Why should we let them go? They're POWs, which means they're in for the duration.
Prisoner trade by Obama: Malevolent or just Stupid?
- Thread starter Colpy
- Start date
Are they POWs? I believe the US classified them as "Unlawful combatants".
If they were POWs they would have to abide by the Third Geneva Convention, no?
OK, you tell me. If they're "unlawful combatants," we can do pretty much as we please, seeing as how there's no law covering unlawful combatants. If they're POWs, they're in for the duration, entitled only to a summary, non-appealable hearing as to their status.
Take your pick.
They sure look happy they put one over on the Americans.......
Taliban Releases Video of Bowe Bergdahl Exchange - YouTube
Or did they.........really
Taliban Releases Video of Bowe Bergdahl Exchange - YouTube
Or did they.........really
Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military.
I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.
Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.
But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)
more to make you throw-up in your mouth
Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash | National Review Online
I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.
Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.
But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)
more to make you throw-up in your mouth
Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash | National Review Online
Well, that is what the US has been going for. The difference between a lawful combatant and an unlawful combatant mostly boils down to if they can be held personally responsible for breaking domestic laws of the country that holds them.
The US is signatory to international treaties that cover this situation, like the 4th Geneva convention and many in the international legal community believe that the US has broken their commitments in these treaties.
They are in this crazy zone where they have declared them unlawful combatants in order to avoid the third Geneva convention, yet held them outside of the US to try to keep them out of the purview of US courts, which should be deciding their fate given that they are not lawful combatants. They are trying to use loopholes to get out of any accountability.
Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military.
I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.
Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.
But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)
I actually believe that Ms. Rice was kind of sincere, in her spectacularly oblivious way. In the best Manchurian Candidate manner, she said what she had been programmed to say by her political culture, then she was blindsided by the firestorm she ignited by scratching two flinty words together. At least she didn’t blame Bergdahl’s desertion on a video.
The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release — as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.
Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.
But compassion, please! The president and all the president’s men and women are not alone. Our media elite — where it’s a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform — instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that “we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters.”
Uh, no. “Save the deserter” is a recent battle cry of the politically indoctrinated brass. For much of our history, we did make some efforts to track down deserters in wartime. Then we shot or hanged them. Or, if we were in good spirits, we merely used a branding iron to burn a large D into their cheeks or foreheads. Even as we grew more enlightened, desertion brought serious time in a military prison. At hard labor.
This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)
President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain’t a tribute to ZZ Top). How do you say “outrageous insult to our vets” in Pashto?
Nor, during the recent VA scandal, had the president troubled himself to host the families of survivors of those vets who died awaiting care. No, the warmest attention our president has ever paid to a “military family” was to Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl.
(I will refrain from criticism of the bumptious attempts to cool the flames of this political conflagration by Secretary Hagel: I never pick on the weak.)
What is to be done? Behind the outrage triggered by Team Obama’s combination of cynicism and obliviousness (Bergdahl was so ill we had to set those terrorists free immediately, without notifying Congress, but now he’s chugging power shakes in a military hospital . . . and all this just happened to come at the peak of the VA scandal . . . ), military members don’t really want to lynch Bergdahl. But they want justice.
Our military leaders need to rediscover their moral courage and honor our traditions, our regulations, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We need a fresh, unprejudiced 15-6 investigation (the military equivalent of a grand jury). We already know, as the military has known since the first 24 hours after Bergdahl abandoned his post, that sufficient evidence exists for a court-martial, but it’s important to do this by the numbers.
It’s hard to believe that the resulting court-martial would not find Bergdahl guilty of desertion (although there will be heavy White House pressure to reduce the charge to Absent Without Leave, or AWOL, status, a lesser offense). If he is convicted, I for one do not want him to go to prison. I’m sure he’s paid and paid for betraying his comrades, quite possibly suffering brutal sexual violence. But if he is found guilty, he needs to be formally reduced to the rank of private, stripped of all privileges and entitlements (the taxpayer should not pay for a deserter’s lifelong health care — Bergdahl’s book and film deals can cover that), and he should be given the appropriate prison sentence, which would then be commuted by the president. Thereafter, let Mr. Bergdahl go home and live with himself.
As for President Obama, how about just one word of thanks to the families of those fallen soldiers you sent out to find Bowe Bergdahl?
— Fox News Strategic Analyst Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and former enlisted man.
Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash | National Review Online
Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash | National Review Online
THAT I actually agree with.....it would be much better to have turned the terrorists over to the tender mercies of the countries where they were captured.
I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.
Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.
But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)
I actually believe that Ms. Rice was kind of sincere, in her spectacularly oblivious way. In the best Manchurian Candidate manner, she said what she had been programmed to say by her political culture, then she was blindsided by the firestorm she ignited by scratching two flinty words together. At least she didn’t blame Bergdahl’s desertion on a video.
The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release — as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.
Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.
But compassion, please! The president and all the president’s men and women are not alone. Our media elite — where it’s a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform — instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that “we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters.”
