Krauthammer Destroys Endless White House Lies on Bowe #Bergdahl

It's just "lie after lie," and the "pretense" that this deal was something to celebrate is just "appalling."

And just compare Krauthammer's comments here to the meme Politico was spinning last week. The MSM propaganda is just terrible: "Charles Krauthammer backs Bowe Bergdahl deal."

Obama Administration Gave #Bergdahl Parents Exclusive Insider Access

The White House planned all along to use Bowe Berdahl's capture to empty Guantanamo.

At the Washington Times, "Bergdahl’s parents got rare access to insiders; data for sympathizer of Gitmo detainees":

Soon after Sgt. Bergdahl went missing in Afghanistan in June 2009, the Obama administration approved an outreach program that involved the Bergdahls traveling from their home in Hailey, Idaho, to the state’s National Guard headquarters in Boise.

There they were hooked into secure video conferences that included representatives of U.S. Central Command, which runs the war in Afghanistan, as well as with White House, State Department and intelligence officials.

Robert Bergdahl has expressed concern for prisoners at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. From that prison, the U.S. released five senior Taliban commanders May 31 in exchange for the 28-year-old Sgt. Bergdahl, who was held five years by the violent Haqqani Network, a Taliban ally.

Air Force Col. Timothy Marsano, Idaho’s National Guard spokesman, said the Bergdahls participated in video conferences quarterly — or perhaps as many as 20 — over the five years.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl were regularly informed about what was happening throughout the duration using video teleconferencing [with] various military and other government agencies,” Col. Marsano said. “There was a great effort to keep Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl updated on developments.”

Keep reading.

More at Twitchy, "Bob Bergdahl now tweeting for more Guantanamo releases." And IJR, "Why Did Robert Bergdahl Stand Next to President Obama and Praise Allah for His Freed POW Son?"

PREVIOUSLY: "Robert Bergdahl's #Taliban Tweets: Allāhu Akbar!"

Saxby Chambliss and Dianne Feinstein on 'Face the Nation' — #BergdahlTreason

At WaPo, "Feinstein, Chambliss criticize White House over Bergdahl secrecy."

And videos, "Saxby Chambliss: Hard to 'validate' reports Bowe Bergdahl was tortured," and "Dianne Feinstein: Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap 'mixed bag at best'."

Details Emerge of Bowe #Bergdahl's Captivity

Most of the news now is pro-administration propaganda, with the folks at the New York Times leading the way. William Jacobson reported earlier on the Old Gray Lady's editorial demonizing Republicans for rightly calling out the administration's perfidy and treason, "NY Times Editors Rush to Demonize Republicans over Sgt. Bergdahl."

And from today's edition, "As Bowe Bergdahl Heals, Details Emerge of His Captivity," and "Bergdahl Was in Unit Known for Its Troubles." (At Memeorandum.)

And here's the report from this morning's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, with both George and Martha Raddatz showing touching solidarity with the traitor Bergdahl.



PREVIOUSLY: "Bowe #Bergdahl Won't Speak to His Family."

Bowe #Bergdahl Won't Speak to His Family

At WSJ, "U.S. Official: Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Has Declined to Speak to His Family: Doctors Moving Slowly on Treatment because of Swirling Controversy Over Prisoner Swap" (via Blazing Cat Fur and Memeorandum):

PARIS—Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has declined to speak to his family after five years in harsh captivity that included being held in a cage after one attempted escape, according to a U.S. official familiar with the Army soldier's recovery.

Doctors treating Sgt. Bergdahl at a U.S. military hospital in Germany are moving slowly because of the swirling controversy over the soldier's release, the U.S. official said.

While he spent five years in captivity after being captured by Afghan insurgents in 2009, Sgt. Bergdahl doesn't yet want to talk to his family on the phone, the official said.

Sgt. Bergdahl has likely been shielded from most of the backlash his release has generated in the U.S. Some former platoon soldiers have accused him of deserting his post and lawmakers from both parties have questioned the decision to trade America's lone prisoner of war in Afghanistan for five Taliban officials held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Local authorities canceled a homecoming celebration in his Idaho hometown because of the backlash. The celebration was canceled specifically because of threats made against the family, officials said.

The political furor, which has raged since the May 31 prisoner swap, continued through the weekend. What had at first blush seemed an uplifting story about a prisoner returning home after five years in captivity has instead become a major headache for the Obama administration, straining ties with lawmakers who felt they were kept in the dark about the prisoner swap and raising fears the freed Taliban detainees could return to the battlefield.

