Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden
Here's one of those White House petitions to pardon Ed Snowden, the guy who revealed details about the National Security Agency's domestic spying program. I signed it. They need 13,737 more signatures to reach their goal of 100,000.
Not sure how to explain why I'd sign that petition while I wouldn't sign a similar one for Bradley Manning, the guy who dumped all the secret files to Wikileaks. I suppose it's because Manning's action seemed more to me like thoughtless vandalism as opposed to Snowden's release of information Americans should have been made aware of.
Not sure if Manning's information was all that damaging to the country. I'm pretty sure Snowden's wasn't, with the exception of making some in government look bad. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't believe Snowden damaged U.S. intelligence gathering capability. It was no surprise to me that domestic phone records were being collected. I'm sure it wasn't a surprise to any terrorists, either.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:33 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I agree, but ask you do reconsider why you don't see Manning in the same way. Manning deserves your and our support as well. He leaked dramatic and compelling evidence of US war crimes - knowing complicity w Iraq torture squads, massacres of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He did it for America - to insure we the people know what is being done in our name.
And he's been treated brutally ever since.
It is sadly typical that we are more outraged about our own loss of privacy than about our military helping kill and torture civilians.
Yes, s--- happens in war, but watch the wikileaks video where our helicopter pilots choose to kill civilians, then shoot up more civilians coming to help the first round.
What Manning did was dump a whole bunch of secret info he was entrusted with. If it was just a few videos exposing our actions overseas, I might be more sympathetic, but he went way beyond that. He dumped a LOT of stuff, most of which had nothing to do with exposing anything important. That seemed to me more like just a rash act of senseless vandalism- trying to cause trouble- than whistle blowing.
I do feel he was mistreated, though, and have wrote that here before. It was outrageous they held him so long without trial and that is something I feel the president should be held accountable for as he could have resolved that at any time.
Manning is just lucky they didn't disappear him with the ndaa I think they should both get medals
"Henchman Of Justice" says,
Both should get pardons as both were heroic in exposing corruption that uses the are of language to wordsmith sentences into legal statements of law that reference articles and statutes and codes and such as far as the eye can see so that it takes a person a lifetime to achieve one simple task of a public records request act request for information that is whole and not "in part" or "delayed endlessly".
Fred - so you think it is wrong for any individual entrusted with information on the notion that the information is "accurate and trusted", but that when in reality that information is "corrupted", it is wrong for any individual to "whistleblow"? It is one thing to know all that happened to be informed to make such a judgement call, one way or the other decision-wise; yet, that is just it, what is important in your mind-frame may not be important to another, and vice versa.
A transparent government is a transparent government - anything less is secretive. HOJ don't like secretive people or processes or power structures.
Our country is no less safe because of these two guys, but imo, we are safer because we are more aware.
Ya know what HOJ learned as a child - keep your enemies in close range for they will reside closer to you than you think, and that goes for sabotage by american government officials, structures and processes.
HOJ
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