Poll: 84 Percent Say #Bergdahl Deal Will Encourage Terrorist Groups to Seize More Soldiers

A Fox News poll conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Co. Research, contacting 1,006 respondents, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

See, "Fox News Poll: 84 percent worry prisoner swap puts US soldiers at risk." (The raw survey questionnaire is here.)

The findings are devastating for the White House.

A majority of 57 percent are "very concerned" that the Berdahl exchange "will encourage these groups to take more American soldiers hostage." Another 27 percent are "somewhat concerned," bringing the total up to more than 8-of-10 who say this deal sucks Taliban goats' balls.

From the article:

Americans hold mixed views of the Obama administration’s deal to swap a captive U.S. soldier for five Taliban prisoners, yet almost all fear that negotiating with terrorist groups will put U.S. troops at risk.

That’s according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

A prisoner exchange Saturday that released U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top-level Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay has sparked debate over negotiating with terrorists. Fully 84 percent of voters are concerned that making deals with terrorists will encourage those groups to take more American soldiers hostage. That includes a 57-percent majority that is “very” concerned and another 27 percent that is “somewhat” concerned.

Only 15 percent aren’t worried deals like this will put more troops at risk.

Also:

Bergdahl was held captive for five years in Afghanistan. Voters are nearly evenly divided over the Taliban-exchange deal that got him released: 45 percent approve vs. 47 percent disapprove.

Well, so much for the White House expectation of public "euphoria" over the deal. At Hot Air, "Chuck Todd: The White House expected “euphoria” over Bergdahl’s release."

At this point you have to question the wisdom (if not the sanity) of President Obama and his inner circle. This prisoner exchange --- perhaps more than anything the Obama-Dems have done in this past six years --- confirms the worst, most vehement attacks on Obama's post-American ideological program. I mean, gawd, this has all the markers of the most hackneyed comic-page attacks on this administration over the last half-decade: the opportunistic weekend news dump (and "look over there" distraction squirrel, to deflect from the VA scandal); the president's own narcissistic belief that the public would collectively bend over in hosannas and Obama zombie-cult ululations; the White House press conference with Bowe Bergdahl's parents, in which father Bob Bergdahl comes out dressed like a Taliban chieftain, exhorting Bismillah al rahman al rahim in Arabic ("In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate") before mumbling a few more foreign homilies in Pashto; all complete with the president's national security advisor arguing that the deserter Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction."

Add on top of that the administration's meme that Bergdahl's fellow soldiers are lying  --- and "swiftboating" this treasonous ballet dancer-cum-Army private first class --- and you've got a concatenation of circumstances that makes the New Yorker's 2008 portrayal of the Muslim Obama with the Black Panther First Lady look positively prescient.

The Democrats are putting the world's most murderous terrorists back on the battlefield. They're war criminals for crying out loud! And the American people are not pleased. The outrage, as shown in the poll, goes far beyond partisan lines. A Washington Post poll out last week showed that a bare majority of 51 percent of Americans favored the formation of a new congressional panel to investigate the Benghazi terrorist attacks --- with 31 percent of Democrats supporting a new probe. The Bergdahl treason-terror exchange only throws fuel on the fire of public disgust over Obama administration incompetence and dishonesty. Politically, I'm thinking back to the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 (which nearly crippled President Reagan's administration), only now with the Bergdahl debacle the Democrats will be taking yet another political hit before the 2014 midterms.

Sadly, only the most diehard leftist partisans, apologists and terror-enablers will now be standing with administration. It's almost as if the president wanted to prove his most vociferous detractors correct. Obama's pulled off an own-goal of monumental proportions, a cluster perhaps not seen in American politics since the Carter administration, and even then our cardigan-wearing chief executive tried to turn things around before it was too late.

Alas, Barack "it's-all-about-me" Obama comes nowhere near Jimmy Carter's level of political humility, to say nothing of basic decency.