Cole writes: "Charging leakers with espionage is outrageous, but it is par for the course with the Obama administration."
Juan Cole; public intellectual, prominent blogger, essayist and professor of history. (photo: Informed Comment)
So When Will Dick Cheney Be Charged With Espionage?
23 June 13
he US government charged Edward Snowden with theft of government property and espionage on Friday.
Snowden hasn’t to our knowledge committed treason in any ordinary sense of the term. He hasn’t handed over government secrets to a foreign government.
His leaks are being considered a form of domestic spying. He is the 7th leaker to be so charged by the Obama administration. All previous presidents together only used the charge 3 times.
Charging leakers with espionage is outrageous, but it is par for the course with the Obama administration.
The same theory under which Edward Snowden is guilty of espionage could easily be applied to former vice president Dick Cheney.
Cheney led an effort in 2003 to discredit former acting ambassador in Iraq, Joseph Wilson IV, who had written an op ed for the New York Times detailing his own mission to discover if Iraq was getting uranium from Niger. (The answer? No.)
Cheney appears to have been very upset with Wilson, and tohave wished to punish him by having staffers contact journalists and inform them that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was secretly a CIA operative. While Cheney wasn’t the one whose phone call revealed this information, he set in train the events whereby it became well known. (Because Cheney’s staff had Plame’s information sitting around in plain sight, Armitage discovered it and then was responsible for the leak, but he only scooped Libby and Rove, who had been trying to get someone in the press to run with the Plame story.
What Cheney did in ordering his aides Scooter Libby and Karl Rove to release the information about Plame’s identity was no different from Snowden’s decision to contact the press.
And yet, Cheney mysteriously has not been charged with Espionage. Hmmm….
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Comments
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Especially, if you planned to become a president who would subvert the constitution at will; become prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner; war on the innocent while coddling the guilty; and generally act like a 15th century monarch.
In that case you wouldn't want to set a precedent for prosecuting the high and mighty.
Obama's Constitutional Law professor, Laurence Tribe, must be wondering where it all went wrong.
WHAT!
He has spent the last 5 years blaming Bush for everything!
Beyond that, Richard Armitage leaked Plame to Novak!
Time to grow up here!
Yes, I said CRIMES -- by the US government AGAIN...or shall I say...STILL!
We, the people, are not the criminals when we reveal truths that are crimes in the government that represents us. WE, the people, ARE meant to BE the government in the face of the lack of transparency in our government about illegal, trumped up, dangerous activities. It is our DUTY to reveal criminal activity within our elected bodies, particularly through the press, which serves as a legitimate check-and-balan ce arm of the US governance.
For the US to charge Mr. Snowden with Espionage and call it "for the safety of the people" is "The Big Lie" that the Obama administration continues to spew on the heels of the most criminal administration in the history of our country: The Bush/Cheney Gang!
Have you no shame, Mr. Obama? Where is your spine????!!! Are your pockets full of cash more important than your integrity???
N.
http://osintdaily.blogspot.com/2012/08/karl-rove-made-all-americans-fair-game.html
"See No Evil -- Take No Action." Think Nancy "Off The Table" Pelosi; Harry Tremble-Chin Reid; soaring over all, Obama -- whose angelic oration screens the monumental sell-out. Add a legion of apologists, who still believe the tale of 19 terrorists with box-cutters, and we've got tragedy.
These people DO get hopping mad -- but only at us who speak out, when we get the real picture. Yeah, be sweet, be still, and die like a wimp.
Does ANYONE still believe that? Really? I think mainly they don't know WHAT happened, but they know now that they have been lied to about it. They may not be speaking out about it, yet, but surely everyone knows now.
Indoctrinating citizens with claims of freedom, as America creates and supports dictatorships worldwide that crush human rights, supports the Apartheid tyranny of Israel, and now -
turns its sick hypocrisy upon its own citizens with the unPatriot Act, the NDAA accords, the police state fraud of the 'drug war', the new fraud to justify police state, the 'war on terror'.
Obama has continued every crime, every destruction of our constitution and bill of rights that Bush-Cheney gang started.
Opps, but the USA has been doing this criminality way before Bush-Cheney -
Eisenhower, Nixon, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton,Bush sr. - all of them bloodied the world for corporate profit and tyranny as they pulled your strings to die for them in the jungles of Vietnam, and the sand traps of Iraq, Afghanistan.
Dance your happy dance of ignorance this July 4 - or dance your happy dance of awakening and taking back our Constitution and Bill of Rights this July 4.
YES, walking softly and carrying a big stick. That's no threat. It's the true American way.
So where's the backup for THAT declamation?
You can't get away with such statements on RSN without reference and credible reference at that -this ain't "Fix" news or the owner media, y'know!
Okay...how is THIS treason? Treason is defined by Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) as "...[a]...citiz en's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]."