Speaking on CNN, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry defended the administration's decision to exchange Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top Taliban detainees, saying it would have been "offensive and incomprehensible" to leave an American prisoner of war behind.

"To leave an American behind, in the hands of people that torture him, cut off his head, do any number of things, and we would consciously choose to do that? That's the other side of this equation," Mr. Kerry said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I don't think anybody would think that is the appropriate thing to do."

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), speaking later on CNN, said he wouldn't have released the five Taliban detainees, saying they were evaluated during their time in Guantanamo as too great a risk and would put other American servicemen at risk. He said the Qatari government "is not renowned for its ability to keep things in security."

"I think we should do everything in our power to win the release of any American being held but not at the expense of the lives and well-being of their fellow servicemen and women," said Mr. McCain, who was himself a prisoner of war in Vietnam. "When we join the military, we know we take certain risks, and among those risks are wounding, death, imprisonment."

More.

Actually, I don't think he's so "shielded." I don't think he wants to be associated with his father right now, who looks like a freakin' imam.

More at NYT, "As Bowe Bergdahl Heals, Details Emerge of His Captivity."

Bowe #Bergdahl's Views Shifted After First Taste of War

At the Wall Street Journal, "Private Was Gung-Ho, but Soon Complained About Army's Strategy":

Bowe Bergdahl arrived in Afghanistan ready to kill.

Like many soldiers heading into a war zone for the first time, the 22-year-old Army private was eager to get into the fight. As he and his unit prepared for battle in late 2008, he approached his squad leader at their Alaska military base with a memorable question.

"The first thing he said was: 'Can I cut off the face of the first Taliban I kill and wear it like a mask?' " said Josh Korder, an Army soldier who said he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

The bravado didn't last. Then-Pfc. Bergdahl's view of America's war began to turn after his first big firefight on an Afghan mountainside in May 2009. A month later, after complaining about the Army's strategy, he disappeared from his post.

Now that Sgt. Bergdahl, 28, has been released after nearly five years in Taliban captivity—he was promoted during that time—some of his friends and fellow soldiers are speaking out on the question at the heart of the controversial prisoner exchange that freed him: Why did he vanish?  "I've been thinking about it since the day he left," said Mr. Korder. "Where'd Bergdahl go?"

Was he trying to switch sides? Did he want to leave the war behind and become a nomad? Was he betrayed by two Afghan police officers who Mr. Korder said mysteriously fled from the same outpost the day the soldier disappeared?

The answer rests with Sgt. Bergdahl in a U.S. military hospital bed where he is probably unaware of the political turmoil his release has created. A spokesman for his family declined to comment on Friday, as did the Army.

The Army and the soldiers who served with Sgt. Bergdahl have no doubt that he walked away from the tiny military outpost on June 30, 2009. A classified Army investigation concluded he voluntarily left the compound in eastern Afghanistan, but it stopped short of characterizing it as a desertion, said military officials familiar with the report.  Some soldiers who lived and fought with then-Pfc. Bergdahl described a man with conflicting and often contradictory views of the war.

Pfc. Bergdahl at one point complained to them that the Army's soft-edged "hearts and minds" counterinsurgency campaign wasn't the way to win the war. But he spent hours hanging out with Afghan police officers, studying the local language and praising their culture, they said.  He chafed for a time at not having more chances to attack the Taliban but appeared to respect the way Afghan insurgents fought.

Zach Barrow, a 27-year-old Army gunner who rode in the same truck as Pfc. Bergdahl, described his shift.

"It seemed like he was this die-hard, Rambo-esque soldier who wanted to kick a— and take names who then became this Peace Corps kind of guy who wanted to help the people," Mr. Barrow told The Wall Street Journal in his first interview about Sgt. Bergdahl.

Soldiers who trained with then-Pfc. Bergdahl described the arriving Army private from Idaho as a quiet loner who favored books on Buddhism over video games. He told friends he was named after Chick Bowdrie, the tough Texas Ranger in author Louis L'Amour's cowboy short stories.

Especially at first, Pfc. Bergdahl was eager to fight. In May 2009, shortly after he arrived in Afghanistan, he took part in a mission to rescue an Army unit stuck in the mountains after a roadside bomb had disabled one of its armored vehicles.

