Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Not Much Sympathy from Rand Paul for Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden

There's terrible news out about Rand Paul and comments he has made about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.

 At a Cato University event, Rand  stated that there need to be some laws that protect certain secrets and that Manning put many lives at risk by releasing millions of pages “willy-nilly,” reports DL Magazine.

“There do have to be laws to protect some secrets. I think if you’ve got the, you know, the plans on how to make a nuclear bomb that is a state secret. If you give that to the enemy, that is being treasonous,” said Rand, “Even if you reveal it, you just have to have laws against that. What Manning did was just willy-nilly, just released millions of pages of things and I think some people have said there is potentially some harm from that. You know individual agents that could have been killed or put at risk from this. So there is a problem with that. So I just can’t support that.”

“If you are doing something for a political purpose; you know, in fact, in some ways the Snowden case is a little bit different,” said Paul, “But even with the Snowden case, I still think you have to have laws against what he did. So he did break the law.”

His continued his comments about Snowden in an even more muddled fashion, attempting to hide is views by saying what others might do and not showing any strong support for Snowden

“Snowden, if he were here, could maybe make the defense ‘Well I released this information because I’m a whistle blower. I’m telling you the head of the intelligence agency isn’t telling the truth. So I’m correcting a lie by another official.’ Some have said he would have had an easier time with that argument if he had come to a member of Congress and gone through the official whistleblower, kind of, pathway,” said Paul, “I think they still would have probably put him in jail and thrown away the key.”

DL reported on reaction from the libertarian community on Rand's comments.

The District of Columbia’s Libertarian Party Chairman, Ryan Sabot stated that Rand's “attempts to wipe away credibility, gravity, and value of both Snowden and Manning’s leaks by Senator Paul are distasteful.”

Jayel Aheram,  blogger for Young Americans for Liberty, said that he was"disappointed that Sen. Rand Paul chose repeat the lie that Manning’s release and Wikileaks’ publication of the diplomatic cables harmed people. Brig. General Robert Carr, the man who was in charge of the Pentagon’s review of the leaks, admitted during Manning’s trial that no one was killed or harmed by the release of the cables."

Young Americans for Liberty NY State Chair, Taweh Beysolow II said:
It’s very obvious to me that Senator Paul  would be against what Bradley Manning and Snowden did simply because he is a politician who has presidential aspirations within the Republican Party. The broad conservative movement does not have sympathy, nor feels empathy for either of these individuals because they feel as if they betrayed this country to some degree, despite how much it works against the Obama administration to their pleasure.Again, it serves more as a reminder that Senator Paul will most likely mimic a George Bush presidency rather than the ideal pie in the sky dream of a libertarian president in my opinion.

26 comments:

  1. While I take issue with what he's said I see no quote of Rand saying "I don't have a lot of sympathy"

    This isn't the first I've seen a news outlet trying to pass off an interpretation of Rands comments as an outrageous quote.

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    1. Good point, it is not clear Rand used those exact words, though DL has them in quotes. At the same time, it does correctly reflect the tone of what Rand said. I have adjusted the post headline.

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    2. I was there at the CATO University event. Rand Paul used the words I have no sympathy. Before answering he said that he hoped he would only get easy questions and after answering the question he stepped down without taking any others.

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  2. At this point Rand has alienated the base who elected him so much that I wonder not if he will approach the presidency, but if he will even retain his Senate seat next election. As far as Manning and Snowden, What would you expect from a guy like Rand, who admits this:
    Rand Paul on Israeli groups: "I visit with them daily":
    http://libertyfight.com/2013/rand_paul_visits_with_Israeli_groups_daily.html

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    1. Why do I get this inkling feeling that a "certain" Mediterranean government is the sole subject of the Snowden's documents.

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  3. Good Lord... if this doesn't prove it, I don't know what will. Rand wants Power and he is steadily proving that he will say anything to get it. Disgusting and very sad to see one of Ron's sons choose Power over Principle. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing.

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  4. In a nutshell here is the difference between Ron and Rand. Ron's goal was to move the Republican Party towards libertarianism. Rand's goal is to move pseudo libertarianism into the Republican Party. The strategy to move pseudo libertarianism into the Republican Party mainstream has been to compromise most of its principles to the point where it is hardly distinguishable.

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  5. Ron Paul needs to stop saying that he and Rand agree on most things.

    Rand is going to give Austrian Economics a bad name.

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  6. Here's what bothers me about this post. Notice it makes a blanket statement looping in Bradley Manning with Snowden and implying that Rand Paul sees them in the exact same light. To Wenzel's credit, he does provide a quote later on, but how many people read content past the first few sentences these days? I run a website and I have statistics on it---very, very few.

    "...in fact, in some ways the Snowden case is a little bit different,” said Paul, “But even with the Snowden case, I still think you have to have laws against what he did. So he did break the law.”

    The full context of this needs to include that Rand Paul believes he is committing civil disobedience. If you give the context, I'm guessing that Snowden, himself, would agree with him. No one is denying that Snowden broke the law.

