Putin is an interesting study of a psychopath in power.
I expect he is enjoying it immensly.
Whether Putin is enjoying it or not is moot, there’s ample reason to fear for Snowden’s safety in US custody, considering the pre-trial torture of Bradley Manning. If we want other states to voluntarily do extraditions, we need to stop acting like some Third World oligarchy, and get back to being the shining city on the hill.
Really. I’m still half-expecting (about 2/3-expecting, actually) that the US will either send a hit squad to assasinate Snowden, or have him abducted and hauled off to some “black site” somewhere.
Why would they bother? Whatever Snowden had, the Russians and Chinese have already. By killing or abducting him, the US government would just make themselves look worse with nothing to gain by it. They’re better off letting him sink into obscurity.
The executive “He tried to kill my Dad!” executive and military mentality. 
Except they can’t let whistleblowers think they can get away with it by running off to Russia or China. Even if Snowden doesn’t get tortured or executed, he still has to pay as an example to others.
All people who enjoy power are psychopaths, but those who have to keep power by appeasing Russian culture, which is at the end of the day far more broken and sick than the already not so great American culture, have to do more obviously awful things.
Because leaving your entire life behind, being used as a political pawn and then relegated to obscurity in some cheap Moscow flat with black mold on the walls isn’t deterrent enough? The downside of taking him out is much greater than any useful effect gained.
You forgot living with three dissident families and no toilet.
An amicable relationship with Netanyahu isn’t something any world leader has, or had. Nobody outside of Israel who isn’t a huge cheerleader for Israel can stand Netanyahu. Netanyahu, Israel and his supporters all deserve each other and I suspect are quite happy with that state of affairs.
Defending a country smaller than the state of Arkansas must be a bitch.
From the Obama Administration’s POV, no this isn’t enough. What they really want is to haul him into court, and then toss him into a jail cell for the rest of his life, so they can hold this up as a warning to anyone else who might be thinking of leaking.
If that isn’t an option (and it looks like it won’t be), then making sure his corpse is found in an alley with a bullet in its skull might be considered the next best thing. It still sends a warning to anyone who might be thinking of leaking. The US government could claim no knowledge of what happened to him. Few people would believe this, but as long as the assassins aren’t arrested, it really doesn’t matter.
These days, our government is fond of blowing people up with drone strikes, but Russia isn’t some Third World backwater, and the diplomatic fallout from such a strike would be very bad. At the very least, Russia and several other countries would likely expell our ambassadors.
Attempting to abduct him and bring him to the US would be very risky. Again, Russia isn’t some Third World backwater, and if Russian authorities managed to rescue Snowden before US agents got him out of Russia, the PR disaster would be of historic proportions.
Letting him go ranks below any of the above options. That sends the message that if you leak, you can get away with it.
All that having been said, I’m rooting for Snowden. We needed to know that our government monitors us like this, and that it’s not just the stuff of paranoid TV shows.
Putin would whack him in an alley for Bush.
“I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
I know our government can sometimes act like a bunch of thugs but I’m pretty sure they don’t get their foreign policy ideas from repeats of The Sopranos. As I said, if it’s obvious enough to be a “message” to any other potential whistleblowers, it’s obvious enough to make the US look bad to pretty much everyone else.
I have said it before, and I say it again – I have the strong feeling that, if Snowden is “whacked” in any way, shape or form, it will be more likely that it was Putin who had it done rather than the US government.