Bergdahl Prisoner Swap:Obama Obeys ONLY the Laws He Wants To.

On Tuesday, Obama again asserted that his administration had been consulting with lawmakers “for some time” and had made clear that it might have to take quick action.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) pushed back, saying that Congress hadn’t heard from the Obama administration since 2011 on the possibility of a prisoner swap with the Taliban.
“I don’t know what he means by ‘consulted Congress for some time,’” Rogers said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “In 2011, they did come up and present a plan that included a prisoner transfer that was, in a bipartisan way, pushed back. We hadn’t heard anything since on any details of any prisoner exchange.”

Republicans got some backup from a powerful Democrat, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California, who criticized Obama for not looping in Congress earlier.
“Should we have gotten advance warning? I actually think so,” she said Monday. “We had participated in a number of briefings some time ago, and there was considerable concern.”

"[T]he White House is pretty unilateral about what they want to do when they want to do it," she said, adding that her whole committee was "very dismayed" about the administration's actions.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) raised doubts Monday that Bergdahl was even in grave health — the reason provided by administration officials as to why they couldn’t abide by the 30-day notification requirement.

“There’s no indication of that other than what the president says,” Chambliss said, “and I don’t believe a thing this president says now.”

“I don’t like it when the White House says the Intelligence Committees were briefed. Because we weren’t. Dianne wasn’t. I wasn’t. Saxby wasn’t. [Sen. Richard] Burr wasn’t. And [Sen. Ron] Wyden wasn’t. And we are the five senior people,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a former Intelligence Committee chairman. “Even that I can live with, but when they say, ‘Oh yes, they were briefed.’ What they are referring to is 2011-2012 when I was still in grade school.”

“One of the issues I want to bring up: What is the precedent this sets or doesn’t set?” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska.).

“I asked questions about life-threatening illnesses. No one could say that this man, Sgt. Bergdahl, was in a life-threatening situation near death,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I also asked: ‘On a scale of one-to-ten, what kind of likelihood would exist for these guys going back to the fight after the year?’ And let’s put it this way: The answer was very disturbing. Likelihood being great.”

“At certain points, they were cutting people out of meetings because everything was being leaked [and] people were very skittish about being criticized,” the ex-official said. Former White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler — who stepped down last month — was among those reluctant to buck the restrictions Congress imposed and Obama signed with reservations, the source said.

Can this White House ever be honest about anything?

Feinstein before she received a personal apology from the White House

Appearing on the Today Show this morning, Chuck Todd reports that, in response to allegations of possible desertion by Bowe Bergdahl, White House sources are accusing the soldiers that served with him of "swift boating." Prior to the allegations made by those who served with Bergdahl, National Security Advisor Susan Rice had said Bergdahl served with "Honor and distinction." From the transcript of the Today Show:

Every [White House] aide I've talked to said they expected there to be controversy involving the decision to release five members of the taliban from gitmo, and the fact that this would then escalate that debate, which has been simmering for a good five years, which is what to do with those detainees, how do you release them, where do you release them. They did not expect this backlash on bergdahl himself. I've had a few aides describe it to me as we didn't know that they were going to swift boat Bergdahl. And that's a reference to that political fight back in 2004 over john kerry's military service, so there's some fighting words there.

the adminstrations thugs in on the fact that the military is held in much higher esteem then they are.

Again, the Taliban detainees were classified unlawful-combatants. Unless you know the Obama Administration reclassified them as POWs, there would have been no obligation to release them at the end of hostilities (whenever that could be determined to have occurred)

Quote:

These men from Bergdahls unit were killed in action looking for him in the days immediately following Bergdahl's desertion

Are those Republicans, Democrats, or just dead?

Flip… flop… flip… flop…

Having a Democrat for president makes it a scandal. If a Republican had done it you folks would be wizzing your pants with joy.

Not All Aiders and Abetters are Equal

He appears to be guilty of being a friend of the Tsarnaevs, and of sharing broadly their worldview, which - under America's insane, suicidal immigration policies - many, many people in this country also share. But he was aware of the scrutiny his friendship with the brothers would draw and so he clumsily deleted from his computer a bazillion generic "Death to America!" videos, none of which are material to the investigation. At the hearing today, he was also accused of wiring $14,000 over four years to non-relatives overseas. (By the way, I'm guilty of that.)

For this, he's looking at forty years in the slammer:

Matanov was charged with obstruction of justice by destruction, alteration, and falsification of records or documents in a federal investigation, which carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison. He was also charged with three counts of making false statements to agents in a terrorism investigation, each of which carries a punishment of up to eight years in prison.

As I said, America's immigration and asylum policy is nuts: that's the ultimate suicide bomb, here as in Europe. If I were in charge of the bureaucracy, I would not prioritize Chechen, Dagestani or Kyrgyzsz immigration. (Mr Matanov was admitted as a refugee "because of turmoil in Kyrgyzszstan".) But, absent my stern hand, the Government of the United States takes a more relaxed view of these chaps, and as a matter of policy gives them the run of the country. Until, that is, you schedule an ill-timed dinner date and delete your collection of Jihad for Dummies YouTube videos.

Now consider another US resident - an American national called Barack Obama. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn't had dinner with terrorists but he and his subordinates have been in close contact with them, including extensive negotiations to pay Bowe Bergdahl's Haqqani kidnappers a ransom, doubtless well in excess of the three-and-a-half grand a year Mr Matanov was wiring out of the country. The implication of today's testimony is that Matanov's wire transfers may have gone to some murky middle-men who passed it on to some guy who passed it on to some guy who passed it on to some guy who used it to finance terrorism in some way. All $14,000 of it.

