It's encouraging to run into people, even if they are just in print on a page, that subscribe the same kind of views as yourself . . . even if the milieu in which you find yourself would automatically brand your views as damn near radical. Case in point: this piece in Atlantic Online by Conor Friedersdorf. All those leaks of State Dept stuff and military stuff and lately Afghan War stuff . . . well, great, I say! Let's have more of them. Why does the government hide stuff from us? Don't even think that national security has much to do with any of it . . . No, it's more elemental than that. The government doesn't want us to know what it's doing in our name and with our money. So all this latest brouhaha about leaks of classified information about CIA drone attacks in Pakistan is just nonsense. Everybody in the world knows we're using drones to kill people in the Middle East. Yet the president is hollering and so are members of both parties in Congress, especially members of the Senate Intelligence Committee such as John McCain and Diane Feinstein. Give me a break.
"The notion that the United States government should wage ongoing war in
multiple countries while keeping it secret from its own citizens is
noxious. By my lights, the CIA drone program's existence should not be a
state secret. Obama ought to declassify it." Right on, brother.
Fact is, Obama has been only too happy to talk classified information himself when it's politically beneficial, and he's has been pure hell on whistle-blowers (this guy is just so wrong on so many counts) All this fuss about something kids in the Congo know about strikes me as a bit more than slightly ridiculous.
"Congress ought to be forcing Obama to declassify more. An illegitimate
cult of secrecy is the problem. But Feinstein, McCain and others seem
determined to have a less transparent executive. They want a man they
regard as having put his political prospects above the safety of
Americans to be even less transparent about his actions and more
secretive."
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