Signals.Cpl

The government wants to punish him for releasing secret information, it is irrelevant what the information was but what is relevant is that he released it. If he is not prosecuted for his crimes then the security clearance system means nothing. We go after the criminals because thats how the system works, cant let you go just because you might have done something worthy in the process.

He is getting so much attention because he himself and wikileaks made sure to get the attention, he started it and the media picked up the story and ran with it thats why he is getting so much attention. That is pretty self evident because if he could the whole security clearance would be nothing but a waste of time. I suspect it laid out all that he would face if he did release information to a third party without proper authorization. I agree, it should not take away from anything he exposed but he is taking away from the bigger problem by his theatrics. Again, the guy's theatrics are forcing attention away from the issue at hand... I agree that the NSA should be held accountable but as long as the people are focused on the guy it likely wont happen. If he thought that this was worth destroying his life over then by all means he should go and release it but then he should face the music, instead he is trying this whole international man of mystery thing which is distracting from the very thing he might have wanted to draw attention to. And in a democracy the government can be changed by the people, yes it sounds naive but looking at some other places and types of government throughout the world I can tell you that it is true. the fact is he signed a contract and then broke it, in fact I have seen articles that suggest he intended to leak the documents before he got the job, he was seeking out the intelligence with the intention of releasing it. Says who? Did he try to do that? Did he pass his issues up the CoC? If all that failed did he bring it to the attention of the proper elected government officials? Those in the committees who oversee the organization? If and thats a big if, he went through the proper chain of events to get his issues across and othign happened he might be more justified at leaking the intelligence and only that relevant to the issue, he would still be guilty of breaking the law but he should by all accounts be treated differently, punished for breaking the law but take into consideration that he tried everything else and nothing worked.

At what point would you tell the people in concentration camps in Europe during world war two that it's just too expensive to save them? Or at what point do you tell the Rwanda's getting massacred that their lives are not worth our money? Would it be better to have 800,000 dead innocent Rwandan men, women and children or spend a ton of money and 5,000 dead soldiers? We all know the price the Belgian's were willing to pay, 10 dead paratroopers and they left with their tail between their legs, they left the mess they created, hell we know what price the rest of the world was willing to pay... nothing...

It's easy to draw a line when all is fine but many if not the vast majority of parents around the world would do literally anything for their children which means any answer you might receive next to useless...

And where is the difference though? The Us said we will go in and do x,y and z... they have so far completed the task and are pulling out. To the fair I would say that to many of the 15,000,000 Afghan women it would be considered a success...

Irrelevant if top secret or not, it could be secret or just protected it still is breaking the law because when he received his clearance he would have been informed of the consequences should he release any of the information to a third party without authorization, I am pretty sure it involves some lengthy prison sentence. The fact that the US government may or may not be doing something wrong does not mean he can break the law with impunity... there are plenty of avenues he could have followed if he felt the need where he would not have committed crimes and still would have gotten his message across.

Maybe so but its still a crime and he still has to face the consequences, for all we know he released part of the intelligence he stole and sold the rest. Would this apply then? If I find something that I just need to tell people about and use it as a cover to make some cash what then?

Not always, but when you do break the law you should stand by your decision. He knew the consequences of his actions. Is that relevant? When given a security clearance you are also informed about the consequences of giving up information willingly or not, you choose to ignore those once you are breaking the law wether you are giving up vital state secrets or just informing the public what the secret sauce in the rations is and you shall suffer the consequences. Would you say Delisle did not commit a crime as long as the information he sent the Russians was not truly beneficial to them? No, the authorities are pissed off because he committed a crime, ignore him and then every narcissist with a security clearance can get his face out there and make some cash in the process.

