Give Edward Snowden the Same Deal General Petraeus Got for Leaking Info

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165. I gave you the wrong Ellsberg quote, but you're off-base and need some perspective

you:

"Anyone who says Snowden is a whistle blower does not present creditability."

I don't care who you think you were talking to, you're spouting cheap pablum in your attempt to discredit Snowden as a whistleblower. Your posts in this thread are pedantic and betray a complete disregard for the issues behind the revelations.

Take some time to read what a person who most people recognize as a whistleblower has to say about Snowden...

Daniel Ellsberg:

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:

“I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that America’s intelligence gathering capability – which is today beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital era – “at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left.”

That has now happened. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former “democratic republic” of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.

...with Edward Snowden having put his life on the line to get this information out, quite possibly inspiring others with similar knowledge, conscience and patriotism to show comparable civil courage – in the public, in Congress, in the executive branch itself –

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....there’s no question in my mind that he is a whistle-blower in the best, complete sense. And he left the country and he did it for good reason.

In my case, as I said, there was a different country 40 years ago, where I was able to speak for so long. The things that were done against me, which included trying to “incapacitate me totally” at the orders of the White House, in other words, assault me or kill me, those were illegal then. And in fact they faced President Nixon with impeachment proceedings and led to his resignation. That’s very different. All the things that were done to me then including CIA profile on me, a burglary of my former psychiatrist’s office in order to get information to blackmail me with, all of those things were illegal, as one might think that they ought to be. They’re legal now, since 9/11, with the Patriot Act, which on that very basis alone should be repealed. In other words, this is a case right now with Snowden that shows very dramatically the dangers of that Patriot Act used as it is. So the fact is that all these things are legal. And even the one of possibly eliminating him.

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I definitely have a new hero in Edward Snowden, the first one since Bradley Manning, and I’m glad it didn’t take another 40 years. People who respect or admire what I did, they may not realize it right now, but before this is over, they’ll recognize that he deserves great admiration. And people who hate what I did, can hate.

...babbling on this thread like a government mouthpiece makes you look foolish alongside men like Daniel Ellsberg. You've lost all credibility here, despite insisting that Snowden has none.