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Is Snowden a traitor?

Read article ... Do you agree he is a traitor or disagree?

  • Total voters
    81
solletica said:
Snowden never exposed anything that hurt the People. His actions only were detrimental to the govt., which is good.
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That's interesting. In today's political climate you won't see too many people openly cheering for the Taliban. How very "libertarian" of you.

However, you are incorrect for the simple reason that you continue to see the federal government as some kind of monolithic entity at war with the U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan aren't American citizens, they are the enemy, and cheers to Snowden if he gets them killed. Diplomats in Yemen aren't American citizens, they are the enemy and cheers to Snowden if he wrecks their efforts to utilize diplomacy to stave off conflict, or ruins our ability to head off threat streams against them.

Congradulations. Yours is the logic of the Westboro Baptist Church. May your particular intellectual movement enjoy the same wide condemnation that they do.
 
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Hard Truth said:
Shooting back at people on a battlefield is legitimate and legal per international law.
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Nope. They have rights, after all, and just because they are threatening others doesn't mean we can just go in nilly willy and either listen to what they are saying to determine if they actually are a threat, or shoot at them, or anything crazy like that.

:roll: seriously. The idea that we can't collect against North Korea is idiotic.

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.
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From what I understand, the available literature actually disputes that. Drones have had a great hand in (for example) sharply reducing the collateral damage you spoke of. The latest open source studies that I have seen suggested that collateral damage from drone strikes was about 1/5 of that of conventional military operations directed at similar targets. :) The mitigated combined effects radius of an AGM-114 is pretty tight.
 
cpwill said:
That's interesting. In today's political climate you won't see too many people openly cheering for the Taliban. How very "libertarian" of you.

However, you are incorrect for the simple reason that you continue to see the federal government as some kind of monolithic entity at war with the U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan aren't American citizens, they are the enemy, and cheers to Snowden if he gets them killed. Diplomats in Yemen aren't American citizens, they are the enemy and cheers to Snowden if he wrecks their efforts to utilize diplomacy to stave off conflict, or ruins our
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And again, the misuse of the "our" pronoun. :rolleyes: :yawn:

When are you going to learn to stop associating me and everyone else w/the actions/policies of the govt.?

Words have meanings, including possessive pronouns--use the correct ones.

cpwill said:
Congradulations. Yours is the logic of the Westboro Baptist Church.
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Nope, it's pure logic. To associate the People w/the govt. means that the govt. works for the people, which is false.

The US govt., like most other plutocratic regimes, works against the People's interests in favor of their private/corporate sponsors. Therefore the govt. is not the people, but rather its adversary.

The WBC is just a bunch of bigots, much like their populist GOP brethren running around screaming "Muslum" or "spic."
 
cpwill said:
Nope. They have rights, after all, and just because they are threatening others doesn't mean we can just go in nilly willy and either listen to what they are saying to determine if they actually are a threat, or shoot at them, or anything crazy like that.

:roll: seriously. The idea that we can't collect against North Korea is idiotic.



From what I understand, the available literature actually disputes that.
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TRANSLATION: "From what my government told me, it is false. And I trust my government even though it lied to me about WMDs in Iraq, about the scope of NSA spying, about terrorism in Libya, about health care, about. . ."
 
Wiggen said:
Who would you expect to give you the information? The Russians?:lamo Snowden?:lamo

The simple fact is that he fled to Russia with every military secret possessed by the NSA.
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The simple fact is there are Americans apparently naive enough to believe that the Russian govt. doesn't already know all those "secrets."
 
cpwill said:
That's interesting. In today's political climate you won't see too many people openly cheering for the Taliban. How very "libertarian" of you.
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Hyperbole. Why even bother?

cpwill said:
However, you are incorrect for the simple reason that you continue to see the federal government as some kind of monolithic entity at war with the U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan aren't American citizens, they are the enemy, and cheers to Snowden if he gets them killed.
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Strawman.

cpwill said:
Diplomats in Yemen aren't American citizens, they are the enemy and cheers to Snowden if he wrecks their efforts to utilize diplomacy to stave off conflict, or ruins our ability to head off threat streams against them.

Congradulations.
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lol yes..right. Diplomats who only desire peace- give me a break. Your conclusions in this thread indicate indoctrination.

cpwill said:
Yours is the logic of the Westboro Baptist Church. May your particular intellectual movement enjoy the same wide condemnation that they do.
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:failpail:
 
Truly sad that because some people feel disenfranchised, they think everyone else is. Perhaps some of you are entirely ignorant. That doesn't mean everyone is.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
Truly sad that because some people feel disenfranchised, they think everyone else is. Perhaps some of you are entirely ignorant. That doesn't mean everyone is.
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i think most people are "plugged into" the system. With the wool pulled over their eyes, they function at a level which prevents them from using logic. Patriotism is devoid of logic and is emotive. Therein lies the weakness and lack of logic.
 
Alyssa said:
i think most people are "plugged into" the system. With the wool pulled over their eyes, they function at a level which prevents them from using logic. Patriotism is devoid of logic and is emotive. Therein lies the weakness and lack of logic.
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I meant you guys. You feel disenfranchised, without a voice, only fed lies. So of course you hate and villainize the government It's just ignorant. The US government isn't good. It isn't bad. It's just a government, made up of regular Americans.
 
Of course he is. He knew that when he made his choice and frankly the little press conference with Putin scuttled the last of his excuses and a lot of his rationale for doing as he did.
 
Hard Truth said:
That is not evidence that he gave anything to Russia. If the Russians seized his data it would have tainted their big PR win from allowing him into the county.

He attempted to go to other places first, he did not go directly to Russia.
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I'm reaching the conclusion that, far from being naïve, you actually don't give a damn whether he supplied military secrets to the Russians. He's your hero, and that's all that matters.
 