There is no evidence that Mr. Snowden's intent was to overthrow the US by divulging the US's criminal activity to China or any other nation. He merely outed the US's ongoing corruption and spying practices, regardless of who they are spying on.
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush were the real traitors as they lied to us, got us into a fake war, killed millions, took US soldiers into the quagmire mercilessly, killed the US and World economy, killed the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights FAR beyond their predecessors, and on and on and on...AND...Mr. Obama has taken it to new heights by breaking ALL records and charging citizens for informing their own citizens of what's going on a whopping 7 times!
You figure it out, bingers.
N.
But the true criminals and terrorists are strutting about free and prospering.
It's getting more like Franco's Spain or Suharto's Indonesia all the time.
As for the Çheney-ghoul, my contempt-o-mete r is way past it's highest reading for Mr "Seven Deferments" as he had "other priorities".
"The evil that men lives on after them, the good often interred with their bones"! But in this case he is rotten to the marrow that I hope he is cremated so the earth is spared the pollution of his carcass.
I often wonder if Obama was taken aside before he took office and was told by the real rulers "Remember JFK, RFK, MLK? So this is how it really works bubbua-bo'--"!
Or if he had a tenth of Snowden's integrity and patriotic bravery, he could have made that conversation and ALL its perps' names public, or even had THEM indicted, ending it forever.
Instead he chose to perpetrate it himself.
(Don't you wonder if that's what Bilderberg really is?)
There's also Snowden's courageous and patriotic choice.
Candidate Obama could have gotten them indicted and punished for those historic crimes and saved the nation from its long time disgrace.
One has to wonder whether he hears from them now on every issue.
Hypothetically,
is our line of Presidential succession (and survival) nothing but a line of craven cowardly puppets and slavish, enthralled victims? When the TRULY brave whistleblower on the perps of that perennial threat finally emerges, nothing but vigilante justice -fighting guerilla tacticts with guerilla tactics- will be available to stop it forever.i hope we are ready.
Well, I personally never expected much different; I always saw him as a right-centrist who has now slid further right rather than stand and fight.
Be honest, NO true progressive is EVER going to be considered electable by those who run things here.
And there hasn't been a left in the US since the 30's.
I'm not shocked, just disappointed.
Of course I meant "The evil thatr men DO---"! Damn my dippy digits again!
How about 'High Crimes against Humanity', and 'Mass Murder', tried in The Hague.
There, a chance for Justice!
With Bush, and Obama, similarly charged!
It seems that Obama (who promised us change we could believe in)cut a deal with these guys after winning the election. It appears that he prefers to enhance his military-muscle image going after the Mannings and Snowdens who had the courage to reveal serious wrongs and with targeted drone killings.
I fear that my support of Obama and the Democrats may have been misplaced.
Maybe so, but if he were a woman, he could change his mind...
Come on, Barry, are you still in touch with your feminine side at all? Were you ever? I think you can still do the right thing.
Do we want "endless war" or do we want to "end war forever"?
Truth, justice and the American way - what a crock of.... There is no justice for those who commit the real crimes of our era, no jail time for those committed to destroying or planet through climate change, no charges for the major players that brought down our economic system - they are the ones who still run free to cause more looting for their own selfish and greedy benefit. Justice? Are you kidding me?
What Cheney did was much worse than what Snowden did. We will get past Snowden without being damaged too much.
If you knew that the CIA gets much of its information by recruiting and relying on informants in hostile nations or organizations. Valerie Plame had build up a network of informants in the MIdeast by operating a pretend import business. She went to places such as Iran on the pretext of buying Persian rugs for her business, but she really went to get information on Iran's nuclear ambitions.
When Cheney outed Plame, he also outed her network, leaving us in he dark about the very programs many on he right want to go to war over.
He also gave the United States a black mark we don't need. After Cheney's betrayal we lessened the chance we can recruit more informants in the troubled parts of the world. It may have come down to the attack on the US post in Benghazi, which the right whines about constantly. The CIA had no informants in the attacking group, and that may be because of Cheney.
Level heads will come to realize that Snowden's betrayal was minor; Cheney's was monumental.
Now is the time, while Cheney is alive to build a movement to punish the most serious criminal who's ever held a high office. His corruption and crimes have to be dealt with if we ever stand a hope in hell of ever becoming a normal, respectable society.
Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld etc,then he himself would be liable for similar prosecution, since before he became president he knew he would continue to carry out their despicable and illegal policies.
He conned us...he is smarter than all of us.
His constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, must be wondering where it all went wrong.
All of this is about the privileges of a ruling elite. The banks too are part of this ruling elite. They have total impunity. Obama is the servant of the ruling elites. So was Bill Clinton. The Bush family is part of the ruling elites.
All of the US regime exists to protect the privileges of the global ruling elites.
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