Susan Rice: Snowden Leaks Have Not Hurt US Foreign Policy

You can practically hear the Obama-bashers’ heads (not to mention those of the Rice-haters) exploding:

US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice dismissed claims that Edward Snowden’s highly classified leaks have weakened the Obama presidency and damaged US foreign policy, insisting that the United States will remain “the most influential, powerful and important country in the world”.

Rice’s remarks were her only public ones on Snowden and came in an interview with The Associated Press as she prepared to leave the UN post and start her new job on Monday as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

She said it’s too soon to judge whether there will be any long-term serious repercussions from the intelligence leaks by the former National Security Agency contractor who fled to Hong Kong and then Russia after seizing documents disclosing secret US surveillance programmes in the US and overseas, which he has shared with The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers.

“I don’t think the diplomatic consequences, at least as they are foreseeable now, are that significant,” she said.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.