Releasing the Taliban — #BergdahlTraitor

From Marc Thiessen, at the Washington Post, "Here’s what happens when Taliban leaders are released":

If anyone doubts that the five senior Taliban leaders President Obama released this weekend will return to the fight and kill more Americans, they need only look at what happened when the George W. Bush administration released a Taliban leader named Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir (a.k.a. Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul) in 2007.

Unlike the terrorists Obama just set free, Zakir was assessed by our military as only “medium risk” of returning to the fight. At Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zakir pretended to be a low-ranking conscript and told officials he simply wanted to “go back home and join my family” and promised “I [have] never been America’s enemy and I never intend to be.”

But when he returned to Afghanistan, he quickly became one of America’s fiercest enemies, directly responsible for the deaths of U.S., coalition and Afghan forces. In 2009, Zakir was appointed as the Taliban’s “surge commander” in charge of countering Obama’s new strategy to deny the Taliban safe haven in southern Afghanistan. According to the Times of London, Zakir instituted a campaign of “increasingly sophisticated [roadside] explosives attacks” that killed British and U.S. forces as well as many Afghan civilians. He waged relentless war on the United States and presided over unspeakable atrocities before stepping down from military command in April.

To this day, he remains a top member of the Taliban leadership council. The five Taliban leaders Obama released will now take up where Zakir left off. According to our own military, they are all “high risk” to return to the fight. How dangerous are these men? Here is what the U.S. military says about them, according to their leaked assessments from Guantanamo Bay...

Keep reading.

Pentagon Report in 2010 Concluded Bowe #Bergdahl 'Walked Away' From His Unit

From AP's Ken Dilanian and Deb Riechmann, published at ABC News, "Questions Loom Over Bergdahl-Taliban Swap":

The Pentagon concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military curbed any high-risk rescue plans. But the U.S. kept pursuing avenues to negotiate his release, recently seeking to fracture the Taliban network by making its leaders fear a faster deal with underlings could prevent the freedom they sought for five of their top officials, American officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. government kept tabs on Bergdahl's whereabouts with spies, drones and satellites, even as it pursued off-and-on negotiations to get him back over the five years of captivity that ended on Saturday.  Bergdahl was in stable condition Monday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, but questions mounted at home over the way his freedom was secured: Five high-level members of the Taliban were released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sent to Qatar. The five, who will have to stay in Qatar for a year before going back to Afghanistan, include former ministers in the Taliban government, commanders and one man who had direct ties to the late al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

A U.S. defense official familiar with efforts to free Bergdahl said the U.S. government had been working in recent months to split the Taliban network. Different U.S. agencies had floated several offers to the militants, and the Taliban leadership feared that underlings might cut a quick deal while they were working to free the five detainees at Guantanamo, said the official and a congressional aide, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about efforts to release Bergdahl.  There was plenty of criticism about how the deal came about.

"Knowing that various lines of effort were presented and still under consideration, none of which involved a disproportionate prisoner exchange, I am concerned by the sudden urgency behind the prisoner swap, given other lines of effort," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has criticized the government effort to seek Bergdahl's release as disorganized.

One current and one former U.S. official said Obama had signed off on a possible prisoner swap. The president spoke to the Qatari emir last Tuesday, and they gave each other assurances about the proposed transfers, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to discuss the deliberations in public.

One official briefed on the intelligence said the Taliban also may have been worried about Bergdahl's health, having been warned that the U.S. would react fiercely if he died in captivity. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, which is caring for Bergdahl, said he was suffering from nutritional issues.

Bergdahl's handoff to U.S. special forces in eastern Afghanistan was never going to lead to an uncomplicated yellow-ribbon celebration. The exchange stirred debate over a possibly heightened risk other Americans being snatched as bargaining chips and whether the released detainees would find their way back to the battlefield.  

Republicans in Congress criticized the agreement and complained about not having been consulted, citing a law that requires Congress to be given 30 days notice before a prisoner is released from Guantanamo.

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee said the Pentagon notified the panel by phone on Saturday that the exchange was occurring in the next five hours.  "A phone call does not meet the legal standard of congressional notification," the Republican members said in a statement and added that official notice of the move came Monday, "more than 72 hours after the detainees were released."

Republicans also argued that the swap could set a dangerous precedent...

More.

The 6 U.S. Soldiers Who Died Searching for Bowe #Bergdahl

At Time.

