I'm running out of ways to ask this...

Please, for the love of Pete, address this specifically. If Snowden wanted to expose Constitutional abuses why not expose the domestic grab and nothing else? Foreign nationals, allied or enemy, are not protected by the US Constitution, period. The NSA mandate since Truman established it in 1952 was to intercept foreign "signal intelligence" in the safeguarding of the US and her interests.

Quite frankly I was floored at your "greatest hero of the last 100 years statement." Snowden could have released those documents that adequately revealed the domestic abuses without getting into the legitimate operations. In fact, why did he even go out of his way to collect and abscond with details of our foreign signal collection? Why go after that in the first place, let alone leak it?

Look, we are in lock step about what the 20th Century+ has wrought on our nation in terms of unchecked, raw government expansion on levels clearly unconstitutional if not downright immoral. But among them is not the NSA collection of foreign communications. Domestic, YES. Foreign, NO. You seem to be disusing his leaks as if he couldn't do one without the other? I mean, did he store all 200,000 plus documents on one USB stick? And even if it were somehow impossible to divorce the Intel on domestic abuses with legitimate foreign targeting, why even go after our international efforts at all? I mean, why did he target the legitimate operations along with the domestic abuses in his three months of secret data collection at the NSA facility in Hawaii? I join the chorus of those screaming aout the NSA's civil abuses. I waited on hold for 45 minutes to voice those objections to three million people. But the majority of those in the chorus with me seem to simply ignore what else he leaked - vital, legitimate, foreign operations. This makes Snowden a simultaneous sinner and saint.

The problem we're having at the moment is exactly the problem I addressed in my first post. Whomever is making an argument about Snowden they seem to champion his actions regarding what they value most - be it civil liberties or foreign Intel - and dismiss the other. I happen to be equally passionate about both. I can not separate the man into EITHER  a genuine whistle blower OR a traitor. He is absolutely both. The former for revealing domestic abuses, the latter for revealing legitimate foreign operations. So again I ask this point blank - why did he collect and leak the details of the NSA's legitimate foreign operations? The people targeted in Pakistan (or even Merkel for that matter, if you want to be technical), are not protected by the 4th Amendment. The NSA committed no abuse and certainly no crime in going after those intercepts. So why'd he leak it?

In those instances they were doing their job, a job I want them to continue doing. I would argue that the answer here is to swiftly and definitely end the domestic abuses, not close down the NSA in its' entirety.  If you do not feel the same then I submit this is a rather extreme example of throwing the baby out with the bath water as you intend to completely do away with the tub.