I've had quite a time on the tweet machine the last couple of days. It's been a hoot.
After their attempts to Swiftboat Bowe Bergdahl by proclaiming - without full evidence or a trial - that he was a deserter worthy of "hanging", [which has now begun to unravel as it appears he had left the base once before and returned, so at worst he was AWOL not a Deserter], and claims that "we lost 6 - maybe 7 - maybe a dozen guys trying to find him" [except that claim is too unravelling due to NYTimes reporting], and his being assailed by Sarah Palin for being "ashamed to be American" [although that was part of a letter where he lamented his fellow troops were running down Afghan children in the Street], these attempted Friendly Fire Operations have turned from Bergdahl himself - to attacks on his father on Morning Joe - and back to the President.
We all know that the President neglected to inform Congress 30 Days before the Swap as required by Law - except that many in Congress were already aware of these negotiations since 2012 and even endorsed a similar plan 4 months prior - we have now moved to a brand new clalm, that the President has two specific chances to Rescue Bergdahl using Special Forces but turned those plans down because he preferred to do a prisoner swap to help his plan to Shut Down Gitmo.
Yes, really. Details over the flip.
The Obama administration passed up multiple opportunities to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl because the president was dead-set on finding a reason to begin emptying Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon official.
'JSOC went to the White House with several specific rescue-op scenarios,' the official with knowledge of interagency negotiations underway since at least November 2013 told MailOnline, referring to the Joint Special Operations Command. 'But no one ever got traction.'
'What we learned along the way was that the president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,' he said.
The official said a State Department liaison described the lay of the land to him in February, shortly after the Taliban sent the U.S. government a month-old video of Bergdahl in January, looking sickly and haggard, in an effort to create a sense of urgency about his health and effect a quick prisoner trade.
'He basically told me that no matter what JSOC put on the table, it was never going to fly because the president isn't going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through.'
Got that? It seems a lone anonymous Pentagon Official is going on record with the DAILYMAIL.UK to suggest that
golly gee willickers if only that C.O.W.A.R.D. Obama had let us REAL MEN into the fight, we could have gotten Bergdahl back
Twice and still gotten home in time for lunch with the Taliban Dream Team in our back pockets.
You betcha.
Yeah, except that DailyBeast says that they didn't mount a JSOC rescue because the Taliban kept moving Bergdahl since he'd managed to escape - twice.
After a second escape attempt, the American hostage was being moved so often, American commandos would’ve had to raid a dozen safe houses in Pakistan at once.
The Pentagon rejected the idea of a rescue mission for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl because he was being moved so often by his Taliban captors that U.S. special operators would have had to hit up to a dozen possible hideouts inside Pakistan at once in order to have a chance at rescuing him.
That’s according to U.S. officials, who also say the Obama administration also did not want to risk the political fallout in Pakistan from another unilateral U.S. raid, like the Navy SEAL raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Bergdahl had also twice tried to escape, so the militants guarding him had stepped up their numbers, further complicating any potential rescue attempt.
What's that again - "
The Pentagon rejected the idea of a rescue mission" - not the President? Not the White House? Hmmm...
Perhaps that's why Secretary Hagel has said the decision to go ahead with the swap was Unanimous.
LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the decision to strike a deal with the Taliban for the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was unanimous in the White House as it was believed that the soldier’s life was “in peril”.
...
Hagel told the BBC in an interview aired on Thursday that Barack Obama’s administration had to act quickly and without first consulting Congress which is supposed to be given 30 days notice before transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
“It was our judgment based on the information that we had that his life, his health were in peril,” Hagel told the BBC in an interview in Romania.
“It was our judgment, and it was unanimous by the way .. that we didn’t want to take any chance here.”
He said the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, director of national intelligence, and attorney general, had all come to the same conclusion.
“You imagine if we would have waited for, taken the chance of leaks over a 30-day period. I will tell you what I know, and I made a judgment on this too, that would seriously imperil us ever getting him out,” he said.
So again,
the Pentagon was down with the plan - even if one anonymous guy whose got a phone line to the DailyMail doesn't think so. And even the DailyMail seems to have their doubts about this guys claim as shown later in the same report.
The Washington Times reported that a congressional aide said JSOC never forwarded specific military rescue plans to the White House, judging independently that President Obama was more interested in a diplomatic solution.
But both the Times' sources and MailOnline's also agreed that commanders on the ground were not in favor of sending Special Forces into the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and risking their lives to rescue a presumed deserter from the terrorist Haqqani network.
'Military commanders were loath to risk their people to save this guy,' a former intelligence official told the Times. 'They were loath to pick him up and because of that hesitancy, we wind up trading five Taliban guys for him.
So it's not really those cowards in the White House who didn't want to go get Bergdahl, it was the cowards in JSOC and "commanders in the field" who really didn't want to risk their guys - or
more of their guys depending on who you believe - for a "Deserter".
Yeah, ok.
