Disagree.

It's a tool for the lazy.

Are you actually -- seriously -- suggesting that you can't guess 80-90 percent of the answers to whatever questions you end up using based on the party identification? Seriously?

For that matter, you think those answers wouldn't be largely scripted & molded to fit a party line (and to play to a perceived base) regardless of whether the labels were shown or not? C'mon DT.

Seems as if Obama had to fire him vs voluntary resignation.

Yes, I can see this happening. Break us away from employer funded healthcare.

Analysts predict most employer-provided insurance will disappear as ObamaCare takes hold | Fox News

But if companies start abandoning healthcare the fine will increase. If the middle class starts losing insurance en masse something will be done.

I think this is the right thing to do and kudo's to Obama. There are questions as to how he was captured so that should be playing out over the next couple weeks.

Idaho hometown of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl celebrates, prepares homecoming - CNN.com

I don't think this is the right thing to do at all.

Great for the one soldier, but not a precedent you want set.

Hopefully this is just some elaborate catch and tag and release program.

I'd say that I'd have to been awfully convinced that we had truly flipped at least one of the Taliban in order for this to be a good thing. And I have more confidence in that than I do in this administration to allow prosecution (or even adequately investigation) into the very questionable circumstances of his capture in the first place.

It sets a precedence that US is willing to negotiate and that is bad? Each case is going to be evaluated on its merits, why are we scared of this -- Israel does it, UK has negotiated with the IRA etc.

We negotiate with really bad people that do really bad things all the time. They may not have the official "terrorist" tag but its semantics.

Bowe Bergdahl, a Taliban captive since 2009, has been freed - CBS News

If not already, I'm sure DARPA et al has thought about some sort of nano tracking device.

Well some VERY fair and balanced right wing blogs told me that ObamerCare was going to plant tracking implants inside of us. So no reason to think that gitmo terrorists wouldn't get the chips themselves.

I'm not an Obama fan as most know, but this prisoner trade isn't that big of a deal. Saying that we don't negotiate with terrorists is like saying we don't talk with North Korea. We do both all the time, but it's not through traditional channels. I have a brother-in-law who contracted through a third party to do U.S. gov't negotiations with terrorists for prisoners for seven years. He was always busy talking to scum through back door channels so the government could deny it was happening.

Really? I have to explain this to you??

It sets a precedent FOR THE TERRORISTS that we're going to negotiate with them.

There is no way we have never negotiated with terrorists. It's all a big show. When it comes down to it though, if there's enough value in negotiating, we will.

But unless we're bringing this guy home to prosecute him, there's not much value here.

I'll be honest, when the story first broke of the swap I really didn't connect who the guy we were getting back was. ( Hey, I'm old, names are fleeting things for me sometimes. )

Having refreshed my recollection, yeah, this is a bad deal unless there's a firing squad in his future.

Does this trade work on the ESPN trade machine? Seems like we're giving up a lot of expiring contracts.

I must be missing something, why should this guy get a firing squad?

He was about as "captured" as I was.

Known malcontent, basically took a walk until he came across someone to take him in.

I've read speculation that he deserted

Alright, I decided to look beyond Wikipedia and found a decent article on him
Is Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl a hero or a deserter? - CBS News

The idea that now we have to worry about kidnapping when we didn't before is laughable.

The idea is pretty straight forward. Why give terrorists even more incentive in the form of a reward. Should be fairly easy to understand.

Let me see if I can lock you down on your concern ... you are concerned the terrorists will think ...

(1) We will negotiate with them at all or
(2) We will negotiate with them on prisoner swaps

I think you are concerned about (2)? or is it really (1)?

Think of groups other than the Taliban who now see 5 terrorists walking free. Seems to give them a good incentive to go kidnap an American tourist.

Pretty sure no one bought the "no negotiatng"stance since the whole "arms for hostages", if not sooner.

But arms for hostages was done in secret and was considered a big scandal when revealed. In 2014, we get a biographies of the released terrorists the next day as if it were an NBA trade. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's definitely a different mindset.

It was secret to the US population but certainly wasn't secret to Iran or their affiliates who held the hostages. Precedents have been set.

In the context of military hostages, I would prefer to see a live hostage vs a butchered one. If this gives them pause to capture a GI which then gives us a chance to rescue them, so much the better.

In the context of US civilian hostages, I am sure US corporations and family negotiate with kidnappers all the time. If a terrorist org wants to butcher a Daniel Pearl to make a statement, this example wouldn't have mattered.

This - no doubt it was done before, but now that it's publicized it's a whole different mindset.

And they never had an incentive to kidnap an American before? The publicity and prestige have seemed plenty good enough for the numerous kidnappings of Americans throughout the region. The people who are doing the kidnapping are already planning ways to capture and kill Americans.

I guess they didn't know about the Iran-Contra precedence as they likely do not have internet (or dare to get on the internet), maybe its their millenial generation who didn't pay attention? :)

Okay, IMO this is more significant than the precedence question. Why trade for a deserter if true.

Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero - CNN.com

Well this is turning into a fairly tragic story all the way around.

