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doe88

Not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker. -- Obama 6/27/13

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19166043-obama...

He's true though, it wasn't jets.

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I also enjoyed this tidbit in the article, which I had not known before:

"The presidential plane of Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to ground in Vienna, after four EU nations refused airspace access on the mistaken belief that Snowden was hidden on board."

Can you imagine the feeling of impotence, as a national president, when your plane is forced to land because of such suspicions?

And imagine the shitstorm that would follow the grounding of Air Force One under the exact same circumstances but by any country other than the US

OK, I bit. Turns out this was a major brouhaha. France participated, but later apologized, and Assange was involved as well. Quite fascinating in its own right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

and picture from Reuters story:

http://www.webcitation.org/6O7egNjku

Can you imagine the feeling of impotence, as NSA/CIA/$100b+ industrial extralegal agency, of telling people to stop that plane without having any remote certainty on the information?

It's this somewhat unnoticed fact of the saga: these agencies are really, really terrible at whatever they imagine their job to be. I wonder if there is still some intern at NSA combing manually through log files to figure out what Snowden possibly took.

That feeling is warranted. Relative to the US, Bolivia is impotent.

Indeed. Having it demonstrated so viscerally would make an impact. Apparently the Austrian police briefly boarded his plane, although a spokesman in his government denied it.

It also speaks to the panic of the American government in those days about Snowden.

I think possibly you are misinformed on what "scrambling" means[1], with regard to "jets".

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrambling_(military)

I'm not sure why someone down voted you for this. When the Commander in Chief uses a military term, I think it's a safe bet he knows what the definition is and actually meant it in that way.

He literally meant "we're not going to send fighter jets to kill him." Taking that to mean "we're not going to try to get him should the opportunity present itself" is just not a realistic interpretation.

Well, it's likely it was a jet airplane as the altitude of the flight was 45,000. I suppose in this usage it was implied to be fighter-jets.

It's amazing to witness the gift of gap that high level politicians possess. Obama says "not going to scramble jets."

What the public assumes he means:

- "Three letter agencies and the military won't be conducting clandestine operations to proactively seek out and remove Snowden from a foreign country."

What he actually means:

- Quite literally, he's saying that they won't be sending fighter jets to go blow up Snowden. Of course that would be silly and not make any sense whatsoever, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what he was referring to.

As an aside a good example of this politically evasive precision in speaking was Clinton's famous "I did not inhale" line when confronted if he had ever used marijuana. His answer was true, he's allergic to smoke and was well known around campus for baking/eating marijuana not inhaling it.

Speaking of Clinton and document leaks, next time Hillary Clinton is asked about the classified email server scandal take note of her precise replies, it is impressive how politicians can fire out precise answers when pressured to both deflect and deny accusations and protect themselves at the same time by later claiming precision.

Well, yeah. Because "scrambling jets" actually means something specific[1]. I actually don't think it was his intention to imply "we won't send any planes to where he's at" because that's stupid. Of course there's the possibility of a diplomatic mission, or DOJ officials visiting the country in question to discuss matters with the officials there. To assume his words meant we had no intention of even visiting a location he was at requires either assumptions about words people don't know the meaning to, or a very naive interpretation of how things get physically get done.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrambling_(military)

Also his use of "boots on the ground"

Ah, yes, but 'jet' in the singular - Obama had said 'jets' in the plural!

Everything I said was true, from a certain point of view.

the jet in question is a Gulfstream G-V. Its a very fancy passenger, long-range passenger jet

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