2012 GOP threat: Sgt. Bergdahl swap will be Obama, Democrats’ ‘Willie Horton moment

[pgardn]

Holding 5 Taliban for terrorizing Afghans was stupid anyway...Bergdahl isn't the first US soldier to feel empathy for the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq for the Bush Administration illegal invasion and occupation...

Of course he is not.

But how many desert and put their fellow soldiers in danger?
(looking more like this is the scenario)

[Nbadan]

A Democrat reminds me that McCain appeared on CNN four months ago, when the Bergdahl case was receiving far less coverage, and did not sound so bearish on the potential of a trade. He hadn't wanted the five Taliban to be released as a "confidence" measure, but "this idea is for an exchange of prisoners for our American fighting man. I'd be inclined to support such a thing, depending on the details."

The whole "details" concept gives McCain some cover, I suppose. But did the prisoners get markedly scarier in the intervening four months? What happened? The Obama administration, which was aware of comments like McCain's, is rattled now to see McCain joining the crowds at the Bastille.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...or_a_pow.html?

McCain was blubbering something about details and how scary these five were, but he knew in February exactly who America had to trade, and there was no mention of who was to be excluded.

[Nbadan]

Of course he is not.

But how many desert and put their fellow soldiers in danger?
(looking more like this is the scenario)

The term deserted has very explicit legal meaning, and I imagine requires a trial before it can be asserted as fact.

What is very clear is that the Army was on notice that this kid was losing it well before he disappeared. And yet they did nothing.

His fellow soldiers noted he would stare at the mountains and talk about going to China; he sent his personal effects home

But most important, the morning he left, he asked his team leader an incredibly telling question:

In the early-morning hours of June 30th, according to soldiers in the unit, Bowe approached his team leader not long after he got off guard duty and asked his superior a simple question: If I were to leave the base, would it cause problems if I took my sensitive equipment?

Yes, his team leader responded – if you took your rifle and night-vision goggles, that would cause problems.

Bowe returned to his barracks, a roughly built bunker of plywood and sandbags. He gathered up water, a knife, his digital camera and his diary. Then he slipped off the outpost.

The talking heads make much of the fact that Bergdahl left his rifle/equipment behind when he left the base, as if that proves he intended to join the enemy. But as the above exchange demonstrates, he was just complying with what his team leader said about not taking his sensitive equipment--rifle and night-vision goggles--if he were to leave the base, so as not to create "problems" for his team....

[Nbadan]

Bergdahl was designated by the Army as missing/captured, not deserted....

It’s true that Bergdahl was never officially categorized as a “prisoner of war,” since the Pentagon apparently stopped using that designation years ago. But he was defined as “missing/captured,” which is essentially the same thing. And while the Taliban fighters who were released were likewise not formally designated prisoners of war, either, because of the odd, formally undeclared status of the war with Afghanistan, that’s what they were. As President Obama said Tuesday morning, “This is what happens at the end of wars.” Imagine the outrage if the president brought the troops home from Afghanistan but left Bergdahl behind.

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_..._savage_obama/

[Nbadan]

The right’s unhinged Bergdahl hypocrisy: The ultimate way to savage Obama
Should accused deserters face trial by Bill Kristol before being rescued? Understanding the latest wing nut hysteria

JOAN WALSH

The anti-Bergdahl hysteria plays into six years of scurrilous insinuation that Obama is a secret Muslim who either supports or sympathizes with our enemies. Even “moderate” Mitt Romney, you’ll recall, claimed the president’s “first response” to the 2012 Benghazi attack “was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” This is just the latest chapter.

The partisan opportunism over the Bergdahl deal shouldn’t be surprising, but it is, a little bit. This wasn’t some wild radical idea of the Obama administration; it was driven by the Defense Department and signed on to by intelligence agencies. Although Congress is claiming it wasn’t given the requisite 30 days’ notice of a prisoner transfer (more on that later), this deal or something very much like it has been in the works for at least two years, with plenty of congressional consultation.