On the narrow mountain road, a vehicle in his convoy hit a roadside bomb, leaving his unit stuck in the middle of Taliban-dominated terrain for days. As the stranded soldiers grew anxious, waiting for commanders to come up with a plan, Pfc. Bergdahl fantasized about life in Afghanistan.

More.

I can't believe I'm saying this but: I want to hear the Taliban's side of the story on this. They're more credible, candid, and trustworthy..."

A follow-up from yesterday, "The Obama Administration's Treasonous Lack of Transparency on Bowe #Bergdahl."

See AoSHQ, "The Psychopathic Death-Cult Taliban: More Honest and Forthcoming Than the Current Occupant of the American White House."

Taliban Held Fast to Their Demands in Sgt. Bowe #Bergdahl Swap Talks

At the Wall Street Journal, "Afghan Militants' Top Priority Was Winning the Release of Detainees in Guantanamo Prison":

Ever since talks for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl began in November 2010, Taliban representatives had a consistent message for the Obama administration. Their priority was freeing a group of Taliban leaders at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for the captive U.S. soldier.

The Taliban had a harder time getting a handle on a divided U.S. government's position, as officials in Washington sent mixed messages about the administration's intentions and what it could deliver, according to U.S. officials close to the talks. Different officials and agencies at different times issued demands and threw up roadblocks.

At several points, the Taliban team seemed confused as to why President Barack Obama couldn't just issue an edict to make the exchange happen, say those close to the talks. So U.S. negotiators brought to one meeting a copy of legislation that restricted Mr. Obama's ability to free the detainees on the Taliban's list, and then explained how the provisions limited their room to maneuver.

In the end, Mr. Obama made a decision that wasn't far from what the Taliban had wanted from the start. On his own authority, the president released the group's leaders from Guantanamo in return for Sgt. Bergdahl, without notifying Congress.

That change of heart is one big reason why the prisoner swap has sparked a political backlash that has consumed Washington since the weekend return of Sgt. Bergdahl, who was captured in 2009. Republicans and many Democrats in Congress are furious with the White House for not consulting with lawmakers. Sgt. Bergdahl's hometown in Idaho has been so riven by debate over his release that it has canceled a homecoming celebration.

According to officials, White House aides feared that briefing lawmakers about the talks would increase the chances of leaks, which could scuttle the swap. Worse yet, U.S. officials feared that the captors, who might not have known about the proposed swap, would kill Sgt. Bergdahl if they found out about the negotiations.

Mr. Obama on Thursday defended the exchange and the secrecy surrounding it. "We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated, and we were deeply concerned about. And we saw an opportunity, and we seized it. And I make no apologies for that," he said at a news conference in Brussels.

Even before the first U.S.-Taliban meeting in Munich in November 2010, the proposed talks faced bureaucratic infighting. Top officials in the White House supported the talks, which Mr. Obama authorized. But some officials were reluctant to entrust such a sensitive effort, which they saw as critical to Mr. Obama's legacy, to the late Richard Holbrooke, then the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Holbrooke was a well-known, long-serving U.S. diplomat, but his high-profile style of personal diplomacy bothered some of his administration and military counterparts, according to current and former officials involved in the discussions. But the White House agreed to tap his deputy, Frank Ruggiero, to represent the U.S. in Munich, as Mr. Holbrook had proposed.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was supportive but skeptical about the prospects, current and former officials say.

Mr. Holbrooke saw the first round of talks in Munich as a critical opening. The Taliban made clear they really cared about obtaining freedom for the detainees and easing U.S. sanctions against the group. Mr. Holbrooke told aides the U.S. would use both issues as leverage to try to advance its priority of getting the Taliban to enter talks to reconcile with the Afghan government to coincide with an eventual U.S. troop withdrawal and end of the war.

Mr. Holbrooke was just starting to put together a negotiating strategy for the next round of meetings when he died unexpectedly, leaving a leadership void.  The U.S. government and the Taliban leadership both knew that talks would be unpopular with their respective fighters on the ground and needed to be closely-held. Then-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, and other military leaders argued that the time wasn't right. Military leaders preferred to notch further battlefield gains to weaken the Taliban before beginning talks, current and former government officials said. Gen. Petraeus declined to comment...

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama Makes 'Absolutely No Apologies' for Disastrous #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange."

