Posted on 07/01/2013 8:30:29 AM PDT by USS Johnston
Former President George W. Bush has weighed in on the Edward Snowden saga, telling CNN the former National Security Agency contractor threatened the security of U.S. citizens by leaking information about the surveillance program his administration created after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
"I know he damaged the country," Bush said in an interview from Zambia, where he and his wife, Laura, are on a humanitarian mission. "The Obama administration will deal with it. I think he damaged the security of the country."
Like President Barack Obama, Bush deflected criticism of the spy program.
"I put the program in place to protect the country, and one of the certainties is civil liberties were guaranteed," Bush said in the interview...
Bush also refused to criticize his successor. "It doesn't do any good," he said. "It's a hard job. He has plenty on his agenda and it's difficult. [A] former president doesn't need to make it harder."
The White House said Obama will meet Bush on Tuesday in Tanzania...
He added: "You know, ultimately history will judge the decisions that I made. And I won't be around because it's going to take a while for the objective historians to show up. So I'm pretty comfortable with it. I did what I did."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Me too.
Yes some argue that it's the Law. Well, they can pass a law to shove us in Ovens TOO
but that doesn't make baking us Legal and Constitutional.
“And people are basically studiously ignoring that it’s now apparent that most of what Snowden took deals with NSA spying on foreigners. To acknowledge that would destroy their hero-worship.”
Snowden is a totally separate issue from the disclosure that the NSA is colonoscopically collecting what EVERY American does.
To turn your argument around on you - to make it more appropriate - People are using Snowden to divert attention from the real issue that NSA is building files on every American as if they were criminals and only pretending that there are safeguards in place to make sure - To quote GWB: “one of the certainties is civil liberties were guaranteed”
I think this has already been proven a lie. The DNI already is a proven liar.
So who do you believe? A government bureaucracy that has been caught pathologically and voyeuristic-ally staring into every Americans private life and is in fear of it’s continued funding, or do we believe what they’ve been forced to admit under duress.
If the NSA had stopped at collecting intel on foreigners and Americans for whom they have a warrant to spy on, they wouldn’t be in this mess, would they?
Snowden will eventually face justice. Fine with me. But that doesn’t mean the NSA should not be forced to open their files so every American can examine the dossier gathered on them. I’m thinking that would be a cathartic experience for freedom loving Americans, from which the NSA would not survive intact.
I don’t believe GWB or the NSA on this matter.
Bush destroyed the republican party and gave us Obama. Now Bush is criticizing a whistleblower but nary a peep about IRS, AP, Bengazi, F&F, Waco, Ruby Ridge,
His silence is revealing.
He’s a globalist just like his daddy and his brother.
Like what articles, the hit and run smear jobs at establishment hack sites like townhall? I swear this is turning into Stockholm syndrome writ large. With everything since the boston bombing to AP bugging and now Snowden the amount of big government worship is a bit disappointing.
Again, we are talking about metadata - i.e. not the contents.
The issue is that the NSA is using metadata (name of sender, address of package, date package is sent) to establish cause for obtaining a warrant in order to look at the contents.
Their act of providing this information without a warrant violates those contracts and agreements.
Read the fine print.
That guys a doofus extraordinaire.
Not a white hat hacker..a dunce hat hacker.
metadata my ass
They have the contents of everything if they want it. They have the balance of your bank account and where you’re spending your money.
And they are sharing it.
I did read the fine print. I have never given the US Govt or any of their lackies permission to access my computer systems.
Now we see how tyranny is accomplished. People like you welcome it in with open arms.
I can say this with certainty: The real damage done to our Republic by Obama is orders of magnitude greater than any damage Snowden could do — even if Snowden released ALL the data.
BINGO!!!
If anyone has been paying attention and listened intently, one would know they definitely have. It is us.
Bush destroyed the republican party and gave us Obama.
They’re all New World Order traitors.
Sorry, W. The program to monitor all Americans should never have been put in place. Under your leadership, I do nt believe it was abused. But the fact is, that it was there and could be abused.
There is NO conceivable probable cause...IOW, there is no eveidence that individual Americans are about to committ a crime, therefore gathering any of their personal effects or communications is unconstitutional. Period. Without that probable cause, the Constitution says you cannot do it.
Snowden did hurt that program. The program to collect data on all Americans as some kind of huge fishing net to help in anti-terror. The sad fact is, such a program can and will be used also to intimidate, coerse, and balckmail people for political purposes, and for curruption, as we have seen under Obama.
Snowden did his patriotic duty...and he will pay heavily for it. ut what he did did not hurt the country. it kept it from being hurt more by this program.
None of this stops our various agencies from gathering that same type of information form individuals or groups that we do have probable cause on. Go do that. Defend the country with it.
But never let it be used to make criminals of us all. That’s just a “bridge,” and a “switch,” and a “router,” too far that crosses a constitutional boundary and does harm to the whole system.
SNOWDEN, PRISM, AND THE NSA
http://www.jeffhead.com/prism.htm
Interview with three high level Whistle Blowers on PRISM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5QV2hXY4xo
Again, for the millionth time, it is not what you know - it it what you can prove. And Snowden handed them the proof they could not otherwise obtain convincingly or legitimately.
You truly have absolutely no love of Liberty. You have clearly shown yourself to worship at the Alter of State Power. You are too blind and arrogant to even entertain the thought that your wonderful Federal Leviathan.
Making grandioise personal attacks is so much easier than actually having to do the heavy labor of thinking and making an argument, isn't it?
In other words, personal animosities and tastes, rather than analysis, are driving your view of the case.
Ignore which party they are with. Take a look at the positions held by the people doing the attacking. Note that they are almost all holding leadership positions in both parties. The only reason that I can see for that level of toadying is that the NSA has embraced their inner j edgar hoover and used this surveillance to blackmail those people. Why else wouldn't their little sock puppet of theirs who admitted he LIED to congress get away with it so easily?
I've said it before many times before anyone ever heard os Snowden...no one in DC is allowed to reach any position of power unless they have been thoroughly compromised and blackmailed.
I guaran-DAMN-tee you that if Snowden were exposing Bush-era behavior, (that is, if BUSH were in office), the FOCUS would not be on Snowden’s misdeeds, but on Bush’s alleged misdeeds.And he's too dense to know that.
That's something that Snowden's stolen documents do not corroborate - whether or not the NSA uses the tools at its disposal to violate "the contents."
I did read the fine print. I have never given the US Govt or any of their lackies permission to access my computer systems.
But you have given your information to these service providers. Once you give it to them, it is their information as well.
Now we see how tyranny is accomplished. People like you welcome it in with open arms.
When the personal attacks start coming thick and fast, I know that my interlocutors are running out of arguments.
Not arguing with someone who celebrates tyranny.
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