It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders.
Edward SnowdenRead
The Iraq war that I signed up for was launched on false premises. The American people were misled. Now, whether that was due to bad faith or simply mistakes in intelligence, I can't say for sure. But I can say it shows the problem of putting too much faith in intelligence systems without debating them in public.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote addresses the deception surrounding the Iraq War and warns against blind trust in intelligence.
Edward Snowden expresses his disillusionment with the Iraq War, highlighting that it was initiated based on misleading information. He emphasizes the importance of critically debating intelligence assessments in public rather than accepting them without scrutiny, which prevents accountability and informed decision-making.
Themes
Iraq WarIntelligenceMisledPublic DebateTrust
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on government accountability, this quote can serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of transparency.
More from Edward Snowden
All quotes →I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.
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Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?
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A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.
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Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him... the better off we all are.
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I don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
Edward SnowdenRead
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