Posted on 06/03/2014 2:10:34 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If President Barack Obama hoped his deal with the Taliban to bring back Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl would be a political boon in the midst of the VA scandal, he is in for a big surprise.
Soon after Obama revealed that Bergdahl was to be released, we learned the president agreed to release five of the most hardcore Taliban fighters from Americas terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay in exchange.
While not as well known as Guantanamo inmates like 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Taliban 5 were some of the worst outlaws in the U.S. war on terror, Eli Lake and Josh Rogin report in The Daily Beast, noting a Pentagon dossier that deemed all five a high risk to launch attacks against the United States and its allies if they were liberated.
Negotiating with terrorists is a dangerous and inadvisable policy under most circumstances. The long-term bad often outweighs whatever short-term good. While it is great to see the return of a captured soldier, giving into terrorist demands to get them back provides greater incentive for terrorists to go out and capture more American soldiers in the hopes of making future lopsided deals.
Perhaps Obama hoped that seeing a captured American serviceman return home would overwhelm any American outrage over the deal. But then we learned that Bergdahl was taken into Taliban captivity only after allegedly deserting his fellow troops.
The sense of pride expressed by officials of the Obama administration at the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is not shared by many of those who served with him, veterans and soldiers who call him a deserter whose selfish act ended up costing the lives of better men, CNNs Jake Tapper reports.
At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for Bergdahl, Tapper added.
To say the least, this complicates the presidents narrative.
And the story doesnt end here. Get ready for the Bergdahl primetime interview with Barbara Walters or Brian Williams or whoever does these things nowadays. It may take weeks or months, but it will happen, you can be assured of that. What will he say in the interview? If the emails he sent to his parents before he was captured by the Taliban in 2009 are any indication, he will have some scathing words for the country that just gave up five vicious terrorists in order to bring him back.
The future is too good to waste on lies, he wrote in an email to his parents before his capture in 2009. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.
If his father joins him for the interview, you can expect a lot of Noam Chomsky-esque, left-wing America bashing as well, if his tweets are any guide.
And this is probably the best the Obama administration can hope for at this point. It may get much worse.
There is a lot we do not know, but what if turns out that Bergdahl was not only a deserter, but a traitor who actively aided the Taliban in attacking American troops?
In his piece, Tapper seems to subtly allude to the possibility.
[M]any soldiers in his platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika province in the days and weeks following his disappearance, Tapper wrote, seeming to suggest that Bergdahl may have provided information to the Taliban that aided them in their attacks against American troops.
Fox News confirmed that Bergdahls conduct both before and after his capture has been the subject of a classified investigation.
A Defense Department source confirmed to Fox News that many within the intelligence community harbor serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy, Fox News James Rosen reports.
If it turns out that Bergdahl did indeed collaborate with the enemy, Obama just gave up five of the worst terrorists in American custody for the return of a traitor we will now have to put on trial. And the president authorized this without notifying Congress, which even his supporters in the legal community say violates U.S. law. So much for President Obamas Dont Do Stupid Shit foreign policy doctrine.
There is also a very real possibility that despite the almost meaningless safeguards the Obama administration put in place, the terrorists the president just released will return to the battlefield to plan and plot against Americans. What if they are responsible for a future attack on the U.S.?
The Bergdahl deal already appears to be a disaster for America and political catastrophe for the Obama administration. Dont be surprised if the Bergdahlzi hearings come to a theater or a C-SPAN channel near you in the not-to-distant future.
The problem is that there are so many things going on now - so many hearings, so many investigations - that this latest outrage is probably going to swamp the investigatory capacity of Congress.
I just can’t see how more hearings are going to help. I read somewhere that Congress sent a formal protest to Obama yesterday, so maybe if they could make this public and actually proceed with something that doesn’t require years of hearings, it might have an impact.
I honestly don’t know what can be done. And furthermore, Obama did what he usually does after some outrageous act: he left the country so that he can keep out of reach of even the most minimal press inquiries. He’s off in the Ukraine right now, thumbing his nose at us.
