Dick Cheney on Monday called NSA leaker Edward Snowden a traitor, and Snowden shot back that given Cheney’s own lies about Iraq, it is an honor for any American to be accused of treason by the former vice president.
On Monday evening, Barack Obama came on Charlie Rose and insisted that the NSA would never misuse the telephone records it collects on all Americans because it would be illegal and that there are safeguards against that sort of thing. Obama did not say why he thinks the government has a right to see your telephone records given that you haven’t done anything wrong and the 4th Amendment hasn’t been abrogated. For the first time in his presidency, I felt as though Obama were looking me in the eyes and lying to me a la Cheney. I don’t know what his ulterior motives are in this, but that he has some seems obvious.
So for those who have forgotten, or for the youngsters who’ve come to consciousness since 2008, let us just review the lies of Dick Cheney and his colleagues in the Bush administration that cost so many American and Iraqi lives, and let us just contemplate whether we really just want to trust Obama that the US government wouldn’t act in illegal ways.