@revelette2,
Quote:Sgt. Bergdahl was not a hostage but a prisoner of war taken off the battlefield and the negotiations were with Qatar (not terrorist) who will hold the prisoners for another year.
It has been pretty well substantiated that Bergdahl was not captured on the battlefield, but went AWOL and either sought out the Taliban or was found by him. I don't agree that this is a reason for him to rot in Taliban captivity, but it's not unreasonable to suggest it should have been considered in the decision to release five high risk detainees in exchange for him.
Quote:Moreover, congress has known the negotiations were underway,
So says Susan Rice who also insisted the Benghazi assault was the result of an anti-Muslim video. Congressman McKeon refuted Rice's assertion, so it is really a matter of who is telling the truth as opposed to a settled fact.
Quote:..and his health required urgency.
Bergdahl was flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany where he is reported to be in "stable" condition. This doesn't tell us much, since an approved condition term "Good" "Fair," "Serious," or "Critical," was not used or provided. I suspect it is a case of the latter and Bergdahl is either in "Good" or "Fair" condition but revealing that would call into question the assertion that he was on death's door. Of course this is only a suspicion based on this Administration's cavalier treatment of the truth. Time will tell.
Quote:Given all of that, I am not sure what law Obama violated. They knew about the negotiations, I don't think there has to be a vote on it before the President can act on it.
He violated the one that requires him to notify congress of the release of a detainee at least 30 days prior to that release. It's pretty simple.
Even if congress had been told that the Administration was in negotiations with the Taliban (the argument that it was in negotiations with Qatar is legal gymnastics) months before the release, the law was not complied with. You'll note that Rice didn't claim that congress was given the identities of the detainees who were to be part of the deal. Besides if congress did anything based on the report of negotiations alone the Administration would have been clamoring that they interfered with or scuttled the negotiations.
There is no provision in the law that congress must approve of the release and so Obama could have complied and then gone through with the deal in 30 days regardless of whatever objections members of congress might express. It's true that any objections made public might have scuttled the deal, but again, the president shouldn't get to flaunt a law because of a, arguably, cynical prediction.
The law was enacted because a sufficient number of the members of congress didn't believe this Administration could be trusted to release detainees without some oversight. Whether or not their mistrust was unfounded or an insult to the president is beside the point. The law was passed and Obama signed it. To be fair it was an amendment inserted in a Defense Dept appropriations bill and so it's not quite as straight forward a piece of legislation as some might suggest, but this is the way both parties get things written into law, and it wasn't snuck by the Democrats or the president.
If Obama signed the bill into law with every intent to ignore this provision, he was acting in bad faith.
Either the system has to be reformed to prevent legislation by amendment (unlikely to ever happen) or the president needs to veto bills he believes contain provisions with which he cannot or will not comply. Neither he nor any other president should feel they have the right to ignore a law.
If you or I ignore a law because we think it is unconstitutional or simply unjust we won't get very far with that as an article of our defense, and if we do it as an act of civil disobedience we should be cognizant of and willing to suffer the consequences.