And plenty of partisan demagoguery: In 2012 the late Michael Hastings reported that the White House was warned by congressional Republicans that a possible deal for the five Taliban fighters would be political suicide in an election year – a “Willie Horton moment,” in the words of an official responsible for working with Congress on the deal. In the end, though, Hastings reported that even Sen. John McCain ultimately approved the deal; it fell apart when the Taliban balked.

Two years later, the right’s official talking points are mixed: Some critics focus on rumors (buttressed by Hastings’ own sympathetic reporting on Bergdahl) that he was a soldier disillusioned by the Afghan war who deserted his post. Wrong-way Bill Kristol has dismissed him as a deserter not worth rescuing, while Kristol’s most prominent contribution to politics, Sarah Palin, has been screeching on her Facebook wall about Bergdahl’s “horrid anti-American beliefs.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_..._savage_obama/

[pgardn]

The term deserted has very explicit legal meaning, and I imagine requires a trial before it can be asserted as fact.

What is very clear is that the Army was on notice that this kid was losing it well before he disappeared. And yet they did nothing.

His fellow soldiers noted he would stare at the mountains and talk about going to China; he sent his personal effects home

But most important, the morning he left, he asked his team leader an incredibly telling question:


The talking heads make much of the fact that Bergdahl left his rifle/equipment behind when he left the base, as if that proves he intended to join the enemy. But as the above exchange demonstrates, he was just complying with what his team leader said about not taking his sensitive equipment--rifle and night-vision goggles--if he were to leave the base, so as not to create "problems" for his team....

If the military put a kid who was losing it at some sort of post that was important to the welfare of his fellow soldiers...
This is also a big problem.

We will just have to wait to get all the details. It is fairly infuriating to me that some of these kids were put in danger by a deserter, or a guy who just could not handle the job anymore. Or both.

Some of the statements by the higher ups in the military are consistent with a pity factor. Sounds almost like he comes back and goes into a pysch unit.

[Spurminator]

Not when it's desertion in a combat zone.

That deserves a firing squad.

You're a sick .

[Spurminator]

I don't care if or where the kid deserted, if you're seriously advocating for a firing squad you might as well join the Taliban yourself.

[Wild Cobra]

I don't care if or where the kid deserted, if you're seriously advocating for a firing squad you might as well join the Taliban yourself.

Yes, I am. I a, solid on that viewpoint.

You don't desert your unit in a war zone. Period. They are claiming 2-6 of the soldiers killed in the area were because they were looking for him.

[Wild Cobra]

I do find it humorous that this administration keeps stumbling into these "what the were they thinking?" moments. As more facts become known swapping 5 hardcore TBan for an apparent deserter the outrage just keeps growing.

In my opinion this wasn't even about Berghdahl, it was just an excuse to let the Taliban guys go in order to diplomatically grease the channels with the TBan. The US is leaving, Kharzai is a crook. Any chance of having any kind of "success" story come out of that hole will rely on brokering deals and negotiating with the TBan even though "the US doesn't negotiate with terrorists"...

That is always possible.

[Wild Cobra]

Bowe Bergdahl’s Vanishing Before Capture Angered His Unit


Sometime after midnight on June 30, 2009, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl left behind a note in his tent saying he had become disillusioned with the Army, did not support the American mission in Afghanistan and was leaving to start a new life. He slipped off the remote military outpost in Paktika Province on the border with Pakistan and took with him a soft backpack, water, knives, a notebook and writing materials, but left behind his body armor and weapons — startling, given the hostile environment around his outpost.

That account, provided by a former senior military officer briefed on the investigation into the private’s disappearance, is part of a more complicated picture emerging of the capture of a soldier whose five years as a Taliban prisoner influenced high-level diplomatic negotiations, brought in foreign governments, and ended with him whisked away on a helicopter by American commandos.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/03...?from=homepage

Sounding more and more like a deserter.

If those is factual, then yes. I read one link where they think he sneaked out in hiding a contractors vehicle. Who knows what happened from there, should that be true. I will assume he thought he had friends in a nearby village, and found the true nature of these people first hand.

[Aztecfan03]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...or_a_pow.html?

