BERGDAHL POW EXCHANGE, NOT AS SIMPLE AS IT SEEMS

 

…Gitmo…some of the “Taliban 5” were here for well over a decade.

 

With Fox News trying to “Benghazi-ize” the prisoner exchange,  once again they are making a serious issue, totally political.

As expected, 6 individuals on Fox News have used their imagined “Benghazi” scandal to describe the GI’s Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange.  I am supposing that those on Fox will somehow also be able to shoe-horn “Benghazi” into their reporting on the 70^th Anniversary of last week’s Normandy invasion ceremony.

But before we take a Fox approach to reporting the exchange, let’s look at what we know about the exchange of the five Taliban Guantanamo prisoners for the captured US Army Sargent, Bowe Bergdahl.

First, these five Taliban prisoners were some of the earliest to be sent to Gitmo.  Some as early as 2001, right after 9/11, and some of their prisoner numbers were as low as being in single digits.

·       These five were some of the hardest of the hard core leaders of the Taliban, but they are not al Qaeda.

·       We are currently not at war with the Taliban, and it is not listed as a terrorist organization.  We are still at war with the al Qaeda.

·       After 5 years in captivity, there were concerns for Bergdahl’s health which caused the fast action exchange.  Having a POW die while in captivity after 5 years would have been even worse.

·       The five Taliban prisoners are supposed to spend a year being monitored in the Gulf peninsula country of Qatar.  After 1 year, the US will mostly be out of Afghanistan.

·       Due to their Bush established “enhanced interrogation” treatment in Gitmo, the health of all of these Taliban individuals is in serious question.

·       Dubya Bush & Dick Cheney released well over 500 Gitmo detainees back to Afghanistan w/o them spending an extra year anywhere.  30% of these released were said to have gone back to the war.

·       Even though these were some of the badest of the bad, after all this time, the military lawyers could not find any solid evidence to charge the five for taking them to trial.

·       With the war winding down, all five prisoners would have just been released when the war is officially over next year.  This is the US law for POW’s when a war ends.

·       At least, they got the last American POW back in the trade.  We do not leave any soldier behind.

·       Congress was not given the normal 30 day notice  on the trade, but Congress had been previously made aware that a trade was a possibility.

·       Many Republican politicians, including Senator John McCain, were for a prisoner trade before they were against it.

·       Even though there were and still are questions about how Bergdahl was captured, first you get him back, make him well, then deal with the reasons for his leaving his post.  Yes, he could still go to the brig for leaving his post.

·       No US soldier is left behind…period!

Hillary Clinton’s new book talks about some of the “Hard Choices” that she and some political leaders sometimes have to make.  This was one of those hard choices that President Obama had to approve.  The president obviously figured that, knowing that the war was ending anyway, it would be better to get the last American prisoner with questionable health back with a trade.  Sending the Taliban POW prisoners to Qatar for a year made for an acceptable resolution.

Obama going to be hit this hard by the opposition, as he has been, must have been a bit of a surprise.  Usually, bringing home a POW is a cause for celebration.  With the questionable reasons around this prisoner’s capture, and the 6 soldiers that were killed while looking for the missing soldier, it just makes the situation that much worse.

The president seriously erred in having Bergdahl’s parents in a White House Rose Garden reception.  The parent's notification should have been a very low key event.  In addition, the Security Advisor, Susan Rice, should not have publicly stated that a potential military deserter served the nation “with distinction”.  Both of these actions are just more fuel to the fire for the opposition, especially all the “talkers” on the Fox channel.

This one won’t be over for a long time to come, and the Republicans are licking their chops from this event.

Copyright G.Ater  2014