All of this of course really has the President singing the Blues, or not.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would make “no apologies” for agreeing to a deal that released Taliban detainee Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, despite controversy in Washington that Congress was not notified ahead of time.
“I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child,” Obama said.
“This is not some abstraction, this is not some political football,” he told a news conference. “As Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, I am responsible for those kids.”
...
Obama called the uproar “par for the course” and said he is “never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington”
As far as I'm concerned even if the most egregious claim made by this source, that the White House rejected rescue plans (even though the Pentagon had already rejected them, JSOC didn't submit any to the White House and the commanders
really didn't want to go after him) and going beyond the
exigent circumstances of Bergdahl's deteriorating health, if they decided in favor of this plan to set a precedent for repatriating former Gitmo detainees - I say "Good".
Gitmo is a Black Bottomless Stain on the Honor of this Nation. It needs to go. If we manage to finally start getting off the dime and moving in that direction and get an American POW back in the process I'm counting it as a the proverbial Win/Win.
Squawkers are gonna Squawk. They always do. They may proclaim that the President violated Art 1, Sec 2 which says that the Congress has the power to set "Rules for Captures" on Land and Sea to which I argue these guys were "captured" a decade ago and have gone that entire time without a trial. Meanwhile in Art 2. Sec 2 it says the President has the power of "Grant Reprieves and Pardons" which is in fact beyond appeal or reversal by anyone including Congress or the Courts.
The President argued in his signing statement on the 2014 NDAA that the Gitmo reporting requirements were potentially Unconstitutional and created a Separation of Powers problem.
For the past several years, the Congress has enacted unwarranted and burdensome restrictions that have impeded my ability to transfer detainees from Guantanamo. Earlier this year I again called upon the Congress to lift these restrictions and, in this bill, the Congress has taken a positive step in that direction. Section 1035 of this Act gives the Administration additional flexibility to transfer detainees abroad by easing rigid restrictions that have hindered negotiations with foreign countries and interfered with executive branch determinations about how and where to transfer detainees. Section 1035 does not, however, eliminate all of the unwarranted limitations on foreign transfers and, in certain circumstances, would violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The executive branch must have the flexibility, among other things, to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.
So it may be the President is actually staging multi-levels of political and literal combat on this issue. He is both battling the Taliban and Congress on multiple fronts at the same time. As this has fallen out over the last several days, and I suspect the back-and-forth will continue for some time, at this point I have one thing to say about it all without reservation or equivocation...
I'm am deeply Proud of Our President for Standing Up for American Values, and the core Principles of the Constitution against All Enemies - Foreign and Domestic.
Welcome Home Sgt. Bergdahl. Welcome home.
Vyan
2:50 PM PT: I wonder if the Wingers keep poking at this whether we'll ultimately have a moment like when Bill Clinton Cleaned Chris Wallace's Clock on Fox News.
Wallace, if you don't recall, tried to ask a snide sideways question about why President Clinton didn't go after the bombers of the U.S.S. Cole. In context, the fact was that Clinton and all of his people already had their hair on fire about Bin Laden, had already tried to hit him with a Cruise Missile at least once - on the day the House voted to Impeach Him - and had sent specific warnings to the Bush Administration about Bin Laden that They Ignored. On the Cole, the problem was that the CIA and the FBI couldn't come to an agreement as to who was responsible until after Clinton left office and Bush was in the driver's seat, so exactly what was he supposed to do - Flip A Coin as to which one of them was correct? [Which actually is pretty much what Bush did with the Intel coming in about Iraq WMD - while continuing to ignore Bin Laden before and after 9/11 - pick whichever version he liked better for his own purposes.]
So as you can see in the video - the Big Dawg took a Bite out of Wallace. Another factor of what had Bill upset was the ABC Mini-series that was running at that time - "Path to 9/11" - which alleged that our CiA and Military had gotten Bin Laden "in their sights" and the Clinton White House had been too cowardly to "pull the trigger" - which was factually - BULLSHIT.
So the CIA, the Northern Alliance, surrounding a house where bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they’re on the verge of capturing, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to proceed.
So they phoned Washington. They phoned the White House. Clinton and his senior staff refused to give authorization for the capture of bin Laden because they’re afraid of political fallout if the mission should go wrong, and if civilians were harmed…Now, the CIA agent in this is portrayed as being astonished. “Are you kidding?” He asked Berger over and over, “Is this really what you guys want?”
Berger then doesn’t answer after giving his first admonition, “You guys go in on your own. If you go in we’re not sanctioning this, we’re not approving this,” and Berger just hangs up on the agent after not answering any of his questions.
This is what [Disney-owned] ABC tried to show the American people - without commercial interruption, which made this a
4 Hour in-kind campaign ad for the GOP - about how the Clinton White House handled the threat of Bin Laden. However, Richard Clarke set them straight.
1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.
3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.
And contrary to the Dailymail report, the Obama White House did not have "2 JSOC Strike Plans" on their desk to rescue Sgt. Bergdahl without resorting to releasing the "Taliban Dream Team". That shit didn't happen, again.