9/11, Boston Marathon, Ft. Hood, Underwear Bomber, Times Square Bomber... etc. The bottom line is that there are enemies out there and they are hidden and we need to find them before they kill people. Collecting or having access to information is not the issue, the real issue is that people think the information will be used for purposes other than stopping criminals.
ok 5, now add up the US's terror attacks around the world I think the world has more to fear from the US
And you really believe that even though Bradley Manning showed you the video of the helicopter pilot playing Xbox with a real gun on real people including Reuters reporters. But lets play it your way and weigh up terror attacks V illegal wars, hmmm.....
Sorry, I'm gonna bow out on this conversation again. Not going down that road. If you can't tell the difference between a rogue soldier who would be punished for his actions and a terrorist who would be praised and idolized, then I'm afraid we have no common ground to start from. Good luck though!
[MENTION=44992]JJ_Maxx[/MENTION], When I have the time, I'll compile a juicy list of US acts of terrorism, which will certainly include the numerous times that US soldiers has killed non-combatant civilians, the use of drones to bomb funerals, their unconstitutional infringements on civil rights through laws that are passed after having used mass media to instill fear and terror in their citizens, the unjustified invasion on Iraq, the Vietnam war, the war on drugs, police brutality against minorities, the "war relocation camps" that kept thousands of innocent Japanese-American civilians imprisoned during WWII and Guantanamo Bay. You must be seriously close-minded if you cannot understand why such a significant portion of the world's civilians view Americans as terrorists, military bullies and superpower tyrants. The world's dominating and unchallenged military superpower is spying on everyone and is leading an endless war against anyone they claim is a terrorist, and they have defied and will certainly again defy international opinion and law in order to pursue their military goals through war; and you think the world has more to fear from a handful of groups of rogue extremist fundamentalists?
Interestingly, with respect to Snowden, you have the U.S. public now being aware of things about their own government that they didn't know before, and that most don't appear to approve of. You have politicians, including one of the Patriot Act authors, being aware of things not known to them before and which many of them also don't approve of. And you have pretty good odds that things are actually going to change as a result of people finding out about this and the fact that they don't approve of it. Given all of the things, above, it seems odd to nevertheless want to prosecute the guy.
Where I come from, we have a certain politician who, when he was in power some 10 years ago, claimed for almost every single thing that happened during his mandate that "he was not informed of that"... It became sort of a joke, of course, especially when he started not to be informed of documents he himself signed, speaches he himself held and the toilet paper he himself used... So, frankly, I don't buy the idea of American public not being aware of something 'till every single freakin' tv station, news portal and personal blog writes about it, in unison voice, and uncritically... Especially when it comes to basic idea of war - if anyone thinks that sending a contingent of armed men or mercenaries somewhere is not going to end with civilian casualties, he or she is, frankly, either an incredibly optimistic person, or a complete moron. And if someone, knowing this, goes cool with the rhetorics about civilian casulaties being "legal", "necessary" or, cynically, "collateral", he or she is simply an apologist. Going all berserk when seeing photage of war attrocities, and in the same time being an apologist is, simply put, hypocritical... But then, I'm simply "inventing hot water" here - public opinion is hypocritical by definiton.
