Patriotic traitors
Jan. 19th, 2004 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusDaniel Ellsberg is defending Katharine Gun.
Ellsberg, if you'll remember, helped bring down the Nixon regime, which was the most blatantly corrupt group we've had in there until this current one. He made public a lot of paperwork that was supposed to remain quiet, including some rather damning evidence about the causes of the Vietnam war - becoming, in essence, a traitor to his boss, Nixon, in order to remain loyal to his country.
Back when I still had aspirations as a journalist, he was something of a hero of mine.
And now that Katherine Gun has done something similar, embarrassing her boss, Tony Blair, she is being similarly persecuted by her government. She did it, she says, to try to prevent a nonsensical war. It didn't work, we still invaded Iraq, but at least she prevented the sham of any kind of international support for our efforts. I'm glad to see Mr. Ellsburg back in the papers, supporting her decision, and calling for others within the regimes of Bush, and it's sockpuppet, Tony Blair, to do the same.
In America, there is no Official Secrets Act, as there is in the UK. Mr. Ellsburg could not be legally prosecuted, and anyone doing the same today could not be, either. Not legally. Though many have been harrassed, quietly disappeared, publicly "suicided", thrown in jail on trumped-up charges (or no charges at all, an incredibly blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment). Gun faces, apparently, at the maximum, two years in jail.
Not that she deserves that much. What she deserves is the Congression Medal of Honor for her part in uncovering, and preventing, an attempt on the part of representatives of my government to break our laws by attempting to spy on representatives of other governments in order to find blackmail material to make them support the Cheney/Haliburton war on Iraq.
So why, given all the information that's now available and in the public domain, is Katharine Gun being prosecuted for leaking the memos, while those who wrote them are not?
Anyway, one story, among many others on the issue, can be found here
Ellsberg, if you'll remember, helped bring down the Nixon regime, which was the most blatantly corrupt group we've had in there until this current one. He made public a lot of paperwork that was supposed to remain quiet, including some rather damning evidence about the causes of the Vietnam war - becoming, in essence, a traitor to his boss, Nixon, in order to remain loyal to his country.
Back when I still had aspirations as a journalist, he was something of a hero of mine.
And now that Katherine Gun has done something similar, embarrassing her boss, Tony Blair, she is being similarly persecuted by her government. She did it, she says, to try to prevent a nonsensical war. It didn't work, we still invaded Iraq, but at least she prevented the sham of any kind of international support for our efforts. I'm glad to see Mr. Ellsburg back in the papers, supporting her decision, and calling for others within the regimes of Bush, and it's sockpuppet, Tony Blair, to do the same.
In America, there is no Official Secrets Act, as there is in the UK. Mr. Ellsburg could not be legally prosecuted, and anyone doing the same today could not be, either. Not legally. Though many have been harrassed, quietly disappeared, publicly "suicided", thrown in jail on trumped-up charges (or no charges at all, an incredibly blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment). Gun faces, apparently, at the maximum, two years in jail.
Not that she deserves that much. What she deserves is the Congression Medal of Honor for her part in uncovering, and preventing, an attempt on the part of representatives of my government to break our laws by attempting to spy on representatives of other governments in order to find blackmail material to make them support the Cheney/Haliburton war on Iraq.
So why, given all the information that's now available and in the public domain, is Katharine Gun being prosecuted for leaking the memos, while those who wrote them are not?
Anyway, one story, among many others on the issue, can be found here
