Why Tice?

* emptywheel:

"Bush's most spectacular foreign policy accomplishment, thus far, is to encourage the formation of a nascent anti-US block with the strategic placement--and oil--to present a real challenge to our power.

This is the logical outcome of Neocon intransigence. In their determination to prevent the growth of any rival, they have fostered precisely that rival. And that rival has oil, enough to act as a new swing producer in the world."

* emptywheel:

"Why Tice?... Of course, that's the thing. We don't know whether Tice is the only supposed Risen-Lichtblau source getting subpoenaed, or whether he's simply the only one going public about the fact.
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Which might mean this is just harrassment--that Tice hasn't broken any laws, but the government will go after him nevertheless because it will prevent others from coming forward. They'll tar him as a paranoid former employee fired for cause. They'll suggest that anyone questioning the domestic spying programs is just equally crazy.

But I also wonder whether the government isn't trying to scare him from leaking details of the program he says he doesn't want to leak. Or whether it isn't trying to scare other whistleblowers and journalists from reporting on the as-yet unreported programs, the ones that seem to be bubbling just beneath the surface.
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But I've got a nagging feeling that we're getting close--close to either the details that prove the known programs have been abused, or to the programs that entail a surveillance so oppressive that even Joe Sixpack will get up in arms over it."