Hard Truth said:
That is not evidence that he gave anything to Russia. If the Russians seized his data it would have tainted their big PR win from allowing him into the county.

He attempted to go to other places first, he did not go directly to Russia.
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You are correct. He first tried to go to China - and did. I expect he dropped some goodies off for them before he traveled on to Moscow.
 
Bodhisattva said:
If he doesn't care about America then how the hell is he a traitor? Stupid ****ing question...
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This just in - traitors don't give a damn about their country. That's why they're traitors.
 
solletica said:
The simple fact is there are Americans apparently naive enough to believe that the Russian govt. doesn't already know all those "secrets."
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How would the Russians know all of those secrets? What a silly comment.
 
Alyssa said:
Hyperbole. Why even bother?



Strawman.



lol yes..right. Diplomats who only desire peace- give me a break. Your conclusions in this thread indicate indoctrination.



:failpail:
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Well, there's some folks who have been indoctrinated here. Mainly with the 'U.S. is evil, and everybody who supports them is good' philosophy. I can only conclude that you are very young.
 
Dion said:
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 with our allies and he aided our enemies and became their propaganda queen and provided them our methods of technology. He betrayed his country.
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What they don't know won't hurt them, right? As long as we don't know we are being spied on its OK? You watch too much television news. He wasn't reckless at all.
 
X Factor said:
Yeah, that's why he had to run to Russia like a total bitch. If he was truly standing on principal he's come back and face his charges.
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Because our judicial system is so honest and fair. :roll: If the gov. willingly breaks constitutional law whats to stop them from silencing whistleblowers through the federal court? How can you blindly follow our idiotic leaders? Its hilarious. Dumb leading dumber.
 
joG said:
Oh, but there is reasonable suspicion. We know a crime has been committed and that anybody could have done so. We must reduce the number of potential perpetrators. The first steps are easy. It cannot have been someone who was on the other side of the world at the time. It cannot have been anyone, who was in jail at the time....

We know that there was a murder for instance. We believe it was committed within a time frame. All 2.000 mobiles within a range are possible perps and all outside are much less ie not totally excluded but less somewhat probable. Checking them out is albeit a very simple case of data mining. Though most of the thousand persons are certainly innocent the data should be checked. The same in a somewhat more complicated context is true for political bribes, drug trafficking, theft, insider trading ect, ect, ect. In all of these cases the data used to eliminate the innocent and narrow down the number of suspects is essentially the same. Only more of it and of greater difficulty to manage.

Should we mind the streets being video monitored and on tape? I don't think so. I lived in an area where everything that happened on the streets was recorded and worked in a sector, where no phone call was allowed that was not taped. This is simple self protection. The crime rate in the streets collapsed and you could always prove that you what you had said. That is great.

That is good, because the higher availability of data reduces the probability of false indictment. It makes it more probable that the right guy or gal will be captured and in shorter time.

It also gives the citizenry a much better way of controlling the people it must give power over itself in order to do the jobs of government. We would never have been able to get Nixon, if actions in the White House were not continuously taped.
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Reasonable suspicion applies to individuals and small groups, not to everyone who happened to be with a few miles of a crime.

I don't want to live in a nation that listens in on my phone calls and I don't think most residents of the USA want that. I would rather take some risk of crime and even terrorism than give up all privacy. Giving more power and access to our personal information to government officials will not make them more accountable.

Since you support data mining, please show that you are not hypocrite by posting your most recent phone bill.
 
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JRSaindo said:
Because our judicial system is so honest and fair. :roll: If the gov. willingly breaks constitutional law whats to stop them from silencing whistleblowers through the federal court? How can you blindly follow our idiotic leaders? Its hilarious. Dumb leading dumber.
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Manning spent years in solitary confinement before he was put on trial. USA citizens and others have been held in Guantanamo and killed without any legitimate due process.
 
JRSaindo said:
Because our judicial system is so honest and fair. :roll: If the gov. willingly breaks constitutional law whats to stop them from silencing whistleblowers through the federal court? How can you blindly follow our idiotic leaders? Its hilarious. Dumb leading dumber.
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It's funny how many constitutional scholars there are about this. They all seem to know more than federal judges. Weird.
 
Wiggen said:
This just in - traitors don't give a damn about their country. That's why they're traitors.
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You have to have loyalty to be a traitor. Benedict Arnold was one... we don't know if Snowden was though. Just being from a country doesn't buy loyalty.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
I meant you guys. You feel disenfranchised, without a voice, only fed lies. So of course you hate and villainize the government It's just ignorant. The US government isn't good. It isn't bad. It's just a government, made up of regular Americans.
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Those who support Big Government without question may not be disenfranchised, but they are being lied to. Behind every truth is a dollar sign. Patriotism is a state funded religion. If flag waving didn't release endorphins, no one would do it.

Wiggen said:
<blah, blah> I can only conclude that you are very young.
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ah yes-- the over used, and non creative "you must be young" response. I was born just before Iran-Contra, thanks very much. :roll:
 
Alyssa said:
Those who support Big Government without question may not be disenfranchised, but they are being lied to. Behind every truth is a dollar sign. Patriotism is a state funded religion. If flag waving didn't release endorphins, no one would do it.
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I don't think I know of anyone that supports "Big Goverment" without question. But I certainly feel like anti-government types feel very disenfranchised.
 
Alyssa said:
I won't deny that. I feel as if only special interests are being represented by this government.
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That's fine, but then can you understand how people in the government- specifically the intelligence community- kinda shake their head at all of this Snowden defense, because they see it from the inside...they have the knowledge, so they don't feel disenfranchised.
 
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