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    1. The government broke the law, too. Why doesn't anyone talk about that? Why isn't the NSA head facing jail time, for both the spying and the lying about it under oath? Why does Roger Clemens get prosecuted for allegedly lying to congress about his personal use of drugs, which harms nobody outside of MLB? Why is the illegal spying still happening?

      So, yes, let's enforce the laws. Start with the people who are running the government.

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  7. It's getting harder to even consider him a net positive (for liberty) anymore. This is so sad.

    The last vote I cast was for Ron Paul in the Republican Presidential primary. It may be the last one I ever cast - Rand is just not going to inspire me to show much support in 2016. He hasn't even officially started running yet, I can't imagine how much he will be selling out by that point.

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  8. I sincerely hope that Rand does not even make it through the Republican primary. If he does, I hope he does not win the presidency. He is a weasel, and far more dangerous than an avowed statist because of the damage he would cause to the masses' perception of libertarianism.

    Millions of people came to support liberty because of Rand's father, but Rand was not one of them. Rand used these people to win his Senate seat, then betrayed them little by little.

    These remarks are, for me, the last straw. Absolutely disgraceful.

    Shame on Rand Paul.

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  9. Seriously at this point who that actually calls themselves a libertarian can seriously defend Rand anymore? Yea he's done some good things but overall he's a damm statist.

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  10. That headline is sensationalist garbage. In context, the actual statement Rand made holds a lot more credibility. We all support the revelation of the atrocities that Manning released, but he didn't just release that stuff. He released a lot of completely unrelated information that was in no way relevant to the bad things he released. Should the good he did be taken into context? Absolutely. But Manning did go about it in a way that could have caused a lot of needless collateral damage.

    What Rand is saying is that there should be laws against releasing government secrets, but he isn't saying that there shouldn't be protections for whistle blowers. His statements defending Snowden earlier should be plenty enough to show his feelings in that regard.

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    1. "What Manning did was just willy-nilly, just released millions of pages of things and I think some people have said there is potentially some harm from that."
      'Some people' are the ones in the Military/industrial/congressional/intelligence complex which would have rather the american people not know what was going on in their nasty little war on 'terror' that was so profitable for them.
      Daniel Ellsberg said recently on the Scott Horton show that he had looked at that information from the Vietnam war and wished he had released that instead of what he had leaked. By his actions Manning scuppered the whole attempt to keep troops in Iraq.

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  11. It's going to be a win/win for the establishment if Rand runs for president. If he wins, then all of his contradicting decision making as president against his father's principles will put his father at odds against his own son. This will put pressure on the father to say something. As of now, the father doesn't have to say anything. This along with everything Mr. Wenzel suggests will happen in coddling political Paulians.

    If Rand loses the presidential bid, then the establishment will put forth the argument that libertarians are nothing but a minority voting group that are nothing but nutjobs. That running as libertarian fails, and that we need somebody more like Christie. That libertarianism doesn't work, though libertarianism has nothing to do with how a campaign was run - it's all about "not working". They already tried to do the "nutjob" name calling, but if history is looked at, it will show that the Paulians were shutout, and the GOP lost by their own demise because of it. Even if Ron did win the Primaries and had lost the General, the GOP would not have supported him and still lost by their own demise. Whereas, if the GOP is to support a pseudo-libertarian, then it will look like the libertarians were in control and lost the election.

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  12. By his own admission, Rand Paul is not a libertarian. That means he leans statist, so we should not be surprised by him taking the State's side.

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  13. I, for one, am relieved that he said this. He has clearly crossed the line here and revealed what he is about. All his previous little nudges towards the neocon worldview were, in the greater scheme of things, excusable by the hopeful as tactics to woo the establishment wing of the GOP. This is a fundamentally different animal. This is siding with the secretive surveillance state. This is defending Big Brother. This is inexcusable.

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  14. After throwing Bradley Manning and Ed Snowden under the bus what rand paul says about liberty is irrelevant.

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  15. You can tell the politics of a "libertarian" by the institutes he decides to affiliate himself with. The fact that he is associating more and more with CATO, and getting further and further away from 'Mises Institute', shows exactly what I mean.

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    1. Agreed. Several of the scholars including Roger Pilon, head of CATO's Constitutional section, believes the NSA program does not mean a seizure of someone's personal information. Roger Epstein concurs with this opinion.

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  16. Is there any other source for this other than DL Mag? They have a page rank of zero, which means their either new or have never developed any web credibility. I haven't been able to find any other source for these quotes. I'm not saying they aren't true, but there is nothing to make me thing they're true yet either. Does anyone have a credible source?

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    1. I was at the Cato event. DL's quotes are accurate.

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    2. CATO soldout to the GOP in the Mid to late 1990's & left the Libertarian Party & ever since has bin co-opted by the Neocon GOP
      Establishment. I know this because I'm a 21 year member of the Libertarian Party & We Have left them behind.

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    3. CATO is directly funded by the Koch Brothers, just like the LP is to a lesser degree. The Koch Brothers also happen to be big funders of the Neocon-wing of the GOP. So, no, they didn't "sell out", they were always part of the same network.

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  17. When was the CATO event he said this? Is there audio? Video? A secondary source? Not a Rand supporter, I just want to verify. Thanks.

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