Originally posted by Gaviani
Just for us naive hacks, could you explain, Graeblyn, what inherent duty United States intelligence agencies have to preserve the lives, liberty, or property of non-Americans?

You seemed to imply believing that was morally repugnant. I'd like to know how I'm an immoral monster (today).
You might want to ask me something based on what I actually said, rather than some imaginary position I don't hold. But since you brought it up, under NATO, the United States is compelled to defend any NATO state that is attacked, including the UK. There are also several other defense agreements and treaties in place between the two countries. I imagine it would be fairly uncontroversial to argue that the US has a duty to live up to agreements it makes. But again, nobody to my knowledge, and certainly not me, is talking about the US having a duty to be coming in and preserving the lives of UK residents, or any country.

Perhaps I should be more clear.

The United States is threatening, if the UK doesn't handle the investigation into the British government's involvement into this scandal in the manner the US wants it to, to withold intelligence in the possible future event the US has information vital to the security of the United Kingdom. The US provides a great deal of the information the UK depends upon for its national security, so it is unlikely the UK would be aware of all the threats against it that the US would be.

Failing to warn a country that its citizens are in mortal peril, simply because they allowed a court case to embarrass a former President's administration is immoral in my opinion. If you fail to see why a reasonable person might find this immoral, I'm not sure what I could say, as it is fairly obvious we aren't operating from the same moral compass if you can defend such behavior.

I will reiterate, however, that if you think you can preserve the lives, liberty, or property of Americans without ever intervening in threats against foreign countries you are quite wrong. There are Americans living and travelling abroad all the time. There are American companies with significant assets abroad. There are American companies who have NO assets abroad, but still highly dependant on foreign supply chains. The US government itself is highly interdependent on many other countries and there governments for any number of activities designed to protect Americans (one example is the global missile shield initiatives such as the trident missiles the US has in the UK, or the missile defense facility being built in Poland). Even if there is nothing wrong with keeping the knowledge to itself that scores of foreigners will die if some other government doesn't act, it is still a foolish thing for the US to do, out of self-interest if nothing else. To threaten to do so to protect an extremely foolish American administration, that isn't even in office anymore, is just mind boggling.

I must say, however, though I think the threat is immoral, I think it is just a threat. It is too bad the UK buckled under to American pressure, as I really believe if the UK had called the American bluff, it would have been pretty clear it was just that... a bluff. Call me naive if you want, but the US and the UK are too interconnected for the US to withold intelligence sharing. I also can't really bring myself to believe that America would do something like this, on the morality grounds you apparently don't share.