The Left Is Terrified Right Now About the Bowe #Bergdahl Story

From Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist.

Chris Hayes, Josh Marshall, and Michael Tomasky come in for a beating.

And here's Hayes interviewing Tomasky at the clip. These people are in a whole 'nother world, a post-American world of blind partisanship for a failed chief executive. Tomasky even bemoans "rank-and-file" conservatives who simply destroyed him on Twitter. I'm going to eschew modesty for a second and suggest that he's got me in mind.

Time Magazine Cover Story on the Bowe #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

See, "Bowe Bergdahl: No Soldier Left Behind":

When President Obama stepped into the Rose Garden on May 31 to announce a deal to free the only captive U.S. soldier in the Afghanistan war, he evidently was worried that Americans couldn't handle this truth. Flanked by the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the President struck a victorious tone. He spoke of parental love and a nation’s duty and the loyalty of the freed soldier’s comrades. But he gave no hint that Bergdahl’s capture was the source of enormous anger and resentment among some of those comrades, who feel that he abandoned them when he walked away from his post one summer night in 2009. The anger at Bergdahl–and at the President–only deepened the next day, when National Security Adviser Susan Rice added another coat of whitewash. Bergdahl, Rice declared, “served the United States with honor and distinction.”

Maybe it was inevitable that even this familiar end-of-war set piece, the tearful return of the last prisoner, would sour, given the division and suspicion sown at home by the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the President made matters worse by rushing the final arrangements to trade five Taliban leaders for Bergdahl past a reluctant military and a skeptical Congress. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, complained of being left in the dark, while a U.S. military source told TIME that the decision boiled down to “suck it up and salute.”

Obama further erred by trying to spin a feel-good story from a messy set of facts. After a dismal week of bad news, including the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, the White House leaped at the chance to show the depth of the President’s commitment to Americans in uniform. Within days, the Rose Garden fairy tale had been shredded by indignant soldiers and Obama’s political foes. Critics demanded to know how many Americans were killed five years ago while searching for Bergdahl and how much havoc the Taliban Five might wreak in the future, should they make their way back into action. The U.S. may vow to leave no soldier behind, but what is a reasonable risk to run or price to pay for that retrieval, and should the calculation change if the soldier is judged to deserve not a parade but a trial?

“This is what happens at the end of wars,” Obama said defensively as the anger and confusion boiled over. Arrangements must be made to tie up each violent drama with a bow, all the dead buried and all the living restored to their homes. “That was true for George Washington, that was true for Abraham Lincoln, that was true for FDR. That’s been true of every combat situation,” the President said. “At some point, you make sure that you try to get your folks back.” He might better have said that the Bergdahl story shows why wars continue to gnaw and grind long after the end is officially pronounced. Too much is smashed and bloodied to be wrapped up neatly. People must live, sometimes in turmoil, sometimes for centuries, with loose ends....

With some Republicans calling for hearings on the matter, the Bergdahl swap is likely to become a sore point in the autumn elections. And it puts a floodlight on the unresolved–unresolvable?–issue of the nearly 150 men still detained at Guantánamo.

The Challenge

The loosest end of all was hidden in plain sight among the Administration’s misleading pronouncements: What lies in store for Afghanistan and its neighbors after the U.S. departs? Though Obama recently announced plans to keep nearly 10,000 troops in place for now, gradually drawing the number down through 2016, the Bergdahl deal bore the unmistakable air of a nation washing its hands. After a year in Qatar, the Taliban Five will be free to return to the scene of past outrages–the soccer-stadium executions, the oppression of Afghan schoolgirls, the destruction of ancient artworks–and while the President pledged to defend the U.S. against them, he said nothing of defending the Afghans.

In this, Obama is reflecting the will of the American people, who have made themselves clear in surveys and at the ballot box. The war in Afghanistan must come to an end–for Americans if not for Afghans. The peace of Kabul will rest on the ability of Afghan factions to coexist, which, given the long history of this troubled land, there is little reason to hope for.

But the decision to try to slip these loose ends past an unnoticing public, borne on a smile and a fable, was a blunder in any event. It is said that soldiers never forget. They don’t forget their promise to leave no comrade behind. In the words of former soldier Alex Horton, “There’s not a place in the world I wouldn't go to bring back the men who served with me. That was true for combat, and it will be true for the rest of my life.” At the same time, they don’t forget the difference between those who stand and those who run, and they are very particular about the language of heroism. “This is just so grotesque,” argues retired Army officer and author Ralph Peters. “Americans can’t name a single Medal of Honor recipient, but everybody knows the name of a reputed deserter. The big mistake was for the President and his gang to present Bergdahl as a hero.”