It does if there is little evidence of it happening... Do you want a cookie for that? Do you see any such men in Iraq? Whats the difference? The people who were predicting doom were disappointed and now they switch to predict doom in Afghanistan. Iraq had and still has three main ethic/religious groups which were not big fans of each other which kind of makes it hard to have a unified and loyal police and military yet they are still hanging on. Ultimately it does not depend on Karzai or a general or the US, it depends on the Afghans themselves, if they want to live in terror then they can fall back to their old ways and there is nothing anyone could do to change that but if they decide they want to live in a peaceful and prosperous nation then they will fight for that if they choose to discard the tools and resources the US has given to them then by all means it is their choice and no head of state can change that one way or another.

Which is less then all the women would go back to being nothing but trash... all women would be denied education... all women can be beaten and/or killed at the whim of their husbands. Afghanistan is far from perfect, but the vast majority of women have it much better now than their best day under the Taliban. Unlike you I have not found a satire news source to put a link up... but all that aside, what exactly do you want me to put a link up for? That thousands of women are not stoned in stadiums anymore for real or perceived "crimes"? That girls are allowed to get an education? That girls and women are allowed to go outside without needing a man to escort them or needing a note from their father/husband/brother? You tell me what you want, I'll post sources. I am sure that there is a source to prove that for a women living in hell is preferable to living under the Taliban. It will be a generation or two before Afghan women get some semblance of real equality but for the moment there is no comparison between what they endured pre 2001 and what they have to endure now, what opportunities existed for women pre 2001 and now... I mean for god sake they criminalized rape... rape was legal under the Taliban and up until a couple of years ago so Id say that was and is progress... but I guess you would disagree because it doesn't fit your agenda... And I have no time for someone who bases their opinion on satirical newspapers but hey its not a perfect world...

I dont think that there is anything the US or anyone else can do to turn either Afghanistan or Iraq in to model democracies, I personally believe it will be at leas a generation before things start looking like a stable democracy. For now there is nothing the US can do to satisfy those "critics" if the US stays they demand a withdrawal because staying equals defeat, but withdraw and you are admitting defeat even though that was the plan from the get go it only took a little longer than expected.

No, its not because you are an irrelevant little person with no power over events in Afghanistan, just like me. The difference is you are hoping for a disaster so you can stroke your ego and tell everyone you "predicted" the collapse whereas I look at the situation as is rather than what I hope it is. If you are going to use it make sure you get the right name...if you cant get it right don't bother at all. Only he did it while Canadian soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan and all he wanted to do was put them in a position where more of them will die for no result. I have no problem with people who are against the war on principle, I have a problem with people who have zero idea what they are talking about and actively searching for ways to get more of my friends killed in order to stroke their ego and the ego of their supporters. I was at one of his speeches a few years back when I was in university, he was the guy who wanted to send Canadians to Afghanistan as peacekeepers... showed me the light, there were those who were realistic and intelligent on one side and then there were those who were in fantasy land with zero knowledge about reality. Besides I think there is a slight difference between the US or Canada telling Afghansitan to Negotiate with the Taliban and the Afghan government deciding on its own. I know there is, you are hoping that it happens, but the realty is that Afghanistan is holding firm. There was a difference between knowing and hoping when it came to Iraq as well, yet here we are a couple of years after the fact and Iraq still holds together...

No there is something wrong with it, he signed a nice little document that stated in one form or another that he will not divulge any secret/top-secret information he broke the law so its wrong... I doubt any nation is surprised that the US is spying on them mainly because they themselves are doing the exact same thing in their own nations plus on US soil as well.

No, I am the realistic guy that expects you to hold every other government and nation to the same standard as the US, cant say the big bad Americans are doing it ooooohhh they are pure evil but the nice EU nations are doing it yet they are so pure. China does the whole spying thing on a scale that the US can only dream starting from traditional espionage, to military espionage all the way down the line to industrial espionage. I dont know what you mean about "spy on their government", do you mean go through the PM's trash? Search history? As a citizen of a democracy you should inform yourself of the facts and its not spying, to be fair there are certain things that should be and are off limits to the average joe. Go right ahead, I wont stop you.

