NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Monday criticized President Barack Obama for empty promises in a wide-ranging online interview, saying that the president’s alleged failings influenced his decision to release the secret information on government surveillance.
“Obama’s campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge,” Snowden said in a response to a question from a commenter on The Guardian’s website.
Snowden was responding to this question: “Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?”
All Obama's fault. Got it? Patriot Act, NSA warrantless wiretapping, STELLARWIND, all of the stuff under Bush? It didn't matter until Obama was President, see. All this bad stuff started on January 20, 2009, remember?
Do we finally understand "Why now?" and "Who benefited from the timing?"
Even if you agree with Snowden's basic message that we need far more checks on power like this (which I do) he's done so much damage to his own message with this loopy Obama Derangement Syndrome garbage that he's setting the message back by light-years.
So congrats, folks. Your civil liberties spokesman is Jason Stackhouse.
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