Snowden and Manning, Obama Untethered

Dear Mr. President,

At Ft. Meade on Wednesday, the defense rested in the Bradley Manning trial after only 3 days and 10 witnesses. The government’s case is so weak that there’s not much to defend against. Few reporters covered it and few papers bothered to report on it—more news not fit to print I guess. Nevertheless, the heart of the government’s case—that Osama bin Laden read WikiLeaks and therefore Manning knowingly provided information to the enemy—was blown out of the water by Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor and WikiLeaks expert who testified that bin Laden didn’t know about WikiLeaks until your administration went hysterical over Manning’s leaks. Zero evidence of the most serious charges, zero case against Manning. Meanwhile, the Moscow airport was a media circus today when Ed Snowden met with human rights activists and Russian officials. Reporters ran up down escalators to get ahead of the crowd, cameramen came to blows and Jay Carney accused Russia of providing a ‘propaganda platform’ for Snowden. One of the meeting’s attendees, Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, said the US embassy contacted her en route to the airport urging her to tell Snowden that “he is not a human rights defender, he is not a whistleblower, and that he violated the law and should be held responsible” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden-accuses-us-illegal-campaign). What hypocrisy! Snowden hurt no one and put no one in danger. He performed a crucial service for democracy by exposing criminal activity and abuse of power, the partnership between government and corporations, and the seamless lies they use to hide it. A few weeks ago you said you were not going to “wheel and deal” to get Snowden but you pressured France, Spain, Portugal and Italy to prevent the Bolivian president’s plane from flying over their countries on the rumor he was on board; Uncle Joe in the Vice’s office was working the phones; today’s NYT reports that every country in Latin America has been warned not to grant him asylum; and you’re calling Putin tonight. I call that wheeling and dealing. For 4½ years you have betrayed the Constitution and the American people and disregarded human rights. In this topsy-turvy Obamaworld, whistleblowers are traitors, murder and torture is humanitarian and people are guilty until proven innocent. You’ve become untethered, Mr. President; you can no longer distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, justice from injustice. And that’s scary.