The Obama Administration is not the first to look at the American people and think, in the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth!” But it is the first to govern entirely in the age of nearly limitless communication. After Edward Snowden, after WikiLeaks, it should be clear that anything known inside the White House stands a good chance of becoming known to everyone. A President who promised unprecedented transparency must understand that a window shows the bad weather along with the good.

And the inescapable truth is that the U.S.’s departure from Afghanistan will not bring an end to the storms of that region, nor shield us from their effects. In its ugly complexity, the story of Bowe Bergdahl–the genuine story, not the bowdlerized version–is one symbol of that truth. Can we handle that? There’s really no alternative.

PREVIOUSLY: "#Bergdahl's Taliban Captors Speak Out."

Secret Documents Show #Bergdahl Declared Jihad in Captivity

James Rosen reports, at Fox News, "EXCLUSIVE: Bergdahl declared jihad in captivity, secret documents show":

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a "mujahid," or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

The reports indicate that Bergdahl's relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, "he became much more of an accepted fellow" than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.

The documents show that Bergdahl at one point escaped his captors for five days and was kept, upon his re-capture, in a metal cage, like an animal. In addition, the reports detail discussions of prisoner swaps and other attempts at a negotiated resolution to the case that appear to have commenced as early as the fall of 2009.

The reports are rich in on-the-ground detail -- including the names and locations of the Haqqani commanders who ran the 200-man rotation used to guard the Idaho native -- and present the most detailed view yet of what Bergdahl's life over the past five years has been like. These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe...

More.

The authenticity of these documents are going to questioned by administration defenders, especially the ties to the "shadowy" Eclipse Group.

That said, so far the preponderance of the evidence --- from those served with Bergdahl and from earlier statements from the Taliban --- lend tremendous corroboration to the latest revelations.

#Bergdahl's Taliban Captors Speak Out

Wolf Blitzer just interviewed Time's Aryn Baker. I'll post the video later if I find it.

Meanwhile, here's Baker's piece trending right now, "Taliban Commander: More Kidnappings to Come After Bergdahl Deal" (at Memeorandum).

And previously, "Brad Thor on #KellyFile: 'Every American Should Be Terrified' by #Bergdahl Swap."

This story's been leading the news cycle, and topping the newspaper headlines, for nearly a week. And it won't be going away anytime soon. I expect we're going to be hearing more still, a lot more.

No doubt in my mind that the worst about #Bergdahl is to come.
— Kathleen McKinley (@KatMcKinley) June 5, 2014

Added: More from Time, "Behind the Scenes of Bowe Bergdahl’s Release."

The Obama Administration's Treasonous Lack of Transparency on Bowe #Bergdahl

Here's the report on Richard Engel at Breitbart yesterday, "NBC's Richard Engel: Taliban More 'Forthcoming with Information' Than U.S."

And here's this from today's "Morning Joe." So sad we're to the point of laughing at how forthcoming are the murderous Taliban:

The Ghastly Transaction That Freed Sgt. Bowe #Bergdahl

From former Attorney General Michael Mukasey (via Memeorandum):

The seeds of what blossomed grotesquely in the Rose Garden last weekend — a celebration of the release of five senior Taliban military leaders in exchange for a U.S. sergeant purported to be a deserter — were sown a long time ago: on the second and third days of President Obama’s first term, to be precise.

On his second day in office, the president signed an executive order directing that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed. You can watch the cringe-inducing video of the signing ceremony on YouTube, as the president stumbles through a reading of the order to close the facility “consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice,” signs with a flourish, and asks then-White House counsel Greg Craig, whether there is a separate executive order describing what is to be done with the Guantanamo detainees; Craig is heard to reply off camera that “a process” will be set up, whereupon the president repeats solemnly into the camera that “a process” will be set up.

The following day, the president met with congressional leaders to discuss his economic stimulus. When Republican House whip Eric Cantor offered some suggestions, the president reminded him and others of the vanquished who were present that “elections have consequences” and “I won.”

