See: Bergdahl Deal Backfiring on Obama
"Hagel defends Bergdahl swap in testimony" by Mark Mazzetti and Charlie Savage | New York Times June 12, 2014
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel defended the prisoner exchange that brought the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl after years of captivity with the Taliban, telling skeptical lawmakers on Wednesday that the operation had needed to be kept secret from Congress to ensure that the soldier was not killed by his captors in the days leading up to the swap.
That argument does not make sense when one considers -- as reported by my ma$$ media, folks -- that the deal was in the works for months if not years. Why would the Taliban kill their bargaining chip after so long?
In the first public testimony before Congress by a senior member of the Obama administration since Bergdahl’s release, Hagel described the exchange as a “military operation” that was in doubt until the very end. He called prisoner swaps part of the “dirty business” of war.
That is why this blog has been against war from the very beginning. You and yours are the problem, Chuck.
“War, every part of war like prisoner exchanges, is not some abstraction or theoretical exercise,” he told members of the House Armed Services Committee. “All of these decisions are part of the brutal, imperfect realities we all deal with in war.”
Hagel showed brief flashes of contrition, acknowledging the complaints of lawmakers’ “great frustration” that they were kept in the dark about the operation and admitting that the Obama administration “could have done a better job” keeping lawmakers informed. A statute signed by President Obama requires that the administration give Congress 30 days’ notice before it transfers a detainee from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Obama issued a signing statement asserting that he could lawfully bypass the notice requirement under certain circumstances.
Signing statement = diktat.
But Hagel did not give ground about the necessity of the prisoner swap, in which Bergdahl was exchanged for five senior Taliban detainees being held at Guantánamo.
Republican critics of the deal have compared it to “negotiating with terrorists,” an accusation echoed Wednesday by Representative Howard McKeon, a California Republican and the committee’s chairman. McKeon also said the deal would “incentivize” militants to capture more US troops.
This is were I wander of the base because all it is doing is reinforcing the whole war narrative based on the inside job false flag lie of 9/11.
In fact, the Globe is full of such related items today, as it is every day. The war on terror and all related stuff is featured very prominently in my agenda-pushing paper every day.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has asserted that the five former detainees — now being held in Qatar for a year under the terms of the prisoner swap — have “American blood on their hands.”
On Wednesday, Hagel said they did not.
“They have not been implicated in any attacks against the United States, and we had no basis to prosecute them in a federal court or military commission,” he said.
Then why were they being held in the first place, other than they could tell bad stories about the torture at Gitmo? They were high-ranking members in the Taliban government turned in by proxy US allies or those looking to cash in at the beginning of the war. That was their crime.
Later, however, under questioning by Representative Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas, Hagel conceded that even though there was no evidence of “direct involvement” in attacks on US troops, the detainees had nevertheless been “combatants” because as mid- to high-ranking members of the Taliban government, they were involved in “planning” Taliban operations after the United States went to war in Afghanistan.
Okay, now THINK ABOUT THAT RATIONALE for a moment!
That would mean ALL the WAR CRIMINAL CABINETS since 2000 are GUILTY of the SAME CRIMES these terrorist Taliban are!!
These puke war criminals of the early 21st-century have become ENTRAPPED by their OWN IMAGERY, ILLUSION and FAKERY of a FACADE!!
So WHEN DO BUSH, CHENEY, CONDI, RUMMY, et al, take up residence in Gitmo?!!!!!!
The other absurdity is the SAME ARGUMENT would be used by these war criminals like Hagel as a defense!
But enough absurdity.
Bergdahl was being held in Pakistan by the Haqqani network, a group aligned with the Taliban that the State Department has listed as a foreign terrorist organization.
Related: Haqqani Ha-Ha
The CIA film studio productions are just funny anymore, sorry.
On Wednesday, several Republican lawmakers asked Hagel to explain why the prisoner swap did not violate the longtime US policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
Hagel said that the Obama administration had dealt directly with Qatari officials, not militants, and that it was operatives of the Taliban and not the Haqqanis who were on the other end of the negotiations.
Yeah, they went through a third party so the convolution made it okay.
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The Globe also enlisted this article:
"Bergdahl discharged from Coast Guard before joining Army" by Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Eric Schmitt | New York Times June 12, 2014
The disclosure that Bergdahl failed to make it through the Coast Guard’s boot camp might raise questions about whether he should have been allowed to enlist in the Army in 2008....
Before he became a Taliban prisoner, before he wrote in his journal, ‘‘I am the lone wolf of deadly nothingness,’’ before he ever joined the Army, Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard for psychological reasons, said close friends who were worried about his emotional health at the time.
I was told in the first paragraph it was "an administrative discharge," but this script is getting weirder and weirder.
The 2006 discharge and a trove of Bergdahl’s writing provided to the Washington Post paint a portrait of a deeply complicated and fragile young man who was by his own account struggling to maintain his mental stability from the start of basic training until the moment in 2009 when he walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan.
Really? That so conflicts with what has been reported so far.
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This mind-manipulating psyop script really taking some strange turns, huh?
These guys should write movie plots instead of propaganda reports. Then again, it's become the same thing.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Ex-POW to return to US amid furor over release" New York Times June 13, 2014
WASHINGTON — Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl will return to the United States on Friday morning to begin treatment at a Texas military medical facility, a Defense Department official said.
It will be the start of a new phase in a multistep healing process for Bergdahl, 28, who since his release has been receiving medical treatment and counseling at a US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
Translation: they are keeping him away from the public and pre$$ for whatever reasons.
While military doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center indicated this week that Bergdahl was physically ready to return to the United States, some US officials questioned whether he was emotionally prepared to make the trip.
Of particular concern, they said, was the potential mental effects of reuniting with his parents, who are from Hailey, Idaho, and the media exposure to which he would be subjected....
As I commented a few days ago, that is such a horse-bleep excuse. Reuniting with loved ones is the first thing you are looking to do to heal. The military is keeping this guy under wraps for a reason. Whether it is reprogramming, keeping him quiet, or some other nefarious case, I don't know. Sorry.
In any event, this script sucks.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Ex-POW to return to US amid furor over release" New York Times June 13, 2014
WASHINGTON — Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl will return to the United States on Friday morning to begin treatment at a Texas military medical facility, a Defense Department official said.
It will be the start of a new phase in a multistep healing process for Bergdahl, 28, who since his release has been receiving medical treatment and counseling at a US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
Translation: they are keeping him away from the public and pre$$ for whatever reasons.
While military doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center indicated this week that Bergdahl was physically ready to return to the United States, some US officials questioned whether he was emotionally prepared to make the trip.
Of particular concern, they said, was the potential mental effects of reuniting with his parents, who are from Hailey, Idaho, and the media exposure to which he would be subjected....
As I commented a few days ago, that is such a horse-bleep excuse. Reuniting with loved ones is the first thing you are looking to do to heal. The military is keeping this guy under wraps for a reason. Whether it is reprogramming, keeping him quiet, or some other nefarious case, I don't know. Sorry.
In any event, this script sucks.
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