And from Jake Tapper, at CNN, "Former Army Sgt. who served with Bergdahl: 'He is at best a deserter, at worst a traitor'. It's Sgt. Josh Korder, who says that he could face repercussions for speaking out now, but he wants the American people "to know the truth."



More here.

King Juan Carlos to Abdicate Spanish Throne

Wow. Not something you see everyday.

At Telegraph UK, "Juan Carlos abdication: Spanish king follows in footsteps of other ageing monarchs and heads of state."

And video, "Spanish King's abdication 'a very great shock'."

Also at CNN, "Spain's king steps down," and Euro News, "Spain's King Juan Carlos has abdicated, PM Rajoy says."

Continuing Developments in Story of Bowe #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

Check Louise Mensch on Twitter, and Twitchy.

@southsalem @AmPowerBlog thank you both for keeping it alive, and making the American heroes of this story into individuals
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 2, 2014

And of course I'll have more later.

We Lost Soldiers in the Hunt for #Bergdahl, a Guy Who Walked Off in the Dead of Night

A first-hand account, from Nathan Bradley Bethea, at the Daily Beast:

For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl. Now we can talk about what really happened.

Well, Good to Know Charli Carpenter Still Has a Girly Crush on the Donalde

I'm tickled pink, I'll tell you!

Old Charli's back at LGM, "Happy Anniversary, LGM. I Miss You."

And she writes, and mentions moi, surreptitiously:

I have two sets of thoughts which I’ve been developing in the context of recent professional debates about academic blogging.

One is about how different strategies of academic blogging affect the way that scholars blend our academic hats with our other other identities / ways of thinking / emoting / deliberating. We vary in how we do this across venues and time. A common strategy for political scientists – I’ll call this Strategy A – is to blog on politics almost entirely as academics, which is to say we bring academic expertise to bear on political problems – in the way, for example, that SEK brings filmography expertise to bear on my understanding of Game of Thrones. By and large this is what the Monkey Cage does: its authors engage with policy problems and current events by articulating what empirical social science has to say about the causal logics underlying policy problems, proposals or debates rather than primarily expressing political opinions. Of course not all academic expertise is empirical and political theory and philosophy can also be usefully brought to bear on debate, but you get my point.

But academic bloggers do other things as well. We sometimes blog, as academics, on politics directly – that is, we sometimes blog to take partisan positions in political debates affecting national or foreign policy, using our credentials as academics to lend an air of authority to what are essentially personal opinions. This is what a certaine right-winge bloggere who shall not be namede does almost exclusively, for example. Many academic bloggers on the left as well do it at least some of the time; I certainly have. Academics also blog on the politics of academia. A lot of this goes on at the Duck: we generally think of it as a subset of academic blogging but I actually think it is a subset of political blogging because our positions on things tend to be more openly partisan and prescriptive when dealing with our profession than we often allow them to be when dealing as social scientists with the explanatory relationships underpinning national/foreign policy...

Lots more at the link, but for those out of the loop, see Charli's 2010 post, "There Goes My Dreame."

Oh, and I don't much care about lending "an air of authority" to my blogging. Frankly, I'd rather people not know I'm a professor, lest I get too many more attacks like this one here, and this one as well.

And ICYMI, "Dr. Charli Carpenter and the Laws of War."

China Touts Power in East Asia

Chinese GDP per capita is still a tiny fraction of America's, but hey, perhaps they've got the mojo.

At the Wall Street Journal, "China Military Official Blasts U.S. 'Hegemony' at Shangri-La Conference: Hagel Accuses Beijing of 'Destabilizing, Unilateral Actions'."

How Legal Education is Changing

From Glenn Reynolds, at the University of Tennessee College of Law, "Legal Education: It’s Not Like ‘The Paper Chase’ Anymore":

Now more than forty years old, the movie The Paper Chase—and the hit television series that it spun off—still embodies the way many people think of legal education. But for better or worse those days are long gone. Today’s law students have to deal with a world in which legal education is more expensive—and high-paying jobs are scarcer—than they were back then. That’s also putting a lot of pressure on law schools.

The movie opens with an enormous classroom, holding a large number of students anxiously awaiting the arrival of Professor Kingsfield, who proceeds to perform what he calls “brain surgery” using no more than Socratic dialogue and a chalkboard. The students are anxious to make good grades, because with good grades they can get jobs at big law firms on Wall Street and elsewhere, where the pay is high and making partner is a guarantee of lucrative lifetime employment.

Today, most of that has changed...

Keep reading.

Obama Announcement on New E.P.A. Regs to Cut Carbon Emissions by 30 Percent

I posted on this yesterday, "Obama's Last Gasp on Global Warming."

