots of speculation.
I think we should do away with drone attacks, and you and your like minded friends should volunteer to go into western Pakistan or Yemen and perform citizen's arrests on these terrorists and traitors.
Joe SixPack is we the people, but so are the bureaucrats, and those bureaucrats have more complete information and are able to actually work together to make rational decisions.
Can we assume that you would have no problem with China, or any other government, doing drone strikes in the USA against legal residents as long as that foreign government tells us that the people they plan to kill are terrorists? If not, what is the principal that makes it OK for us, but not for others?
True, but bureaucrats, a small handful of selected politicians*, generals, contractors and vendors that are making these policy decisions have their own interests that may not be compatible with the public interest. Many of them have a financial incentive to maintain endless war.
Those bureaucrats are selected by we the people. Joe SixPack is chosen by those bureaucrats to have access to classified information. Your premise is kinda full of holes.
Condemning Snowden requires holding these beliefs:
Allowing our government to obtain and use the ability to spy on virtually anyone, anywhere at anytime benefits us citizens.
We can trust the government to use their top secret programs only for our protection.
We can trust the government to harm other people only when there is a known threat to our safety and there is no viable alternative.
The interests of the politicians, bureaucrats, military personnel, contractors and vendors that control our intelligence and security apparatus are exactly the same as the public's interests.
The USA should have the ability to control the political decisions made by every other nation.
Condemning Snowden requires holding these beliefs:
Allowing our government to obtain and use the ability to spy on virtually anyone, anywhere at anytime benefits us citizens.
We can trust the government to use their top secret programs only for our protection.
We can trust the government to harm other people only when there is a known threat to our safety and there is no viable alternative.
The interests of the politicians, bureaucrats, military personnel, contractors and vendors that control our intelligence and security apparatus are exactly the same as the public's interests.
The USA should have the ability to control the political decisions made by every other nation.
Interesting that you don't trust the U.S. government to use top secret programs but you do trust the Russians with our top secret programs. Speaks volumes about you and your political philosophy.
True, but bureaucrats, a small handful of selected politicians*, generals, contractors and vendors that are making these policy decisions have their own interests that may not be compatible with the public interest. Many of them have a financial incentive to maintain endless war.
Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense's accounts.
Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon's main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy's books with the U.S. Treasury's - a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.
t the DFAS offices that handle accounting for the Army, Navy, Air Force and other defense agencies, fudging the accounts with false entries is standard operating procedure, Reuters has found. And plugging isn't confined to DFAS (pronounced DEE-fass). Former military service officials say record-keeping at the operational level throughout the services is rife with made-up numbers to cover lost or missing information.
A review of multiple reports from oversight agencies in recent years shows that the Pentagon also has systematically ignored warnings about its accounting practices. "These types of adjustments, made without supporting documentation … can mask much larger problems in the original accounting data," the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a December 2011 report.
Plugs also are symptomatic of one very large problem: the Pentagon's chronic failure to keep track of its money - how much it has, how much it pays out and how much is wasted or stolen.
We've already discussed that. Let me try one more time. Snowden fled to Russia with every single military secret known to the NSA. The guy who welcomed him with open arms is a former KGB officer named Vladamir Putin. The KGB, when not arresting, torturing, and imprisoning their own citizens, was the primary Soviet instrument for gathering intelligence about the United States. You are either the most naïve individual on the planet, or you simply don't care.
Again, your refusal to recognize this simple 2 + 2 = 4 equation speaks volumes about your political philosophy.
Why do you continue to pretend this is only about the metadata program? Even if that never existed or was excused, Snowden is a traitor for everything else he exposed.
I would also like to add that does not mean I give a full stamp of approval to the NSA and have issues ...yet I think Snowden is a traitor based on the evidence.
He damaged our relationships
It shouldn't target individuals or groups without reasonable suspicion.
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