I was thinking of Nixon and Reagan, actually.
:rolleyes:
Well that’s lovely but the law didn’t exist back then. brand spanking new and ready to be followed. And it was really tough too. It involved picking up a phone.
I wasn’t speaking of “the law”, but the law, as in a law.
:rolleyes:
Sorry old chap, I haven’t being following the news too closely.
I must have missed the story about the U.S. forces and their allies killing ‘hundreds of thousands of Arabs’.
Would you care to provide a link for the enrichment of my education?
It must really bug you to witness a president using his powers for good instead of evil. 
So long as it’s polite idiocy, it doesn’t need Pitting.
Um… Your grandmother’s sun hat is unflattering…
There, that’ll get it moved!
And my grandmother really stinks, too! At least I’ll bet she does, after decomposing for a couple of decades. Agree the sun hat wouldn’t do a thing for her at this point, what with her being six feet underground and all.
Gentlemanly, refined discussion.
:rolleyes:
So how many veterans of foreign wars died while on the waiting list at the VA hospital in Phoenix.
We could of traded some lower level terrorist at Guantanamo Bay for them to get treatment too. :smack:
American troops are being withdrawn from Afghanistan. As several people have pointed out, the United States will have a lot less leverage against the Taliban once it no longer has the option of military strikes to back up its demands. So any deal made after this year would have been made under worse terms.
I don’t have a problem with the prisoner exchange but it does appear that the administration has badly mishandled this.
The soldier’s history should concern even the President’s supporters and he should have been made available for an interview by now. This is an embarrassment to the President.
It’s looking even more ham fisted. I don’t think there is anything particularly sinister here beyond hastiness and a basic lack of due diligence.
The problem is that some people have been crying wolf since 2008. There are people who are insisting every action taken by the Obama administration has been wrong. We all know that if Obama hadn’t made the deal and had left Bergdahl in Afghanistan, these same people who be denouncing him for that decision with equal fervor.
So Bergdahl had a habit of sneaking off the post. That has to make him the dumbest MF serving in the Army. I can’t imagine a more hostile place in the world than an American alone in Iraq or Afghanistan. There’s no such thing as a safe village over there. The villagers might be ok, but somebody will tip off the insurgents and they’ll drop by pretty quick.
Outright desertion makes even less sense. Where the heck do you go? You’re in the middle of Afghanistan. Not exactly a place you can just hitchhike out of.
Interesting stuff, if true, but I don’t see what these allegations have to do with the efforts to try and get him released.
Truth is there were no easy solutions in Afghanistan. We took out the Taliban largely using their enemies the other warlords and such who were hardly any better. Karzie himself is supposed to keep a boy lover.
Now word is coming down that the US knew where this guy was being kept but any military action to rescue him would have put too many lives, both US and Afghan civilian, in jeopardy. They say 6 men already died trying.
I’m fine with Obama sending all the Guantanamo prisoners back to wherever they came from and closing the damn thing. Let Afghanistan or wherever deal with them.
Why bargain away five high ranking Taliban prisoners for someone that joined the other side? Or allegedly tried to and got taken prisoner? He made his choice. Let him accept the consequences.
We may need that bargaining position later. Who knows what might come up in the next couple years. The Taliban has focused on getting these 5 back for years. We’ve wasted the best bargaining chip we had.
He allegedly made a choice. We don’t know what choice he made. I’m not willing to leave a soldier behind for the enemy, just because he is accused of desertion, and just because he supposedly left a note behind that was critical of the USA.
It may have been an unwise trade, but not because of anything Bergdahl did – we were duty-bound to treat him like any other soldier who was captured by enemy forces.
Or more likely, some independant contractors who probably have less security and would make better targets. Didn’t Israel have this exact problem after the first round of prisoner exchanges with the PLO? The PLO realized that kidnapping Israelis was an excellent way to get their own guys released, so guess what happened?
And the fact that we traded 5 high-level baddies for 1 deserter (or at best, AWOL) just rubs salt in the wound. My guess is the Administration will tell the army not to court-marshal him, even tho he undoubtably should be.
So far it looks as if the Army will be investigating him (as they should), and if the evidence warrants, they will bring charges.