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Benny Johnson, over at Buzzfeed, has been able to get a bunch of
intelligence community and military officials to comment anonymously, but
on the record:
1. “In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an
American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA
analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.”
2. “I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon
official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly. “I do not take
pleasure in taking another human beings life, having to do it in
uniform, but he is single handedly the greatest traitor in American
history.”
3. “His name is cursed every day over here,” a defense
contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas Intelligence
collections base. “Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried
and hung, forget the trial and just hang him.”
The best one of the bunch:
4. “I think if we had the chance, we would end it very
quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow,
coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is
casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time
starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local
water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in
the shower.”
.
If the system is so brittle one dude can bring it down it needs to be redesigned anyways.
Expressions of personal sentiments are one thing. I wouldn't be surprised that they personally hate him, after all Snowden hit them all deeply where they live... the making and trading of secrets.
If any of these individuals were actually CAUGHT doing this, they're liable for prosecution.
BTW, Buzzfeed, you can't be anomynous and on the record, they're mutually exclusive.
Then why hasn't President Obama been charged with murder? He has ordered the killing of American citizens.
Then why hasn't President Obama been charged with murder? He has ordered the killing of American citizens.Expressions of personal sentiments are one thing. I wouldn't be surprised that they personally hate him, after all Snowden hit them all deeply where they live... the making and trading of secrets.
If any of these individuals were actually CAUGHT doing this, they're liable for prosecution.
BTW, Buzzfeed, you can't be anomynous and on the record, they're mutually exclusive.
There are laws governing killing. Not all killings are murder. If you think that Obama has broken any laws, you're welcome to write a U.S. attorney and make your views known.
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There are laws governing killing. Not all killings are murder. If you think that Obama has broken any laws, you're welcome to write a U.S. attorney and make your views known.Then why hasn't President Obama been charged with murder? He has ordered the killing of American citizens.Expressions of personal sentiments are one thing. I wouldn't be surprised that they personally hate him, after all Snowden hit them all deeply where they live... the making and trading of secrets.
If any of these individuals were actually CAUGHT doing this, they're liable for prosecution.
BTW, Buzzfeed, you can't be anomynous and on the record, they're mutually exclusive.
You're hilarious. Or a government stooge. Maybe both. ;-)
I always preferred the Marxist Brothers' films over those of the Government Stooges.
I can't decide whether Biden or Feinstein is the new Shemp.
You're hilarious.There are laws governing killing. Not all killings are murder. If you think that Obama has broken any laws, you're welcome to write a U.S. attorney and make your views known.Then why hasn't President Obama been charged with murder? He has ordered the killing of American citizens.Expressions of personal sentiments are one thing. I wouldn't be surprised that they personally hate him, after all Snowden hit them all deeply where they live... the making and trading of secrets.
If any of these individuals were actually CAUGHT doing this, they're liable for prosecution.
BTW, Buzzfeed, you can't be anomynous and on the record, they're mutually exclusive.
And correct. Let's not pretend that government-sanctioned killing of its own citizens is new or even frowned upon in all instances.
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I always preferred the Marxist Brothers' films over those of the Government Stooges.
[Runs through thread, honking horn and engaging in behavior that would, today, result in sexual assault charges]
Since the previous exchange between myself, the delectable Madame Sissyl, and The Thing from Beyond the Edge (my apologies if I didn't get your name correct, Thing) disappeared down this past weekend's memory hole, I am relinking
Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?
which I still haven't read because my bookmark disappeared.
And correct. Let's not pretend that government-sanctioned killing of its own citizens is new or even frowned upon in all instances.You're hilarious.There are laws governing killing. Not all killings are murder. If you think that Obama has broken any laws, you're welcome to write a U.S. attorney and make your views known.Then why hasn't President Obama been charged with murder? He has ordered the killing of American citizens.Expressions of personal sentiments are one thing. I wouldn't be surprised that they personally hate him, after all Snowden hit them all deeply where they live... the making and trading of secrets.
If any of these individuals were actually CAUGHT doing this, they're liable for prosecution.
