Posted on 06/11/2014 12:42:10 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Obama’s top intelligence officers warned that four out of the five Taliban prisoners swapped for Bowe Bergdahl would return to the battlefield. A top intelligence official told lawmakers in a classified Senate briefing last week that he expected four out of the five Taliban leaders released by the Obama administration to eventually return to the battlefield.
According to a pair of U.S. officials, the briefing from Robert Cardillo, a deputy director of national intelligence, represented the latest community-wide U.S. intelligence assessment on these Taliban Five, completed in 2013.
It also means that President Obama was faced with a particularly excruciating choice as he weighed whether or not to swap these five for American hostage Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The government of Qatar, which agreed to look after the five Taliban leaders as part of the deal for Bergdahl, warned that factions within the Taliban were growing impatient, and campaigning to kill Bergdahl instead of trading him.
“Time is not on your side,” they told U.S. negotiators, according to two senior defense officials. They described a growing split within Taliban and Haqqani Network (which held Bergdahl) over how to best use the soldier—a split confirmed by multiple Taliban and Afghan sources in the region.
Making matters more desperate for Bergdahl was the fact that in September a CIA drone killed Mullah Sangeen Zadran, the Haqqani Network commander who first captured Bergdahl, a move that could have scuttled any chance at all for a prisoner swap.
It all added up to a painful dilemma for the White House: free Taliban leaders who might return to the fight—or risk losing America’s last service member held abroad. Obama ultimately chose to make the deal, despite his intelligence services’ estimate that four of the five Taliban detainees would ultimately resume their struggle against American allies.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
The 5th will be Our President. . . .
>> U.S. Spies Say
Quite a retro description of our IA.
Only 4? The 5th must be a slacker...did he apply for food stamps, welfare, an Obamaphone and free TV while at Gitmo?
Catch them again and I would bet they will NEVER fight again, in any skirmish. Dead is dead!
The first American who gets killed by one of them, this president should be hung.
More American blood on Obama’s hands, and yet neither the press nor the Democrats give a rat’s *ss.
And not too many Republicans, either.
CIA SAD/SOG and their associate POOs should go rogue and kill them in Qatar while they are vulnerable. Mossad, GDSE, and SAS should assist.
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