Edward Snowden Issues Statement from Wikileaks Website...Or Does He?

Did Edward Snowden actually write the statement that appears on the Wikileaks website? Maybe, maybe not , but your Wonkette has accessed the Wikileaks website for you, for the purposes of critical analysis re: said statement. Now the NSA will extra carefully target us for visiting Wikileaks, and just lightly target you all for visiting Wonkette, YOU ARE WELCOME.

Here it is in full, via Wikileaks :

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

We are not sure that an offhand comment at a press conference counts as a solemn "promise" in any case, but let us read on!

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country.

Of course we have rejected Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! We are the U.S., so we alone get to decide what a human right is and who is entitled to it. A "treaty" signed by the "international community" is irrelevant, duh.

The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

This, by the way, is pretty troubling to your Wonkette. Whatever we think of Edward Snowden, he has not been convicted of breaking any laws. This means that the U.S. can apparently revoke your passport even if you have not been brought to justice, and even if you are accused of breaking a law by revealing OTHER laws that the U.S. has broken.

Given that Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney -- both of whom are accused of being war criminals, albeit not by the U.S. Government, because they ran that sucker -- have not had their passports revoked, we wonder if there is an official process or formal procedure for revoking passports, or if a sitting administration can simply revoke passports if you break CERTAIN SPECIFIC laws but not others.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

-Edward Joseph Snowden

How very moving! Except for 1) not sure why the Obama administration would be afraid of "us" since there is a long line of so-called " journalists " waiting to give him a tongue bath, praise his resolve, and either condemn Edward Snowden for daring to tell us what our government is doing or criticize him for the way he is doing what he is doing, and 2) Americans sadly seem pretty resigned to the idea that they will live under cradle-to-grave surveillance so our prediction is that little will change, in the end.

Also, (spoiler alert!) there is a twist, which is that Edward Snowden possibly didn't write the statement at all:

The offending statement has since been changed to "has been." Perhaps Edward Snowden didn't write the statement, then, or perhaps he is putting on airs, saying "have been" and driving around the Moscow transit area in a lorry whilst eating crumpets and drinking tea. Or a British editor "corrected" it from "American" to "English" and back? Your Wonkette cannot say for sure, but we will keep you updated as the mystery of the Wikileaks statement develops further.

Or WILL WE?

[ Wikileaks ]