Could be. Who knows? But we do know for certain that the money the Government of the United States offered to the Haqqani network would have gone to terrorism because that's the business these guys are in - which is why, two years ago, the same US Government that subsequently offered to pay them money designated them as a terrorist network. If 14K is enough to earn Matanov four decades behind bars, what sum do you think the Government of the United States was offering to the Haqqani, and what pro rata jail term would that work out to?

The terrorists Mr Matanov is accused of "aiding and abetting" killed three people. What of the five high-level terrorists Barack Obama has just sprung from Gitmo to wander around Qatar at liberty for a year and then head off wherever they wish? Let's take just one of them, Mullah Norullah Noori, according to a report from JTF-GTMO, leaked by Wikileaks:

Detainee was a senior Taliban military commander in Mazar-e-Sharif during hostilities against US and Coalition forces in late 2001. Detainee was also the Taliban governor for the Balkh and Laghman provinces and is wanted by the United Nations (UN) for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims.

So Barack Obama has just liberated an internationally wanted war criminal who's killed thousands of people. If going to a Boston restaurant with terrorists who've killed three people is worth 40 years in the Big House, how long would you get for helping terrorists who've killed thousands?

Oh, but Mr Matanov had all those "Death to America!" videos on his computer. Well, Barack Obama stood in the Rose Garden and hugged a man who declared that "God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!" - which presumably means that Americans will suffer and die as a result of their actions in Afghanistan. And, in fact, the Rose Garden video itself, complete with invocations of Allah in Arabic, is a much more effective jihadist propaganda tool than any of the garbage on Matanov's computer.

But there it is: Khairullozhon Matanov's life is over, while Barack Obama is hailed by Susan Rice and Senator Chris Murphy for bringing home an American hero.

~What national interest of the United States justified President Obama's actions?

Oh, don't be ridiculous. That's not how he thinks about it. He's working on his "legacy", and one of the things that he wants to do is close Gitmo before he leaves office, and redeem himself in the eyes of the anti-war left. The problem is nobody except our avowed enemies wants to take these guys. Obama went behind the British Government's back and dumped four Uighurs on Bermuda - which is the equivalent of David Cameron dumping a bunch of IRA guys in the US Virgin Islands. Bermuda would dearly like to be rid of them ,and the Uighurs would dearly like to be rid of Bermuda. But they're stuck in limbo, the lonesomest Uighurs on the planet, so Obama can't pull that shtick twice.

So as the clock ticks down the priority was to liberate the hardest, most violent men out of Gitmo under some other pretext. The pretext the President chose was a "prisoner exchange" - and Bowe Bergdahl was the only American available to play the US end of this pantomime horse of a pseudo-exchange. It's not that he wanted this guy back, it's that he wanted to get rid of the other guys.

Even so, it's impressive how far he was prepared to go to prioritize his "legacy" - which is to say his and his party's political needs - over the national interest of the United States of America. If you were watching from Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Saudi Arabia, that Rose Garden ceremony was, in effect, an acknowledgment of American defeat.

But it was worth it to the President because, under the peculiar priorities of his base, it's better to be the man who closed the prison camp than the man who won the war.

The proof is in the two faced statements I quoted.

A former Bush administration official broke with Republicans on Tuesday to defend President Obama’s prisoner exchange, arguing that since “the war in Afghanistan is winding down,” the United States would be required to return prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay back to Afghanistan.

“I don’t see how these particular Taliban officials could ever have been tried in the southern district of New York,” John Bellinger, who served as an adviser to President George W. Bush explained during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday. “They’re certainly some Al Qaeda detainees who committed actual terrorist acts against Americans who perhaps could have been tried in a federal court because they committed federal crimes, but these particular Taliban detainees I think could never have been tried in federal court.” Although some of the released prisoners posed a danger to the United States when they were captured in 2002, especially toward soldiers serving in Afghanistan, several of the detainees did not commit crimes against Americans.

Republicans — including former Vice President Dick Cheney — have blasted the administration for swapping five Taliban-linked prisoners to secure U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s freedom. They argue that the trade endangers Americans stationed overseas by sending top Taliban officials back into the battlefield and could inspire other terrorist groups to capture American service members in order to extract concessions from the United States. GOP lawmakers also claim that the administration circumvented a law requiring Congress to be notified 30 days before prisoners are transferred from Guantanamo Bay.

Asked about reports that Bergdahl deserted his unit, Bellinger added that the former hostage “will have to face justice, military justice.” “We don’t leave soldiers on the battlefield under any circumstance unless they have actually joined the enemy army,” he said. “He was a young 20-year-old. Young 20-year-olds make stupid decisions. I don’t think we’ll say if you make a stupid decision we’ll leave you in the hands of the Taliban.”

Though Cheney told Fox News on Monday that he would not have agreed to the deal, Bellinger stressed that the Bush administration “returned something like 500 detainees from Guantanamo.” Statistics from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence show that only 6 percent (5 in total) of Guantanamo detainees released during the Obama administration have potentially engaged in militant activities. That compares with a rate of nearly 30 percent under the Bush administration.

“I’m not saying this is clearly an easy choice but frankly I think a Republican, a president of either party, Republican or Democratic confronted with this opportunity to get back Sgt. Bergdahl, who is apparently in failing health, would have taken this opportunity to do this,” he added. “I think we would have made the same decision in the Bush administration.”

President Obama defended trade in similar terms Tuesday. “The United States has always had a pretty sacred rule, and that is: we don’t leave our men or women in uniform behind,” Obama said in Warsaw, Poland. “Regardless of the circumstances, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity. Period. Full stop.”