American POW freed in prisoner swap. And the GOP doesn't like it.....

Deserters are not soldiers. I'm not saying this guy was necessarily a deserter because I'm not jumping to conclusions. But if he was indeed a deserter, then Obama should have just let the Taliban keep him.

 

here is some background on the Taliban 5, from a profile that ran in the weekly standard last year.

tl;dr: these are very bad guys.

[rquoter]Shortly after opening its political office in Doha, Qatar earlier this week, the Taliban floated the idea of exchanging U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been in captivity since 2009, for the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody at Guantanamo. The offer, which has been a longstanding Taliban demand, was first reported by the Associated Press.

While the U.S. has stripped away its preconditions for the problematic peace talks, the Taliban has continued to insist that the proposed prisoner exchange is a necessary first step for going forward. “First has to be the release of detainees,” Shaheen Suhail, the Taliban’s spokesman, told the Associated Press. “Yes. It would be an exchange. Then step by step, we want to build bridges of confidence to go forward.”

It is easy to see why the Taliban is so keen on freeing them. The five Taliban leaders in question are among Mullah Omar’s most notorious commanders.
Below are short profiles for each of the “Taliban Five.” The summaries have been culled from longer profiles, which rely on leaked and declassified Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) files, as well as other sources. All of the citations below were found in the JTF-GTMO files.

Two of the Taliban commanders have been wanted by the UN for war crimes. JTF-GTMO deemed all five of them “high” risks to the U.S. and its allies. And all five worked closely with al Qaeda prior to their detention.

The Obama administration wants to convince the Taliban to abandon its longstanding alliance with al Qaeda. But these men contributed to the formation of that relationship in the first place. It is difficult to see how their freedom would help the Obama administration achieve one of its principal goals for the hoped-for talks.

Mullah Mohammad Fazl (Taliban army chief of staff): Fazl is “wanted by the UN for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiites.” Fazl “was associated with terrorist groups currently opposing U.S. and Coalition forces including al Qaeda, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), and an Anti-Coalition Militia group known as Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami.” In addition to being one of the Taliban’s most experienced military commanders, Fazl worked closely with a top al Qaeda commander named Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, who headed al Qaeda’s main fighting unit in Afghanistan prior to 9/11 and is currently detained at Guantanamo.

Mullah Norullah Noori (senior Taliban military commander): Like Fazl, Noori is “wanted by the United Nations (UN) for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims.” Beginning in the mid-1990s, Noori “fought alongside al Qaeda as a Taliban military general, against the Northern alliance.” He continued to work closely with al Qaeda in the years that followed.
Abdul Haq Wasiq (Taliban deputy minister of intelligence): Wasiq arranged for al Qaeda members to provide crucial intelligence training prior to 9/11. The training was headed by Hamza Zubayr, an al Qaeda instructor who was killed during the same September 2002 raid that netted Ramzi Binalshibh, the point man for the 9/11 operation. Wasiq “was central to the Taliban's efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. and Coalition forces after the 11 September 2001 attacks,” according to a leaked JTF-GTMO threat assessment.

Khairullah Khairkhwa (Taliban governor of the Herat province and former interior minister): Khairkhwa was the governor of Afghanistan’s westernmost province prior to 9/11. In that capacity, he executed sensitive missions for Mullah Omar, including helping to broker a secret deal with the Iranians. For much of the pre-9/11 period, Iran and the Taliban were bitter foes. But a Taliban delegation that included Kharikhwa helped secure Iran’s support for the Taliban’s efforts against the American-led coalition in late 2001. JTF-GTMO found that Khairkhwa was likely a major drug trafficker and deeply in bed with al Qaeda. He allegedly oversaw one of Osama bin Laden’s training facilities in Herat.

Mohammed Nabi (senior Taliban figure and security official): Nabi “was a senior Taliban official who served in multiple leadership roles.” Nabi “had strong operational ties to Anti-Coalition Militia (ACM) groups including al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), some of whom remain active in ACM activities.” Intelligence cited in the JTF-GTMO files indicates that Nabi held weekly meetings with al Qaeda operatives to coordinate attacks against U.S.-led forces.

