Point #1: The Espionage Act of 1917 is a horrid piece of legislation. The defendant can offer no defense to justify it, as Ellsberg found out. The prosecution doesn't need to show that there's even the potential to cause harm. What you wrote, saying Snowden should be considered a patriot deserves at most 10 years in federal prison, is completely ignored by the law. There no legal defense for "Snowden based on his intentions".
Simply put, nothing you wrote in defense of Snowden is relevant to his prosecution.
Point #2: I brought up Petraeus in response to your statement that:
"This is the balanced response that is needed to keep copycats from recklessly harming national security while at the same time strengthening our collective priority on government transparency."
We also need a way to keep copycat ex-CIA heads and generals from sharing secrets with unauthorized people and from lying to FBI agents. We have laws which define the rules. They make no exception for generals, and Petraeus signed over a dozen NDAs where he agreed that he would not reveal any secrets. These are the rules he's subject to, but the "balancing" here is being done completely pre-trial, with no transparency, in order to avoid prosecution under the laws that clearly say that Petraeus committed several felonies.
It seems that if you're friends with people in high places, you get special favors. If they don't like you, you get treated like Wen Ho Lee or worse. This is not justice under the law. If Petraeus, or Scotter Libby, or others with high position get little more than a handslap, while Lee gets solitary confinement, then I have little faith that we have a "balanced response".
Point #3: As I pointed out, It's not simply a matter of Petraeus sharing secrets that went no further than his biographer. He also made false statements to the FBI. This is a felony under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001. It's the law that made Martha Stewart a convicted felon.
I mentioned this earlier. Do you ignore it because it doesn't fit the narrative you want to impose upon those you disagree with? This speaks ill of you.
Point #4: Being a decorated war veteran is irrelevant. There is no special get-out-of-felony card written in the law for being a veteran, decorated or otherwise. Or put it this way, if Snowden had been a decorated war veteran - say, a Purple Heart - how would that change things for you? What if he had a Congressional Medal of Honor? Two Medals of Honor? What if Petraeus had been the one to leak the information, rather than Snowden? What if Petraeus' biographer had been the one to the leak the information?
If being a war hero is relevant, then surely all of those cases would make you want to be more lenient, yes? How much lenient?
If you can't give a good answer - and I really don't see how that's possible - then I'll assume that your reference to war hero status is a post hoc justification that has no actual bearing on the matter but exists mostly for the rhetorical sympathy.