Uh, no. “Save the deserter” is a recent battle cry of the politically indoctrinated brass. For much of our history, we did make some efforts to track down deserters in wartime. Then we shot or hanged them. Or, if we were in good spirits, we merely used a branding iron to burn a large D into their cheeks or foreheads. Even as we grew more enlightened, desertion brought serious time in a military prison. At hard labor.
This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)
President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain’t a tribute to ZZ Top). How do you say “outrageous insult to our vets” in Pashto?
Nor, during the recent VA scandal, had the president troubled himself to host the families of survivors of those vets who died awaiting care. No, the warmest attention our president has ever paid to a “military family” was to Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl.
(I will refrain from criticism of the bumptious attempts to cool the flames of this political conflagration by Secretary Hagel: I never pick on the weak.)
What is to be done? Behind the outrage triggered by Team Obama’s combination of cynicism and obliviousness (Bergdahl was so ill we had to set those terrorists free immediately, without notifying Congress, but now he’s chugging power shakes in a military hospital . . . and all this just happened to come at the peak of the VA scandal . . . ), military members don’t really want to lynch Bergdahl. But they want justice.
Our military leaders need to rediscover their moral courage and honor our traditions, our regulations, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We need a fresh, unprejudiced 15-6 investigation (the military equivalent of a grand jury). We already know, as the military has known since the first 24 hours after Bergdahl abandoned his post, that sufficient evidence exists for a court-martial, but it’s important to do this by the numbers.
It’s hard to believe that the resulting court-martial would not find Bergdahl guilty of desertion (although there will be heavy White House pressure to reduce the charge to Absent Without Leave, or AWOL, status, a lesser offense). If he is convicted, I for one do not want him to go to prison. I’m sure he’s paid and paid for betraying his comrades, quite possibly suffering brutal sexual violence. But if he is found guilty, he needs to be formally reduced to the rank of private, stripped of all privileges and entitlements (the taxpayer should not pay for a deserter’s lifelong health care — Bergdahl’s book and film deals can cover that), and he should be given the appropriate prison sentence, which would then be commuted by the president. Thereafter, let Mr. Bergdahl go home and live with himself.
As for President Obama, how about just one word of thanks to the families of those fallen soldiers you sent out to find Bowe Bergdahl?
— Fox News Strategic Analyst Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and former enlisted man.
Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash | National Review Online
Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash | National Review Online
THAT I actually agree with.....it would be much better to have turned the terrorists over to the tender mercies of the countries where they were captured.
I don't get how people can say stuff like this and use it as reason that it was wrong to go get Bergdahl.
If you are going to hold this "sacred trust" in such high regard, don't you think you should also abide by it yourself?
I don't see anything in there about this sacred trust only extending to a point. You may hate this guy and hate what he reportedly did, but when others fail, it doesn't give you excuse to fail too.
Is English not your first language??
BOWE BERGDAHL, JUST DESERTS
June 4, 2014
Death Penalty Month at anncoulter.com has already been interrupted by the psycho in Santa Barbara, and now it's being interrupted by the Buddhist in Bagram.
Keeping to the spirit of Death Penalty Month, let's review the execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik. Slovik's offense: desertion in wartime. (See the tie-in?)
Unlike Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted his unit, according to the accounts of his comrades, Slovik never actually deserted. He also didn't call America a "disgusting" country or say he was "ashamed to be an American."
Slovik was just a chicken.
In October 1944, as Allied forces were sweeping through France, Slovik left his position on the front lines, walked to the rear of his unit and handed a note to the cook, confessing his desertion. The letter explained that he was "so scared" that he had already abandoned his unit once, and concluded: "AND I'LL RUN AWAY AGAIN IF I HAVE TO GO OUT THERE."
Slovik was like Bradley Manning minus the lipstick and eyeliner.
A lieutenant, a company commander and a judge advocate all tried to persuade Slovik to shred the letter and return to his unit, warning him that he'd be tried for desertion otherwise. Slovik refused.
In the middle of World War II, the military court-martialed Slovik, tried him and sentenced him to death.
Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower denied Slovik's pardon request, saying it would encourage more desertions, just as the fighting was getting especially hot. Slovik was executed by firing squad and buried among the numbered graves of court-martialed rapists and murderers in an American military cemetery in France.
Contrast Slovik's story with the beloved troop whose return just cost us the release of five of the most dangerous terrorists in the world.
Three days before he walked off his base, Bergdahl emailed his parents:
-- "I am ashamed to be an american."
-- "The US army is the biggest joke ... It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies."
-- "These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid."
-- "The horror that is america is disgusting."
These emails were given to the author of a 2012 Rolling Stone article on the case by Bergdahl's own parents.
The overwrought soldier's father, Bob, emailed back: "OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!" And then, according to the Rolling Stone profile reporting these emails -- as well as the Army report on the incident -- Bergdahl "decided to walk away."
