Trevor Timm points out how in recent remarks, Hillary Clinton trots out the same old lies and arguments about Snowden that have been thoroughly debunked. Here are the debunked statements she made that Timm rebuts point by point.
“If he were concerned and wanted to be part of the American debate, he could have been… I don’t understand why he couldn’t have been part of the debate at home.”
“When he emerged and when he absconded with all that material, I was puzzled, because we have all these protections for whistleblowers.”
“I have a hard time thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and liberty has taken refuge in Russia under Putin’s authority.”
“I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or unintentionally, because of the way it can be drained—gave all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups and the like.”
Either she is clueless or pretending to be so. Clinton is not a fool. I doubt that she could be that clueless as to believe what she is saying so these comments are likely meant to preserve her credentials as an establishment insider who can be counted on to mouth the conventional wisdom in the event that she runs for the presidency again.
Let’s just turn that around.
If the protections against whistle blowers are so strong, why did Snowden have to leave the country?
Please have a nice little chat with John Kiriakou and Chelsea Manning and Thomas Drake about what happens to US whistleblowers under Obama, Ms. Clinton.
Walk it back even further: Why is so much of this stuff hidden or classified in the first place? Until the whole over-classifying culture of secrecy gets kicked down several notches, don’t even pretend you would protect whistle blowers. Those two concepts are completely at odds.
Yes, exactly. Just like when she voted for the Iraq war. I’m pretty confident she understood that it was a big risk with little likelihood of achieving its goals, but she wanted to appear tough, so she basically used our soldiers and the Iraqi population as catspaws to help her get into the White House. Ugh!
If they weren’t doing anything wrong, why did they work so hard to hide it?
If you gave an order that Santiago wasn’t to be touched, and your orders are always followed, then why would Santiago be in danger?
The lesson that the Democratic party will learn if Hillary gets elected is how much further left your average self-declared democrat is from the current party. She’ll get elected, but she will recieve a ton of shit from the dem electorate on an issue by issue basis We’ll vote for Hillary because the alternative is disastous, however we actually get exited by the likes and existence of folks like Warren. People like her are where our hearts are. The election of Hillary is a necessary yet ugly bit of work that has to be done to keep the fascist right wing from blowing us all up…
Hillary is either being disingenuous or delusional. Neither of which is a good thing. Whistle-blower protections have become a joke in the last administrations.