Eli Lake Needs A Dictionary.......

Last week, The Daily Beast's Eli Lake stated that the Kremlin was not familiar with the term hypocrisy for releasing the private phone calls of politicians and leaders that are involved with the Ukrainian unrest. Mr. Lake seems to think that protecting the freedom of Edward Snowden is somehow hypocritical to the afore mentioned action. What Mr. Snowden did was to inform the public that the NSA was not only spying on the enemies and those that pose a threat to the security of the US; but, the NSA was also spying on private citizens of the US, as well as, the leaders of our allies. What Mr. Putin and the Kremlin did is not the same. Mr. Snowden was a private citizen, whom acted as a whistle-blower, whereas the Kremlin was acting as a government entity.
Here is a little history lesson, Mr. Lake, it has always been the prudent common practice of governments to spy on the leaders of their enemies. It is not common or prudent for a government to spy on its own citizens when that country is tauted as a democracy, with freedom of speech. This means that there is absolutely nothing wrong with or uncommon about what Putin and the Kremlin have done by releasing the private phone calls of the opposition to the democratically elected government of Ukraine. It is exactly the same as the US releasing transcripts of Al Qaeda to justify the use of drone attacks on family gatherings in countries that we are not even at war with; in countries that we do not have large American populations in; in countries that do not border the US main land.
To compare the circumstances of the Ukrainian unrest and the circumstances surrounding the Edward Snowden affair is either at best a lame attempt to demonize Putin to the American public or at worst to bolster US involvement in Ukraine that is in contrast to International Law by promoting the blatant misinformation of the government in order to initiate military action in an area and manner that is not justified. If the US, on its own or as part of NATO, intervenes in Ukraine in a military manner, it is the Balkans all over again. And the Balkans were not ethically or morally just interventions but the actions of the greed of our German and French allies whom have eyed the containment of the Balkan peoples for hundreds of years.