Bergdahl's unit commander, Evan Buetow, told CNN's Jake Tapper that intercepted Taliban "chatter" soon revealed that Bergdahl was looking for a member of the Taliban who spoke English. (Other than his father.)
Buetow said he couldn't prove it, but he believed Bergdahl began helping the Taliban attack his own unit. After that, Buetow says, the assaults were much more direct, and Bergdahl would have known the unit's tactics and how they would respond to an attack.
U.S. forces in the area spent the next two months on a single mission: trying to find Bergdahl. It is beyond dispute that any American killed during that time was killed on a mission to "rescue" Bergdahl from his new comrades.
Over the years, the Taliban produced several propaganda videos with Bergdahl -- eating, doing push-ups and criticizing American foreign policy.
During the Vietnam War, POW Navy Vice Admiral James Stockdale disfigured himself so that he could not be used in a propaganda video. He slit his wrists to avoid being tortured for information.
When captured Navy aviator Jeremiah Denton was forced by the North Vietnamese to make a propaganda video, he blinked the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code, over and over again, as he said these words:
"I don't know what is going on in the war now. My only sources are North Vietnamese radio, magazines and newspapers. But whatever the position of my government, I agree with it. I support it. I will support it as long as I live."
It was the first confirmation the U.S. had that the North Vietnamese were torturing POWs.
These men -- and many more -- had limbs torn from their sockets, their legs and backs shattered by the North Vietnamese. As Denton said of the repeated torture, he'd rather lose an arm than his honor.
When right-wingers get choked up about "the troops," these are the sort of men we're thinking of. Not Bowe "America is disgusting" Bergdahl.
But to Obama, Bergdahl was the picture of American manhood and military honor.
He released five of the most dangerous terrorists in the world -- captured at great cost to our military -- in order to give Bergdahl an exit plan from his Great Adventure. (Before he ever set foot in Afghanistan, Bergdahl had told a fellow soldier, "If this deployment is lame, I'm just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan.")
Bergdahl wasn't being "left behind" or "left on the battlefield." He was being left where he wanted to be, with the poor, innocent Talibanists, far away from this "disgusting" country that made him "ashamed to be an American."
Ann Coulter - June 4, 2014 - BOWE BERGDAHL, JUST DESERTS
No. It is laid out pretty clear.
"Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated."
How can you be mad at someone else for violating something while promoting that everyone else should do the same.
If it really is a "sacred trust", you wouldn't violate it under any circumstances, including if someone else violates it.
Newly freed soldier's Idaho hometown cancels rally amid backlash
Newly freed soldier's Idaho hometown cancels rally amid backlash
Newly freed soldier's Idaho hometown cancels rally amid backlash
"Heather Dawson, the city administrator of Hailey, Idaho, told Reuters that town officials called off the June 28 event at the request of organizers because the town "will be unable to safely manage the number of people expected."
The decision came as the community came under mounting pressure to cancel the rally in the face of rising anger, expressed in emails and phone calls directed at city officials and businesses, over claims by Bergdahl's onetime Army comrades that he had deliberately abandoned his post in Afghanistan.
.....
The statement went on to say organizers expected a dramatic increase in attendance "by people who both want to support or protest against it," adding that in "the interest of public safety, the event will be canceled.""
It sounds like Bergdahl may have been safer in the hands of the Taliban than he will be in the US.
if he is what is being thrown around here that he is, a deserter, then the last thing he would have wanted, was
to be handed back to the u.s., so the taliban might have been his friend, but that all went down the
drain when the exchange was arranged.
if he is what you say he is, he probably begged them to let him stay there, he probably thought he had
found safe haven, now he is in a bees nest.
to be handed back to the u.s., so the taliban might have been his friend, but that all went down the
drain when the exchange was arranged.
if he is what you say he is, he probably begged them to let him stay there, he probably thought he had
found safe haven, now he is in a bees nest.
Bergdahl is going to get killed. Dead man walking.
When did the "no man left behind" trope begin?
Lol, now it's a "trope"? Was it a trope when everyone was quoting it in relation to Benghazi?
Less funny though is how right I think you are about his life being in danger. This is exactly why I hate seeing stuff like this turn into a circus. Sometimes it has very real consequences.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr49TsLSnnkAt 2:04 notice that the US Special Forces operators search Bergdahl for weapons before allowing him on the helicopter.
Notice the special forces search Bergdahl for weapons before allowing him on the helicopter...@2:04.
If he was a deserter, which seems pretty well assured, and especially if he gave aid to the enemy, it is only right that he not be safe in the USA.
But.....we have fought that to a standstill.
So let's move on......
A couple of years ago, the idea of trading some Taliban from Guantanimo was brought up to Congress by the White House. In response, Congress passed a law SPECIFICALLY FORBIDDING the action taken by Obama without 30 day notice to Congress.
Obama broke that law.
Obama was NOT elected Emperor, and has brazenly broken the law and trashed the constitution.
Impeach him. It is the only recourse left to those that believe in democracy.