It is so bad on so many levels, I almost don't know where to begin.
Susan Rice also made the assertion (without explaining how she knew or providing evidence) that the excuse for pushing the prisoner swap so quickly that they could not even inform Congress as required by law was Bergdhal’s purported rapidly declining health and need for immediate medical attention to save his life.
So here we have a confirmed deserter and probable traitor who got pushed to the front of the line for health care while our wounded warriors languish and die on secret death panel lists because they are denied care.
Sounds like the VA Scandal is at play here as well.
I am so sick and tired of this clown and his minions running our beautiful country into the ground while or so-called Representatives do absolutely NOTHING.
I would be shocked if it turned out that Obama traded a deserter for 5 terrorists. Just shocked I say!
Yeah, because 15 or 25 sounds more like him...
Five terrorist leaders returned
For one deserter and traitor
Brought to you by one islamic sodomite "present" in the Oval Office
("Body man" Reggie Love will be jealous.)
Obama stands with the muslims - as he said he would.
Yeah, 5 sounds a little light.
I just can’t figure out why they did it and why they did it now.
Take the VA scandal out of the news? Get the last American out of the region before pulling out? Test this approach to slowly empty out Gitmo?
They had to know the allegations against Bowe. We are definitely missing something here. They can’t be that dumb.
You got that right. It is like the "Little Dutch Boy" Syndrome. So many leaks (scandals) that the investigative powers can't keep up. The level of intentional corruption by this slimeball is mind boggling.
This happens right after Obama announces the Bug Out date for Afghanistan. What if the REAL deal is to get the Taliban to stand down so that they don’t embarrass the Obama regime during this period in return for those leaders. Our “ prisoner” was just cover.
I just cant figure out why they did it and why they did it now.
Susan Rice has said that Bergdahl was in declining health and could have died. If Bergdahl died in captivity, then Obama would not have an American prisoner held captive to use an pretext to release the five members of the Taliban leadership.
Obama didn’t release these five to get Bergdahl back, he used Bergdahl as a pawn and as an excuse to free the Taliban leaders whom he wanted to release so they could begin to get prepared for operations in Afghanistan as soon as we leave at the end of the year
“And what is going on with CNN, Chris Matthews, The Daily Beast, Time and scores of other regular Obama sycophants going after him on this and the VA medical scandal?”
IMHO, they are distancing themselves from obama now, so they can shill for hillary later this year.
It’s unfortunate but I doubt anything comes of this. Anyone in Congress with a set of balls would have impeached this ass over any number of scandals.. pick one. IRS, Benghazi, bypassing Congress, VA and now Bergdhal. BO’s track record on doing anything right is non existent.
Releasing the 5 GITMO terrorist for a deserter fit’s in line with his mentality. Pathetic, but this is the new America.
How is giving the Taliban their terrorists in advance going to make them back off and let us leave peacefully? There was nothing about this deal that was meant to benefit America.
Yes, it's pretty clear that, in the general, Hillary wants to run against Obama - she knows the GOP isn't going to put up much of a fight.
My guess would be that they were counting on the media to fall in line on this one too.
Without media scrutiny there is no story except the glorious homecoming, there is crime because Obama makes the law, there are no dead soldiers in the wake of this deserter because confidentiality agreements have been signed, Holder has his pen at the ready, and the media are ready to urge to let the rest of the animals in Guantanamo go.
I couldn’t believe it either when Jake Tapper at CNN immediately ran hard with the postings by Bergdahl’s platoon members, when NBC news led with the same thing, when leftist Obama sycophants like the “legal scholar” Jeffrey Toobin immediately announced that Obama had broken the law.
I don’t think Obama, Jarrett and Rice saw this coming in a million years.
I told them how fed up I am and how they are doing nothing while ZERO does anything he wants to. This latest is the last straw. We need to stay on this until something is done.
You crackers will learn to serve the Moslem Brotherhood,
al Qaeda, and us. We won on 911. Now serve."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.