Just wanted to remind folks of the president's promise to bankrupt the coal industry:

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.  So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.

More at Bloomberg, "Obama Said to Propose Deep Cuts to Power-Plant Emissions":

Plants that burn coal to generate electricity account for about 75 percent of all power-plant emissions. Coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, provides about 40 percent of the U.S. power. While that’s down from about half, coal is remains the single largest source of electricity generation in the U.S.

The proposed rules are among policies “designed to drive out low-cost electricity and replace it with higher-cost, more expensive and less reliable electricity,” Hal Quinn, chief executive officer of the National Mining Association, said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program.

The EPA is counting on coal plants being operated more efficiently and states shifting to natural gas from coal to get modest cuts in the next four or five years, people familiar with it said. Each state will have a target based on its emissions, and in the next decade the overall electric grid will need to become more efficient and use renewable generation to achieve the reductions, they said.

“President Obama is right to take decisive action to combat this clear and present danger,” Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said by e-mail. “The proposed standards will limit -- for the first time in U.S. history -- the unrestricted pollution of our atmosphere by carbon dioxide.”

The Obama Paradox

A dishy piece from Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein, at Politico.

And at Twitchy, "Politico report: Coordination between White House and Congress ‘has never been better’."

And that goes for the relaxation, too:

Obama golfed in FL during Ukraine crisis. Told friends: “I needed this. I needed the golf. I needed to laugh." http://t.co/OGc95oHRzo

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) June 2, 2014

'We’re up against evil like I've never seen in my life...'

It's Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference, via the Blaze, "‘We’re Up Against Evil’: ‘Duck Dynasty’ Star Phil Robertson Blasts White House, Tells GOP to ‘Get Godly’."

The Case Against Obama's #Bergdahl Deal

Actually, I think by now we've heard the case against this monstrous, politically-expedient terror swap, but here's Ilya Somin, at Volokh Conspiracy, in any case, "The case against the Obama administration’s deal exchanging five high-ranking Taliban leaders for one captured US soldier [Updated]."

And ICYMI, "Uncle Jimbo on #BergdahlTraitor."

Fellow Soldiers Call Bowe #Bergdahl a Deserter, Not a Hero

From Jake Tapper, at CNN, via Louise Mensch:

Very surprised, but very encouraged, to see CNN actually reporting on the deeply squirrelly #BergdahlTraitor case http://t.co/XHG9iZ2m1c

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 2, 2014

The sense of pride expressed by officials of the Obama administration at the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is not shared by many of those who served with him -- veterans and soldiers who call him a deserter whose "selfish act" ended up costing the lives of better men.

"I was pissed off then and I am even more so now with everything going on," said former Sergeant Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl's platoon when he went missing on June 30, 2009. "Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him."

Vierkant said Bergdahl needs to not only acknowledge his actions publicly but face a military trial for desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

A reporter asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Sunday whether Bergdahl had left his post without permission or deserted -- and, if so, whether he would be punished. Hagel didn't answer directly. "Our first priority is assuring his well-being and his health and getting him reunited with his family," he said. "Other circumstances that may develop and questions, those will be dealt with later."

Following his release from five years of captivity in Afghanistan on Saturday, Bergdahl was transferred to a military hospital in Germany....

According to first-hand accounts from soldiers in his platoon, Bergdahl, while on guard duty, shed his weapons and walked off the observation post with nothing more than a compass, a knife, water, a digital camera, and a diary.

At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for Bergdahl, and many soldiers in his platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika Provice in the days and weeks following his disappearance.

Many of Bergdahl's fellow troops -- from the seven or so who knew him best in his squad, to the larger group that comprised the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division -- told CNN that they signed nondisclosure agreements agreeing to never share any information about Bergdahl's disappearance and the efforts to recapture him. Some were willing to dismiss that document in hopes that the truth would come out about a soldier who they now fear is being hailed as a hero, while the men who lost their lives looking for him are ignored.

Many are flocking to social media, such as the Facebook page "Bowe Bergdahl is NOT a hero," where they share stories detailing their resentment. A number of comments on his battalion's Facebook page prompted the moderator to ask for more respect to be shown.

"I challenge any one of you who label him a traitor to spend 5 years in captivity with the Taliban or Haqqani, then come back and accuse him again. Whatever his intent when he walked away or was captured, he has more than paid for it."

Emails reported by the late Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone in 2012 reveal what Bergdahl's fellow infantrymen learned within days of his disappearance: he told people that he no longer supported the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

"The future is too good to waste on lies," Bowe wrote to his parents. "And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting."