BTW, Buzzfeed, you can't be anomynous and on the record, they're mutually exclusive.
Legal government sanctioned killing involves a trial and conviction. President Obama gave the citizens he ordered killed neither.
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Due process tends to be thrown out whenever its deemed convenient by authorities.
Authorities always find due process inconvenient.
I saw that Obama was on Leno last night. I didn't watch the whole thing, but one response that was given by pres on Snowden: "I executive ordered protection for govt employees to report to their superiors something that they find unconstitutional." (paraphrased)
Thejeff, are you agreeing with me on this? I had thought we were opposed.
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I think he's saying that the paraphrased Obama speech is a bunch of high-sounding bullpuckey to obscure the fact that he's prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president.
But, that's just my take. I'm sure Comrade Jeff will be back in a moment.
When you're in a war which has no defined beginning or ending. A commannder (and Obama is Commander in Chief) can exact summary judgement for strategic reasons. The examples you cite were all Americans that were actively operating on foreign soil, as part of a hostile power at war with us. Due process tends to be thrown to the curb in those situations.Legal government sanctioned killing involves a trial and conviction. President Obama gave the citizens he ordered killed neither.And correct. Let's not pretend that government-sanctioned killing of its own citizens is new or even frowned upon in all instances.You're hilarious.There are laws governing killing. Not all killings are murder. If you think that Obama has broken any laws, you're welcome to write a U.S. attorney and make your views known.Then why hasn't President Obama been charged with murder? He has ordered the killing of American citizens.Expressions of personal sentiments are one thing. I wouldn't be surprised that they personally hate him, after all Snowden hit them all deeply where they live... the making and trading of secrets.
If any of these individuals were actually CAUGHT doing this, they're liable for prosecution.
BTW, Buzzfeed, you can't be anomynous and on the record, they're mutually exclusive.
And the death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16 year old that was not a target of of the strike that killed him, nor on President Obama's "kill list."
To this end, the President has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified. You and other Members of your Committee have on numerous occasions expressed a particular interest in the Administration's use of lethal force against U.S. citizens. In light of this fact, I am writing to disclose to you certain information about the number of U.S. citizens who have been killed by U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of areas of active hostilities. Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qa'ida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi. The United States is further aware of three other U.S. citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same time period: Samir Khan, 'Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Aulaqi, and Jude Kenan Mohammed. These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States.
You'll note that 3 of the 4 people that have been killed on the Presidents orders, were not targets.
Ah... Okay.
For the record, I don't hate Snowden, but I remain skeptical of his story and his motives. Overall, i think he could have gone about this in a way that did not make him look like he had secrets to sell to foreign governments.
Hey wait a minute... Are you calling me a flip flopper? Because I was against Snowden before I was for him! :)
Yeah, he could be sitting in a cell next to Chelsea.
"With each new document released by Snowden further exposing U.S. imperialism’s dark underbelly, Washington has suffered no shortage of embarrassment. So much so that some in the government, beginning with the head of the NSA task force assessing the impact of the leaks, have floated the possibility of granting Snowden amnesty in order to stanch the flow of revelations. Various bourgeois commentators, rankled by the trampling on their rights but not wanting the spymasters to lose more face, have picked up this theme. Thus a recent New York Times (1 January) editorial declared: 'It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home.' The government itself continues to treat Snowden as a traitor who deserves to feel the full wrath of bourgeois justice. As Marxist opponents of the capitalist-imperialist order, we say: Drop all charges against Edward Snowden!
"A debate within the government is also unfolding over how precisely to carry out damage control and package the snooping to make it more palatable to the public. Congress, which the NSA recently all but admitted is also subject to its surveillance, now has dueling comprehensive bills on the floor. One, dubbed the Freedom Act, is designed to restrict the NSA program that collects and stores records of virtually all telephone calls made in the country. The other would approve it in its current form. The same sides were drawn in competing federal court decisions last month. One judge concluded that the program is likely unconstitutional and 'almost Orwellian”' in scope. Eleven days later, another judge gave his enthusiastic stamp of approval, observing: 'This blunt tool only works because it collects everything.'”