McCain was blubbering something about details and how scary these five were, but he knew in February exactly who America had to trade, and there was no mention of who was to be excluded.

WHat Is your point. He didn't like the trade then either.

[Aztecfan03]

Yes, I am. I a, solid on that viewpoint.

You don't desert your unit in a war zone. Period. They are claiming 2-6 of the soldiers killed in the area were because they were looking for him.

I've seen 8 people mentioned now.

[Nbadan]

WHat Is your point. He didn't like the trade then either.

He was for the trade before he was against it...

[ChumpDumper]

Too many people Wild Cobraing this thing.

[TDMVPDPOY]

i remember obamas first inauguration speech, that he will not deal with terrorists...so what happen here? exchangin 5 monkeys for a monkey who deserted his position?

[Spurminator]

Yes, I am. I a, solid on that viewpoint.

You don't desert your unit in a war zone. Period. They are claiming 2-6 of the soldiers killed in the area were because they were looking for him.

No you don't desert in a war zone but you also don't adopt archaic methods of punishment on those who do. you and anyone who wants our military to resemble anything like that, tbh.

[boutons_deux]

"who wants our military to resemble anything like that,"

the Repug/FOX/right-wing hate-and-spittle machine wants the military to abandon US prisoners to the enemy, overturning 200 years of US military history.

senile McLiar actually prefers a US soldier be left in enemy hands because 5 jihadis are worth more than a US soldier.

[boutons_deux]

Lawmakers Change Their Minds After Demanding ‘Every Effort’ Be Made To Free Bergdahl

Republicans are almost uniformly criticizing President Obama’s decision to swap five Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay for the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American held hostage in Afghanistan. But many of the administration’s loudest critics have previously demanded that it do more to bring Bergdahl to safety. Since his release, these lawmakers are emphasizing their
criticism of Obama’s handling of the prisoner exchange while downplaying the successful return of an American servicemember.

In the clearest contradiction, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in February that he “would be inclined to support” “an exchange of prisoners for our American fighting man,” like the one Taliban officials had offered in 2012. He has since labeled Obama’s deal “ill-founded” and a “mistake.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) also thinks that “the administration’s decision to release these five terrorist detainees endangers U.S. national security interests” and “sets a precedent that could encourage our enemies to capture more Americans.”

But since 2011, Ayotte has issued multiple press releases and public statements calling on the Obama administration to “redouble its efforts” to find Bergdahl. She touted a provision in the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2015 defense authorization bill “that presses Pakistan to fully cooperate in the search for SGT Bergdahl” and specifically mentioned Bergdahl in her Memorial Day address.
“We also must continue to keep Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held prisoner by the Taliban for nearly five years, in our thoughts and prayers – and I renew my call on the Defense
Department to redouble its efforts to find Sergeant Bergdahl and return him safely to his family,” she wrote just one week ago.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — has also said that the U.S. “must make every effort to bring this captured soldier home to his family.” But appearing on Fox News just days after Bergdahl’s release, Inhofe criticized the administration for agreeing to free “people who have killed Americans, people who are the brain power of Taliban.”

Still, not all conservatives oppose Obama’s decision. John Bellinger, who served as an adviser to President George W. Bush, has characterized the swap as fair, since the United States would be required to return prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay back to Afghanistan as the military conflict comes to an end.

“I’m not saying this is clearly an easy choice but frankly I think a Republican…confronted with this opportunity to get back Sgt. Bergdahl…would have taken this opportunity to do this,” Bellinger said, adding, “I think we would have made the same decision in the Bush administration.” It appears that many of the administration’s loudest critics would as well.

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/...free-bergdahl/



iow, for Repug assholes, ALL POLITICS ALL THE TIME.

[Winehole23]

mornin

[TeyshaBlue]

lol thinkprogress.

[TeyshaBlue]

Howdy Winehole.

[pgardn]

They are going to claim they did not have all the info...

[Winehole23]

hi there, TB. nice burn on boutons in the other thread.

[TeyshaBlue]

Self-inflicted. I'll just take the assist.