Pardon Assange
and Snowden
By Jacob G. Hornberger
December 20, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" -
The Washington Post has
just released a trove of previously secret records
documenting that the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been
based on a multitude of lies and deception. It is beyond
dispute that the Pentagon and other elements of
America’s deep state were determined to keep those
records secret from the American people.That’s because
it took three years and two federal lawsuits to force
deep-state officials to finally release the records.
No one is accusing the
Post of publishing lies. It is undisputed that what
the Post has published is the truth.
Why then did the deep
state oppose release of the records? Why was the deep
state so insistent that they be kept secret?
The answer is: Because
the deep state knew that the records recounted the
truth, and the last thing the deep state wanted was for
the American people to know the truth about its war in
Afghanistan — that “Operation Enduring Freedom” was
built on lies, just like the Vietnam War was.
But that’s also what
Julian Assange and Edward Snowden did. They didn’t
publish any lies either. They simply published records
that revealed the truth about the deep state. That’s why
the deep state has condemned and vilified them as bad
people, even as traitors — because they revealed the
truth, just like the Washington Post has.
Arguably the information
released by Assange, through his organization Wikileaks,
and Snowden was much more valuable than the information
released by the Post. The Post’s
information involves lies within the deep state
regarding the progress that was supposedly being made in
the Afghanistan war. Assange and Snowden released the
truth about some of the actual dark-side practices of
the deep state, such as the killing of innocent people
and illegal surveillance schemes to spy on the American
people.
Questions naturally
arise: Why should anyone who publishes the truth about
the deep state be condemned or punished? Why should’t
the condemnation and punishment instead be leveled at
the entity that engages in sordid, dark-side practices
and the intentional utterance of lies and deception,
especially with respect to something as important as
war?