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And I've never been able to see why, if he was really interested in selling secrets to foreign governments he didn't just disappear and do so, rather than make a target of himself by revealing so much.
That's the big issue, and what clears Snowden, as far as I'm concerned.
If Snowden wanted to sell secrets to a foreign government, he would have travelled there and done so. He did, after all, wait until he was in Hong Kong and out of US jurisdiction before breaking his news. It wouldn't have been difficult at all for him to fly to whatever country he wanted first.
Instead, he spent nearly a month in a transit lounge in Moscow. That can't have been part of his master plan.
Similarly, I'm sure that the foreign government(s) would have loved to have this intelligence trove secretly, for themselves, rather than having the US know just how much had been leaked. By releasing as much information as he did, he lowered the value of the information he had to sell.
Freehold DM suggested that there was a way "that did not make him look like he had secrets to sell to foreign governments." I disagree. If he had gone through channels, he and his secrets would have been buried. If he had leaked to the press from inside the US, he'd be sharing a cell with Manning right now,... and there's a good chance that the story would still have been buried. Assange is trapped in an embassy in London right now because neither Sweden nor the UK is willing to protect him from US prosecution.
I'm sorry that we don't agree here.
Hmmm...it seems we're deleting posts with no notice again.
Hmmm...it seems we're deleting posts with no notice again.It's the NSA!!!
Bastards.
Hate to defend the NSA, but there were problems of a technical nature over the weekend, Bugley, and a whole bunch of shiznit, on this thread and elsewhere, that were posted on Saturday (I think) disappeared.
Or, maybe I'm being naive and it was the NSA.
Legal government sanctioned killing involves a trial and conviction.
No, it doesn't. Try to think of some examples to the contrary.
We have not been active on this thread.
As for Snowden, we totes "don't" want him dead.
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I don't really believe that the comments from Buzzfeed can be taken indicative of the feelings or fantasies of the US Intelligence Community. There are plenty of people in every line of work that would vent/fantasize about killing/hurting/doing away with an annoying co-worker, especially if that co-worker had, as LazarX pointed out, made their job harder.
Or, maybe I'm being naive...Cause that NEVER happens. :)
I have many qualities (flaws?) but naivete isn't one that comes up much in conversation. :)
Nor do I see any legal or moral difference in the US killing American citizens vs foreigners in such (or any other situations). Yet somehow the focus in these discussions is always on "He's killing Americans", with the implication that the next step is sending a drone through your window. That's stupid.
I agree that there probably isn't going to be a drone strike coming through any American in America's soil in the near future, but this Jeremy Scahill quote from one of the other Kill List discussions seems apropos:
"So, I mean, I really think that Congress needs to step it up and ask how these Americans were killed. But I also think that, on both a moral level and, my understanding, also on a legal level, it really is irrelevant whether they’re Americans or not Americans. Why I think it’s important to focus on these cases is because how a society will treat its own citizens is a good indicator of how it’s going to treat noncitizens around the world. And if the basic standards of due process are not being afforded to American citizens, then they certainly are not going to be afforded to non-American citizens. So I see this as a very high-stakes issue that we’re facing right now, and we have a Congress that largely is failing to ask the right questions."
Not to mention the US isn't going to call the shots for much longer. That has gone the way of the dodo with all this spending on frivolous warring and securitheatre. When the next crow forces its way to the top of the s!@%heap, American actions now will not likely be forgotten.
Not to mention the US isn't going to call the shots for much longer. That has gone the way of the dodo with all this spending on frivolous warring and securitheatre. When the next crow forces its way to the top of the s~#&heap, American actions now will not likely be forgotten.
No empire stays on top forever. Its kind of silly to think theres any option that has us holding onto this level of dominance forever.
Not to mention the US isn't going to call the shots for much longer. That has gone the way of the dodo with all this spending on frivolous warring and securitheatre. When the next crow forces its way to the top of the s~*%heap, American actions now will not likely be forgotten.