Bergdahl wrote to them, "I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting."

CNN has not independently verified the authenticity of the emails.

More.

Rhian Sugden for Zoo Today

A lovely video, "Rhian Sugden's on-set teaser video!"

Added: "Rhian Sugden Archive - All of Her Strip Pictures and Videos Galleries!"

Photo Roundup #Rule5

At Theo's, "Pic Dump..."



BONUS: At 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Blogs With Rule 5 Links."

John McCain Questions Swap of 'Highest High-Risk People' for #BergdahlTraitor

At CBS News.

Trading With the Taliban — #Bergdahl

From the editors, at the Wall Street Journal:

The return of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of the Taliban is cause for relief for his family and all Americans. But there's no denying that the price of his recovery is high. The Obama Administration swapped five of the hardest cases at Guantanamo in a fashion that will encourage terrorists to kidnap more Americans to win the release of more prisoners.

This does not mean we agree with Republicans who say President Obama broke the law by failing to inform Congress 30 days in advance of the prisoner release from Gitmo. Presidential power is never stronger than in the role of Commander in Chief. Congress did not attempt to use its comparably strong power of the purse. Instead Congress's Gitmo language sought bluntly to constrain Mr. Obama's wartime decision-making.

This is unconstitutional, as the President averred in a statement at the time he signed the bill. That Mr. Obama—and his liberal friends—denounced George W. Bush for similar signing statements is one more antiterror irony of this Presidency. Readers should watch to see if the same politicians and newspapers that assailed Mr. Bush are more forgiving when their kind of President is using the same war powers.

The real problem with this prisoner swap is the message it conveys about American weakness, especially in the context of Mr. Obama's retreat from Afghanistan and elsewhere. The world's bad actors have long perceived that the U.S. doesn't negotiate over hostages, in contrast to, say, France or Italy. This has made American soldiers and civilians less promising targets.

The Taliban swap will change that perception and increase the likelihood that more Americans will be grabbed, not least in Kabul. Don't be surprised if 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shows up on a list of future prisoner-swap demands...

Keep reading.

Uncle Jimbo on #BergdahlTraitor

I checked over there early this morning, and now here's this, at Black Five, "Big Problems With Bergdahl Deal":

The problems with the deal we made is not the worthiness of Bergdahl, but the price we paid and the timing of the deal. We are releasing five of the most heinous and senior Taliban leaders we ever captured. Men with the blood of hundreds of US troops on their hands who will spend the rest of their lives adding to that toll. They are unrepentant, barbarian killers and the Afghan people we are supposed to have been helping all these years will pay the price when these men rejoin the resurgent Taliban. We are packing our things and loading planes to come home and the Talibs have known this since Obama unveiled his faux surge at West Point in 2009. He announced more troops were coming and he announced that those same troops would be leaving prior to his next election campaign. The Taliban plays the long war and they knew they could wait us out and they did.

If you want to know just how bad these five are, go read this and then weep for the innocents who will pay the price for their discharge. All the prisoners we still hold at Gitmo are evil terrorists who will perpetrate more evil given the slightest opportunity. Well we just handed it to these five and they will use it to undo any semblance of good we did in Afghanistan. This is not just a possibility; it is the undeniable reality of the deal we made. There is also a good possibility that the Haqqani network, who were holding him, may have picked up a number of satchels full of cash in the exchange as well. They are essentially a crime syndicate and money talks with them. It is just not something we should be involved in doing, hence the Qataris involvement.

The next point is why now? This deal has been on the table for several years. The Taliban proposed it and we could have agreed to it at any point. Why let Bergdahl rot for years if this was an option? The simplest answer is that this is and was a horrible deal that never should have been made. As much as it pains me to say, the life of one American POW is not worth the certain deaths of the hundreds or thousands who will die at the hands of the scum we have just unleashed. Those are the tough decisions and calculations that the Commander in Chief should weigh. We cannot pay any cost to regain a prisoner, because some costs are just too high. This was one of those times.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Can't wait for Bergdahl's trial.

'Collective Amnesia' in China 25 Years After Tiananmen Square Massacre

A great piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "Collective amnesia prevails in China 25 years after Tiananmen Square."

The Chinese Communist Party maintains a brutal regime, but economic development and the loosening of social restraints have "bought off" mass unrest.

Plus, a video at Telegraph UK, "Tiananmen Square massacre: Communist Party still dares not publish the truth."