The president apparently hadn’t thought through how he would accomplish the goal and serve the interests he had announced. But he had indeed won.

Fast forward, and characteristically the Obama administration has apologized only for the least of the president’s transgressions in this sorry affair: his failure to consult Congress 30 days in advance of freeing any Guantanamo detainees, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act. At the time the president signed that law he issued an accompanying signing statement taking the position, I believe probably correctly, that the law is unconstitutional as a restriction on his Article II executive powers. However, his own criticism of his predecessor for alleged misuse of executive authority apparently left him diffident about relying on that, so he relied instead on two excuses with neither legal nor factual basis: concern for the rapid deterioration of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s health, which does not explain why no notice was given; and simple neglect due to the rush of events, which contradicts the first.

It is difficult to believe that the president actually understood last weekend the enormity of what he had done...

Keep reading.

Obama Makes 'Absolutely No Apologies' for Disastrous #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

Well, no surprise there. Has he ever apologized for anything?

At the Hill, "Obama 'Absolutely No Apologies'":

President Obama said Thursday he would make “absolutely no apologies” for ordering the controversial prisoner swap to rescue Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last American prisoner of war in Afghanistan.

Obama said he was never surprised by “controversies that are whipped up in Washington,” but deflected criticism from members of Congress and the military over the trade of five Guantanamo prisoners for Bergdahl, who has been accused of abandoning his post in Afghanistan before his capture...

He's such an asshole.

More at the link.

Also at WSJ, "Press Conference Transcript: What Obama Said Thursday About Bergdahl Controversy."

Exclusive: The Story You Haven't Yet Heard About Bowe #Bergdahl's Desertion

An absolutely amazing report, from Michelle Malkin.

Read it and then tell John Cole to get f-ked.

Obama's #Taliban Release Has Afghan Villagers Fearing for Their Lives

Blowback.

At WSJ, "Release of Taliban Detainees Alarms Afghan Villagers: Some Recall Scorched-Earth Offensive Led by One of the Freed Prisoners":

SHEYKHAN, Afghanistan—Taliban forces led by Mohammed Fazl swept through this village on the Shomali plain north of Kabul in 1999 in a scorched-earth offensive that prompted some 300,000 people to flee for their lives.

Fifteen years later, local residents here are responding with fear and dismay to the U.S. release of the notorious commander, along with four other Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American prisoner of war who was held by the Taliban. The group released a video on Wednesday showing the hurried handover a few days earlier of the American captive, looking gaunt and dazed.

The villages of Shomali were once the orchard of central Afghanistan, and the plain's carefully tended vineyards were famous for their grapes.

When the Taliban seized control of this area from their Northern Alliance rivals in 1999, they systematically demolished entire villages, blowing up houses, burning fields and seeding the land with mines, according to two comprehensive studies of war crimes and atrocities during wars in Afghanistan and human rights reports. Mr. Fazl played a major role in the destruction.

"There was not a single undamaged house or garden," said Masjidi Fatehzada, a shopkeeper in Mir Bacha Kot, the district center. "My entire shop was burned to the ground. There was nothing left."

Khwaja Mohammad, a farmer in the village of Sheykhan, remembered how Mr. Fazl's men took away his son, a civilian, and sent him to Kabul's Pul-e Charkhi prison.

"They jailed him for nearly three years," Mr. Mohammad said. "They took him when he was on his way from the bazaar to buy oil and flour."

The release of Mr. Fazl and the four other Guantanamo detainees has become a hot-button political issue in both Afghanistan and the U.S. Critics complain that the Obama administration has freed some of the most dangerous militants.  One day after Sgt. Bergdahl's release, the Afghan government protested the swap because it placed restrictions on the five, saying it sought "unconditional freedom of its citizens." Under the agreement, brokered by Qatar, the five Taliban leaders are supposed to live in the Persian Gulf emirate under supervision for the next 12 months to prevent them from returning to violence.

Kabul's protest underscored mistrust between Kabul and Washington at a delicate moment when the U.S. is preparing to drastically reduce its military presence in the country and a new Afghan president is about to be elected.

En route to Afghanistan on Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged that the U.S. government had only informed the Afghan government about the swap after the fact.

The release has been a boon for the Taliban.  Shortly after the exchange, the group posted a video of them receiving a hero's welcome in Qatar.  Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the minister of foreign affairs in the Taliban regime that was ousted by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, described the exchange as "an achievement for the Taliban" which gave the militant group a form of recognition.

