A credible source would have to clarify which leak was more damaging which would make the leak even worse. I'm not sure a credible source is something possible in this scenario. I mean, do you think the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a liar?
apparently Snowden used an open source, widely available web crawler to zoom up all of the information. http://beta.slashdot.org/story/197931 If this is true, throwing money at the problem is just digging a bigger hole. you're basically giving the same people who wasted billions of dollars even more billions. it's a level of incompetence I find stunning---which brings up a good point on the whole metadata debate---why exactly do we trust these people with so much data?
Do you think he would not lie if he thought it helped his idea of national security? We just saw the National Intelligence Chief lie to Congress about surveillance of US citizen's phone calls and emails.
The chairman's incentive is to quote the high-end, worst possible scenario. Probably the actual leak is something less than the worst case, and probably their ultimate response will be something less than the maximum. But, their budget is something like $600b, so "billions" isn't necessarily all that significant anyway. Even so, I feel like we have some sufferers of cognitive dissonance here. Snowden is a hero of democracy, right, so how could he have leaked sensitive military documents that could get soldiers killed? The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must be lying! He's trying to wring more money out of Congress to aggrandize his empire (though he just finished defending a budget proposal for the smallest military since World War II).
No he wouldn't, he is a better soldier than Colin Powell. And unlike the Director of National Intelligence, he doesn't lie for a living.
Not trying to pick a fight here or anything.... ...but what's made Colin Powell less of a soldier than Chuck Hagel, in your opinion? That whole Iraqi invasion he helped his administration sell to the U.N., maybe?
Hello, Bandwagoner. Sorry about that. Some of us gotta work. I certainly don't begrudge your seeming disgust with General Powell's term as Secretary of State under George W. Bush (wrong about. And like I said...I wasn't looking to pick (another) fight about this. Far too many of them for my liking already. I think General Chuck Hagel is the right man for the job of Secretary of Defense at the right time. I also think that he has the confidence and support of the guy who put him in charge...the President. That would be my point in relation to Powell's turn as Secretary of State. I was an enlisted soldier a while back, so I know the mindset that the military tends to promote. I had an irritating tendency to question a lot of things. And while good soldiers ask questions, they still have jobs to do and orders to follow. Just the way the military (has to) work. One company sergeant thought pretty highly of me, I remember. He said he thought I was too smart to stay a grunt in the trenches. I could only do so much there. The best way to help any soldier is to be a good soldier, he told me. That invariably meant following orders, even ones you didn’t particularly agree with or understand. And the only way you fix things that might be wrong is by becoming the person who gives the orders. Which is why he told me, point-blank and with a loving candor you have to be in the service to appreciate, to either get promoted or get out. Best advice I ever got. Colin Powell has a decorated and distinguished service record, no less so than Chuck Hagel. They both served in the Vietnam war. They are both soldiers of the highest order and moral fiber, I believe. I'm sure that both would tell you in no uncertain terms that the thing soldiers do is follow orders. Thus, it becomes the responsibility of the men in command to honor that directive, and not take the lives of men who willing adhere to that creed for granted. It certainly seems, the more that we discover, or the more that is revealed, about the buildup to and subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq, that there were more than a few people in the administration who had their doubts as to the veracity of the case the Bush White House was trying to publicly make against Saddam Hussein, particularly. The best lies, I’ve heard, often are wrapped in some semblance of truth. It’s the best way to get anybody particularly skeptical to at least consider the “lie” as a possibility. For the Bush Administration at the time, Colin Powell was the “truth” that their “lie” needed to pass muster. Powell’s international reputation was impeccable, and the world community valued his voice and perspective like it did no one else’s at the time. If Colin Powell said it, the sentiment was, nobody would be inclined to question it. He’d provide the moral cover the administration needed to go into Iraq for whatever ulterior purpose they held. I understand your apparent feeling that Powell is just as responsible for the mess the Iraq incursion turned into as anybody else. And I agree with you. If, as it seems in hindsight, that Powell had any reservations about any of the “facts” given to him by Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department, he should have been more resolute in his disbelief. So if the outside perception is that he, at the very least, did not behave to the level that the office (and more importantly, the moment) required, especially in light of the consequences of “…following orders…”, I can’t argue. I like and respect Colin Powell. I suspect I always will. Just a personal thing with me. And even in this, while he was empirically wrong in his presentation of the “facts” surrounding the Iraqi invasion, I guess a part of me still wants to believe that he acted as any good soldier would have. Like I said, not looking for a fight . Choices tend to have consequences. Nobody’s immune to that. Even General Powell would agree with that.
I'd enjoy seeing Snowden moved to an American prison. He could have stayed in the United States, exposed much of what he knew without compromising so much of our national security, and without fleeing to Chinese controlled Hong Kong, and then to Putin's Russia for the on-going "big reveal." He's a traitor. He could have been a hero, but didn't have the balls to face justice in the United States courts. I have no respect for the guy. None at all. He's aiding powers that are not friends of ours, and not friends of our allies. He's aiding a country busy invading a sovereign nation's territory right now. The love he gets from some quarters is something I find absurd. Snowden DID NOT have to do things this way. It was the act of a coward. In my humble opinion.
http://www.texastribune.org/ If it hasn't already been posted, it's streaming live now. Just started a few min ago.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/zuck-on-snowden/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/10/snowden-the-nsa-is-setting-fire-to-the-future-of-the-internet/ very well-put. Once again, security agencies are thinking short, when they should be thinking long.
Snowden made an excellent point that it really isn't even the agencies making the decisions or the policy recommendations anymore. It's all been outsourced to third party companies who really have no interest in preserving any kind of Constitutional integrity in the programs.
Deckard, the Cold War is over. We won. Besides the Commies were in many ways not as much of a threat to us as we were told. For a liberal guy you are still obsessed with it.
Until that Coward comes to the US, Don't want to hear from him. Courage will come back a face your accusers. If you are justified, then you will be set free.
China and Russia are still countries that don't have our best interests at heart even if we won and they lost. If we can't always trust our country to act in our best interests, why should we expect other countries to do better? They wouldn't hesitate to use any possible information they gather in a way detrimental to the U.S. So, just because the Cold War is over doesn't mean that Russia loves U.S. Citizens and has our best interests in mind. You are certainly entitled to believe that Snowden should not be imprisoned within the U.S., but keep in mind that others weigh the damage calculation differently than you do and it isn't because they have some remnant cold war mindset.