Yup, can't disagree.

Obama must have known about the backstory and he still made the decision to trade.

If this is not decisively contradicted in the next few weeks, this something the GOP play with all the way to the election, Dems will run away from, and make Obama more of a lame duck than he already is. Not good for team Obama.

Good to know the next election will be fought on substantive issues, then. :rolleyes:

The desertion angle was pretty well known. It almost sounds as though he may have been trying to join the Taliban, though probably anything like that was from a place of immaturity/mental illness, rather than a real thought-out plan. As for punishment for that though, what do deserters even get these days? Certainly not the firing squad. Do they even get five years? It seems like "credit for time served" and looking the other way is appropriate here, and it looks like that's what's going to happen. Still, he'll have to live with that (which I'm sure beats living the way he has been living), and he's not exactly going to be considered some hero by those in the military, and by those with military families. His act resulted in 5 terrorists being set free and the deaths of at least 6 American soldiers that went looking for him.

Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero - CNN.com

Well, depending on how this plays out, it could point to the general lack of competence on the part of this administration. That is definitely a substantive issue.

Another part of this is that international law that we played a pivotal role in establishing requires us to return POWs after hostilities end. Now the line between Taliban and AQ is blurred, but withdrawing from Afghanistan means we either release some Guantanamo prisoners or we undercut what we have considered important international norms.

edit: It could also be that this is the price paid for the Taliban to play nice with the new Afghani government. We certainly wouldn't just release the prisoners and probably can't disclose any deals, but the trade makes a good cover.

I'm sure both State and DoD were involved in this and I can't imagine it's as simple as Obama doing anything necessary to get back Bergdahl.

No major news seems to be reporting it but has anyone else read about some of Bergdahl's dad's tweets?

It's been a slow process but Gitmo has been thinning out for a while. 759 prisoners have gone through there, and there were 149 left as of last month. Which makes the white house comment about there being "no security threat" about the released 5 prisoners kind of interesting. If they weren't a threat, why were they there for 10+ years? Just as a potential trading chip? Also, I wonder if there was some part of the deal preventing the U.S. from just drone striking the 5 tomorrow or sometime in the future. Especially if there's indications they're back in the game in some capacity.

i think they have to stay in Qatar for a few years as part of the deal. See them elsewhere, and fire away, supposedly.

I think they were also mandated to work construction on the Qatar World Cup stadiums.

That's probably more dangerous than sitting around a Taliban camp and waiting for a drone strike

The *only* mistake here is the press conference hailing him as a "hero" while there was an ongoing investigation.

When you join the military and you're held captive, the military is obligated to try to get you back regardless of the circumstances of your capture. It doesn't matter if you got captured in combat, due to negligence, if you went AWOL or had a mental breakdown. It doesn't matter - the military must do its best to get you back. It's an unspoken covenant.

If the Obama administration didn't get him back, there would be massive cries about how we "left one behind". Now you're hearing the FauxHeads complain about how we endangered national security to bring home a traitor. Horseshit.

As for the 5, no one knows if they've been held captive as bargaining chips, due to intelligence, whether they're a security risk or any number of reasons. But after 10 years in captivity, I'd place a bet that these guys have been broken.

Another note is that some soldiers have claimed that people lost their lives in the search for him (I believe I read the number was 6). So his actions may have caused the death of a number of other soldiers. Not to mention all the resources that have gone into finding him and bringing him back.

I don't have an issue with swaps of some kind. It's gone on for ages and part of war. But this swap doesn't seem to be balanced at all. If we were getting back a decorated soldier who was captured doing his job, that's another thing. But this is a deserter. Someone who chose to leave his position and responsibility and put people fighting him in danger.

By the way, the Rolling Stone piece on him is excellent and talks about the prisoner swap years in advance.

Bowe Bergdahl: America's Last Prisoner of War by Michael Hastings | Politics News | Rolling Stone

The Taliban are technically not terrorists. They are an enemy we are at war with. POW swaps have gone on in every single war we've fought in. It's semantics I guess, but this doesn't intrude on the "negotiate with terrorist" mantra we pretend to have.

Regardless, the deal doesn't seem good to me. Here is a piece on the six soldiers who lost their lives searching for him.

The 6 U.S. Soldiers Who Died Searching For Bowe Bergdahl - TIME

Yeah - that's pretty semantical, but true.

To be fair - I hadn't/haven't read anything about this/heard anything about this, so I'm basically speaking out of my ass here.

"Held captive" versus "collaborating" is two different animals.


Umm ... so much so that I didn't even remember the scumbag's name when it first re-entered the news. No Blackadar, there was not "massive cries" because the military community has known for years what this p.o.s. was. Repeatedly I saw the phrase "should be shot on sight" in reference to this guy, both at the time of the original desertion and once he reappeared this week. And those aren't comments from keyboard jockeys, those were from people not only in the field at the time but in his area of operations AND familiar with the circumstances on a personal level (i.e knew people in his unit, etc).

There may well be cases where the points you made are perfectly valid, this specific case simply isn't one of those.