"In terms of military significance, Fazl was the most important" among the freed Guantanamo prisoners, Mr. Muttawakil added.

More.

Obama's Foreign Policy is Mainly About Domestic Politics

At WSJ, "The Bergdahl Fiasco":

President Obama's decision to swap five Taliban killers for the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has morphed from a debatable policy decision into the Administration's latest political fiasco. There's a lesson here about the risks of spin and narrow political calculation, especially in foreign policy when American lives are stake.

Start with the fact that little the Administration has said about this swap has turned out to be true. "He served the United States with honor and distinction," declared National Security Adviser Susan Rice on ABC on Sunday. But as everyone has since learned, the soldiers who served with Sgt. Bergdahl almost to a man believe that he deserted his post in Afghanistan in June 2009 before falling into the hands of the Taliban.

We think Sgt. Bergdahl deserves the benefit of the doubt until the facts are all known, but our guess is that Ms. Rice oversold him as a hero because the White House was hoping to turn the swap into a big foreign-policy victory. Thus Mr. Obama hosted the sergeant's parents in the Rose Garden on Saturday in front of the TV cameras, while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took a victory lap in Afghanistan, and Ms. Rice called it "a great day for America."  You can argue the prisoner swap was necessary to retrieve our man, or a difficult moral choice, but it is not a reason for back-slapping and high fives.

Then there's the dubious claim that the Administration had to move fast to negotiate Sgt. Bergdahl's release because he was dangerously ill. This line was used to explain why the President had ignored a statute demanding that Congress be consulted 30 days in advance of any prisoner release from Guantanamo Bay. But Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the swap after the fact, says that she "heard no evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl was in immediate medical danger that made it necessary to act without consulting Congress."

We think the President has the power as Commander in Chief to undertake the swap without telling Congress, but instead of saying this forthrightly, Mr. Obama said from Warsaw on Tuesday that he had consulted Congress "for quite some time" on the possibility of a prisoner exchange. He also invoked the phony health excuse.

Yet both Ms. Feinstein, who runs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and ranking Republican Saxby Chambliss said they hadn't been consulted on the swap for months. "There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call and say 'I know you all had concerns about this, we consulted in the past, we want you to know we have reviewed these negotiations,'" said Ms. Feinstein. George W. Bush was honest about his claims of executive war powers.

Also disconcerting is the President's insistence that releasing the Taliban commanders to Qatar for a year won't jeopardize U.S. security. Qatar is already making a mockery of U.S. claims that the five will be under close supervision, with one source in the Persian Gulf region telling Reuters that the men "can move around freely within the country" before they leave.

"This is what happens at the end of wars," Mr. Obama said in Warsaw. "At some point you try to make sure that you get your folks back." Yes, but the Afghan war isn't over, never mind the continuing and larger war on terror in which the Taliban and al Qaeda are allies. When the Taliban killers do leave Qatar, several thousand U.S. troops will still be in Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistan border will still be an al Qaeda sanctuary.

The larger problem is that Mr. Obama treats all of foreign policy as if it's merely part of his domestic political calculus...

Well, yeah.

More.

Guantánamo: Closing Up Shop?

From Arnold Ahlert, at FrontPage Magazine, "What the Bergdahl fiasco may be foreshadowing":

Lost in the furor surrounding President Obama’s decision to swap five high-level terrorists for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is a potential ulterior motivation for the deal lurking in the background: fulfilling the president’s 2014 State of the Union promise to completely shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

“This whole deal may have been a test to see how far the administration can actually push it, and if Congress doesn’t fight back they will feel more empowered to move forward with additional transfers,” a senior GOP Senate aide told the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin. “They’ve lined up all the dominoes to be able to move a lot more detainees out of Guantanamo and this could be just the beginning.”

The principal domino is the notion, getting play in the precincts of the left, that once a war ends, the prisoners of that war must be released. In an exchange with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) addressed the absurdity of that contention. “So they should have turned Hitler loose and that would have been the end of the war,” he said. “This isn’t right, and I just — it’s hard for me and people I talk to, a lot of people in Oklahoma, just this morning about this, they can’t figure out why in the world would we turn loose the five most dangerous people who hate America, who want to kill Americans, who have the equipment and the following to revive the Taliban and that’s what they are doing.”

Continue reading.

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.