> A bit hypocritical of Snowden to criticize the USA while holed up in Russia.
So you have no problem with the substance of the article, only with the author's place of residence?
The article itself references several instances of the CIA toppling governments and starting wars - those are not invalidated because Russia also did similar or and worse things. Plenty of people in the Middle East and Central America could justifiably feel the same about the CIA as you do about Russia.
> Plenty of people in the Middle East and Central America could justifiably feel the same about the CIA as you do about Russia.
(The USSR, not Russia.) It's pure fantasy to argue that the CIA, even given their sordid history, ever partook in anything even remotely comparable to the scale of the USSR's destructive regime[1].
The US invasion of Iraq that the CIA helped start [1] resulted in about 200k civilian deaths [2]. I don't feel like tallying the deaths from all of CIA's projects (or deciding how to split responsibility between the CIA and the USA as a whole), and I'm inclined to agree that Russia did worse, even much worse, but not incomparably worse, as subjective as that term is.
Regardless, my statement holds - there are plenty of people that justifiably hate the CIA. It wouldn't surprise me if plenty of proud Americans hated it - it has dragged their country into unnecessary wars, and subverted their democracy. Why this desire to protect a rogue agency that seems hostile even to the US itself, just because Russia is bad?
So you have no problem with the substance of the article, only with the author's place of residence?
The article itself references several instances of the CIA toppling governments and starting wars - those are not invalidated because Russia also did similar or and worse things. Plenty of people in the Middle East and Central America could justifiably feel the same about the CIA as you do about Russia.