October 27, 2013 from WashingtonsBlog Website
Hypocrisy as a Weapon
U.S. leaders have long:
Can you spot a pattern of hypocrisy?
Indeed, the worse the acts by officials, the more they say we it must be covered up… for "the good of the country".
For example, Elizabeth Goitein - co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice - writes:
That’s why high-level CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou was prosecuted for espionage after he blew the whistle on illegal CIA torture.*
* Note: That may be why Guantanamo is really being kept open, and even prisoners that the U.S. government admits are innocent are still being blocked from release: to cover up the widespread torture by keeping the evidence - the prisoners themselves - in a dungeon away from the light of day.
Obviously, the government wants to stop whistleblowers because they interfere with the government’s ability to act in an unaccountable manner.
As Glenn Greenwald writes:
But whistleblowers also interfere with the government’s ability to get away with hypocrisy.
As two political science professors from George Washington University (Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore) show, the government is so hell-bent to punish Manning and Snowden because their leaks are putting an end to the ability of the US to use hypocrisy as a weapon:
Professors Farrell and Finnemore note that the government has several options for dealing with ongoing leaks. They conclude that the best would be for the government to actually do what it says.
What a novel idea …
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