Mr. Kerry: Why Snowden can’t “Make his Case” in “Our System of Justice”

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/snowden-system-justice.html

Mr. Kerry: Why Snowden can’t “Make his Case” in “Our System of Justice”
By Juan Cole | May. 30, 2014

Secretary of State John Kerry said that Edward Snowden should “return home and come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case.” Kerry seems to have a high opinion of the Department of Justice and the US courts when it comes to national security issues. I can’t imagine for the life of me why. Kerry is either amazingly ignorant or being disingenuous when he suggests that Snowden would be allowed to “make his case” if he returned to the US. No one outside the penal justice system would ever see him again, the moment he set foot here, assuming he was not given a prior deal. He could maybe try to explain himself to the prison guards, assuming they didn’t stick him in solitary. Here are some reasons Mr. Snowden would be unwise to trust himself to that system, given the charges against him:

1. The United Nations Special Rapporteur found that the US was guilty of cruel and inhuman treatment of Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who was responsible for the Wikileaks and revelations of US killing of unarmed journalists in Iraq. Manning was kept in solitary confinement and isolated 23 hours a day for months on end, was kept naked and chained to a bed, and was subjected to sleep deprivation techniques, all three well known forms of torture, on the trumped up pretext that he was suicidal (his psychiatrist disagreed).

2. The Espionage Act under which Snowden would likely be tried is a fascist law from the time when President Woodrow Wilson (like Obama a scholar of the constitution) was trying to take the US into the war, and was used to repeal the First Amendment right of Americans to protest this action. It was used to arbitrarily imprison thousands and is full of unconstitutional provisions. In recent decades the act was used against whistleblowers only three times, but Barack Obama loves it to death. It is an embarrassment that it is still on the books and it reflects extremely badly on Obama and on Eric Holder that they have revived it as a tool against whistleblowing (which is most often a public service).

3. John Kiriakou, who revealed CIA torture under Bush-Cheney, was prevented by the Espionage Act from addressing the jury to explain the intentions behind his actions and therefore forced into a plea bargain. None of the CIA officers who perpetrated the torture or their superiors, who ordered it, have been punished, but Kiriakou is in prison and his family is in danger of losing the house because of the lack of income. The US public deserved to know about the torture rather than having Obama bury it the way he has buried so many other things wrong with the system.

[bowens43]

1. this adminstartion and those prior have shown us

that we do not have a 'system of justice'.

[n2doc]

2. I'm sure the usual gang will have no problem with any of these

Snowden 'deserves' whatever the Government decides to do to him, right? The President is a Good Man and deserves our support!

[marmar]

3. k/r

[bahrbearian]

4. Jail all the whistle blowers,,, starting with Paul Revere.

[Fuddnik]

6. Paul Revere and George Washington were criminals.

They violated the laws. They should have asked King George very nicely to withdraw. But, Noooooo, they had to go and start a war.

Fucking commies and traitors.

[Fuddnik]

5. The only chance Snowden would have in our system of justice.

Is if he hired Kerry to be his defense attorney, and he bored the jury to sleep, and they couldn't hear any testimony.

I still curse the day I went to work for that asshole.

[Divernan]

7. He'd be disappeared before he ever saw the light of a courtroom, let alone a jury.

[zeemike]

8. Kerry knows that...they all know it.

But they just don't give a shit, because that system of justice will never apply to them...And money trumps justice just like it trumps peace.

[bemildred]

9. The spooks want to get their hands on him to shut him up. nt