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.[/rquoter]

 

republicans support the rule of law until they don't

The dude may very well have had a crisis of conscience and broke the military code of conduct but you don't know the facts without due process. I'm pretty sure you need a psyche evaluation too.

The dudes from Gitmo have been there for 10 years. The US interrogators knew who they were letting go, I doubt they were fire-breathing revenge seekers, probably everyone they knew back then is dead, hell, they might even be inserting chosen informants.

People making definitive statements about things they have little knowledge of are a joke. Do we now not trust The President, The DOD, The CIA? The same people that push the envelope of civil rights to protect us are now endangering us with an irresponsible, highly public act? Wouldn't be very logical.

Bergdahzi!

 

Always good to get the fake army perspective.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>The men who died trying to find <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Bergdahl&amp;src=hash">#Bergdahl</a> after he deserted them. His desertion cost lives <a href="https://twitter.com/EliLake">@EliLake</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Thomasismyuncle">@Thomasismyuncle</a> <a href="http://t.co/wMeyq8dA73">pic.twitter.com/wMeyq8dA73</a></p>&mdash; Christopher Moore (@cjmoore72) <a href="https://twitter.com/cjmoore72/statuses/473415024476569600">June 2, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

Good article from CSM on Bergdahl.

http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2014/0601/Did-Bowe-Bergdahl-go-AWOL-in-Afghanistan

 

sorry all I see is forum posters taking what they see on the media and internet, calling guy a deserter.

that's pure conjecture right there.

 

or until they desert, leading to the death of numerous other soldiers. Same thing right?

 

so you are convicting the guy without benefit of court marshal?

 

If this guy was a deserter, then I can think of nothing more shameful than this story.

This country needs revolution.

 

This is why I can't stand politics, we have people tripping all over themselves trying to justify this action solely because it was done by a politician they support, had it been done by a politician they don't support, their opinion would be completely different. It's pathetic.

 

He was an American Soldier
He was the last POW in Afghanistan
He worked in a chain of command system responsible for morale issues
He is owed due process before conviction
The prisoners, never tried and convicted themselves, are going to Qatar into conditions we do not know

It's the honorable, American thing to do, if you want to abandon your own and have summary justice by hearsay, you should pick a new country

 

Sounds like the kind of person worth saving.

 

if if if

 

What does that have to do with Obama consulting Congress as required by law?

not sure if serious?

It's Congress's call to make by law.

 

So, you are fine with trading 5 high value prisoners for a guy who if convicted, could be sentenced to death? If you were going to trade prisoners for a traitor, why not trade them for Snowden instead?

Simply put, the guy deserted his unit in a war zone and it got at least 6 real soldiers killed as a direct result. He should be put up against a wall and shot. Just because you were a soldier or marine at one point doesn't excuse treason.

 

Yes, 'if convicted' is your key phrase there. It's tough to be consistently ethical.

How are those guys "high value" when they have been in Gitmo for 10 years?

Snowden?

 

Hey, I'm all for checking Presidential overreach. I'm just glad the guy is home after 5 years of being held captive.

Serious.

 

You use your political perspective to explain why you can't stand politics?

All we know at this point is this.... we'll hear more BS and innuendo about this than we will truth, probably from any side... and most of it will be to outweigh or counter the other side's bs.

On the surface I don't like the move as it seems to set a bad precedent but my guess is we will never know the full truth of what has happened and why it was done, so the rest is just conjecture.

What makes me sad is how ready everyone is to condemn an American soldier who was captive for years, just because the move was made by a president on the other side of the aisle from them. It may turn out it deserves derision, but some are just wayyyy too eager.

I'd say let's wait and see what the truth shakes out to be, but I know those few that are the most vocal will not do that. I would guess that there's more to the story than "We gave up the worst terrorists ever to get what we just now found out is a deserter, home. Thanks, Obama."

 

Sounds like a total sack of **** to me.