Russia is defiant and rejects America's demand for Snowden extradition

[davidn3600]

"Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him," Putin said. "I hope it will not affect the business-like character of our relations with the U.S. and I hope that our partners will understand that."

Putin compared Snowden to WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who has been provided asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, saying that both men were labeled criminals but consider themselves rights activists and champions of freedom of information.
"Ask yourself a question: should people like that be extradited so that they put them in prison or not?" he said. "In any case, I would prefer not to deal with such issues."

"We can only hand over foreign citizens to countries with which we have an appropriate international agreement on the extradition of criminals," Putin said, adding that Snowden has committed no crime in Russia.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violating U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct by U.S. officials."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NSA_SURVEILLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-06-25-06-03-09

[ljm2002]

1. How can we demand extradition...

...from a country with whom we have no extradition treaty?

[kenny blankenship]

2. As Leader of the Free World

We are the country that must be obeyed always, and with fear and trembling.

[ljm2002]

3. It's really too bad though, isn't it...

...that it's come to this.

We thought we were omnipotent back when we were getting into Vietnam as well. Then when Bush's illegal Iraq invasion occurred, those asses were telling us it would be over in weeks, or a few months at most. I knew better, tried to tell people I worked with, but they were all in thrall to the cheerleading that our media was doing. 'Cuz we were gonna get 'em for 9/11, yeah, that's the ticket! Even though they had nothing to do with 9/11. That's why Bush et al had to concoct the WMD nonsense.

And here we are, making demands of Russia that they are under no obligation to honor, and we expect them to do it because we say so. Yet again we find out, gosh, we're not omnipotent.

[davidn3600]

5. America has always had this arrogant attitude that we run the world

Look at some of the threats being thrown out there by Lindsey Graham, Jay Carney, or Diane Feinstein. You really think Russia is scared of them or even cares what they say?

We are acting like a spoiled kid who's not getting what he wants.

[msongs]

4. or..putin stands up against american bullies nt