Forget domestic law, what exactly did the US breach when it comes to international law? Espionage has existed in one form or another since the first nations were formed, it has been part of our daily existence for last hundred years, Israel spies on the US and when caught the spy get punished relations return to normal soon thereafter and the same would happen if it were any EU member. The Naval officer who was spying for Russia, where do you think the intelligence he was selling came from? Santa?

What are they going to do? Kick them out? My source? The Israelis that keep on getting caught spying on the US...

Its cute that you think that all those problems will be solved at once... the situation is not rosy yet its magnitudes better than it was during the summer of 2001 or at anytime in the few decades before... I have no problem with criticism, I know the mission in Afghanistan had a lot of problems yet I don't sit and pray that everything disintegrates just so I can put my nose up and give a big I told you so... You are not interested in improving anything, you are interested in Afghanistan failing so you can point to the US and call them the bad guy, I mean after all the prediction for Iraq did not come true Afghanistan HAS to be the one, right? You are absolutely right, its not like females get to go to school right? Or get a chance to have a career right? Or exponentially more protection from abuse than under the Taliban? No I said there were significantly less, the Taliban made a culture of treating women as animals, Afghanistan at any point after the fall of the Taliban is significantly better, and it gets better with every day. It gets better with every female ISAF officer or NCM who shows that women can command men, it gets better every time a school opens its doors to educating girls, it gets better every time there is a new female doctor, police officer or soldier. Afghanistan will not be well off for another Generation or two, what the US and ISAF gave them is the chance to build a better future for themselves by being able to protect themselves in the present. You are right, it is sad, praying for failure just so you can be "right".

But you are, nothing has happened yet you are calling it. The reality is that we wont know one way or another for some time but for the moment the ANA and ANP remain standing and capable of fighting therefore its success for the moment this might change in a month, year or a decade but at the moment it is a success. That remains to be seen, I would venture to say that they have right along with the other ISAF nations build a lot that will remain but then again that remains to be seen. And maybe that will change at some point in the future, the reality is that many nations throughout the world change their government yet they endure. Thats what they said about Iraq, they said it will end up a three way civil war once the US goes yet here we are with Iraq still more or less intact. It's about 12 years too late for that position, it would have been helpful in 2001 but now we have a problem that has to be solved and I think it has been to a degree.

About the American spying, which was not really a surprise, cant fault the Americans for doing something that every other nations is doing and doing that on their soil. He may have released that the US was spying on the British, French, Germans, South Koreans etc... but that does not mean he released the intelligence gathered from that effort, and as I said I don't fault the US for spying on other nation's embassies on US soil since those embassies are likely spying on each other or the US in one form or another.

Afghanistan was a country before the Soviets invaded as well, besides Iraq was one breath away from collapse for most of the last decade and they still are as they have three main groups within the country. Each group had or some still have their own militia's, some segments of the Iraqi military were used for sectarian violence as death squads. The situation was not much different than Afghanistan and in some ways it was much worse yet the Iraqi military is still holding firm in their country even though the three major ethnic/religious groups within its borders are not big fans of each other. You are hoping for a defeat it is as simple as that, reality is we will not know for sure until the US pulls out and if the ANA and ANP hold firm and keep the country together it was successful, otherwise it would be failure but we would not know until it happens. For the moment it is success because the US is giving more and more freedom to the Afghanistan Government and they are still surviving.

No it would not be interesting, we found out with our little spy that just because no one says it out loud does not mean it is not happening. Also just to point out, just because he had a security clearance does not mean he had access to the intel gathered if any on those embassies which means that either the US has to leak the intelligence or the nations in question have to and the answer to that is a resounding on both.

You think that those nations will admit to spying on the US or on third party nations while on US soil? Or do you think the US will decide to spill the beans on who is spying on who?

How do Snowden's actions tell us about the intelligence gathering activities of those embassies in question?

And you think those embassies are not in anyway conducting intelligence gathering operations wether they are aimed at the US or a third party on US soil?

Greater than man as in "god"? Once religion gets involved in government things get more violent rather than less so.