Don't make the all-too-common mistake of forecasting America's imminent fall from hegemony. We may one day slip from the top of the heap for another country to take our place, but that day is quite a ways off. The idea that America's position relative to the rest of the world is so fragile that a few years of especially high military spending can disrupt it is a fiction.
That is your judgement. I don't find it convincing. Certainly, high military spending doesn't necessarily equate to lowered influence, but without a functioning economy to back that up - no. And it's not just me saying this, is it? Keep comforting yourself, Scott. What will happen will happen.
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The US's position as hegemon of the "free world" has been on the decline since they scrapped the Bretton Woods agreement.
It has thus far retained its position by a) ratcheting up the rate of exploitation of the working class, domestic and foreign and; b) brute military force.
Some (far left) commentators have pointed out that Putin's out-manuvering of Obama around Syria and America's traditional allies refusal to go along with the proposed missile strikes there ("Socialist" France being the lone exception) are going to be looked back upon in retrospect as the day America slipped from the number one spot, but I think that may be too optimisitc.
Defeat US Imperialism Through Workers Revolution!
Vive le Galt!
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That is your judgement. I don't find it convincing. Certainly, high military spending doesn't necessarily equate to lowered influence, but without a functioning economy to back that up - no. And it's not just me saying this, is it? Keep comforting yourself, Scott. What will happen will happen.
The economy is functioning. It is not as strong as it has ever been, but nor is it the weakest it's been (and is, thankfully, now improving). More importantly, the United States is the hegemon. If it falls into decline so rapidly that we can go from the current situation to falling behind another country in the near future, what country is poised to take our place? There would have to be a country that is both an economic superpower, and whose economic strength is not inextricably reliant upon our own economic strength.
No such country exists.
It's the ultimate irony of the international political economy: if the United States falls so far that another powerful country could take its place, there will be no other powerful country to take its place precisely because the United States has fallen that far, and taken the global economy with it.
Armchair doomsayers have literally been assuring us for decades that the ridiculous levels of military spending are going to result in the United States' collapse in a few years. Those few years keep passing with little fanfare, of course, but we tend to forgive poor or deceitful predictive powers pretty easily.
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The economy is functioning. It is not as strong as it has ever been, but nor is it the weakest it's been (and is, thankfully, now improving). More importantly, the United States is the hegemon. If it falls into decline so rapidly that we can go from the current situation to falling behind another country in the near future, what country is poised to take our place? There would have to be a country that is both an economic superpower, and whose economic strength is not inextricably reliant upon our own economic strength.No such country exists.
This assumes that a hegemon can only be replaced by another hegemon. The 5th century Ostragoths might disagree.
Have no idea what motivated me to post that.
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The economy is functioning. It is not as strong as it has ever been, but nor is it the weakest it's been (and is, thankfully, now improving). More importantly, the United States is the hegemon. If it falls into decline so rapidly that we can go from the current situation to falling behind another country in the near future, what country is poised to take our place? There would have to be a country that is both an economic superpower, and whose economic strength is not inextricably reliant upon our own economic strength.No such country exists.
This assumes that a hegemon can only be replaced by another hegemon.
No, it doesn't. Sissyl claimed that we'd see another "crow force its way to the top of the s%!*heap," which merely requires that another power supersede the United States as the strongest nation-state. There is no country that is in a position to fill that role. It would first require finding a country that is powerful. A number of those exist. It would then require finding such a country that wouldn't be devastated by the fall of the United States. No such country exists.
There may come a day when the United States ceases to be the dominant world power, but that day is probably far off. It is very unlikely that we will see the United States lose its role on the international stage in our lifetimes, or even our children's lifetimes.
Also, it's hard to take seriously the sort of person who uses any of the Roman empires as an analogue for the United States on the international stage. That's the sort of inane comparison I expect to be discarded after a high school civics course. You want to use history as a predictor? Here's one that's actually applicable: of the hundreds (if not thousands) of attention-hungry political analysts who have forecasted the imminent downfall of the United States over the last fifty years, not one of them has been correct.
But I'm sure Sissyl is the exception to that rule.