Tuesday morning's news came with the interesting headline, not unexpected in some circles -- the Army sergeant who had been traded back to the USA in return for five Taliban leaders who had been held in the facility at Guantanamo Bay, is bring charged with desertion. The Pentagon's spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, backed off on that this morning (there is no "final decision"), but it appears imminent.
That the Army is doing this despite what must be immense pressure from above (read: the White House) speaks to the huge preponderance of evidence relating to Bowe Bergdahl's determination to desert his position and associate himself with the enemy (aside to the White House: the Taliban is, indeed, the enemy).
The president was out of the country, traveling to India so that the press could buzz about the first lady's attire while the president tried to persuade the Indians to help him fight that nasty global warming, and then to Saudi Arabia for the funeral of their king. So it may be a few days before he puts himself in a position of having to comment on Bergdahl's imminent arrest and court-martial.
It's a good thing for Mr. Obama that, as he pointed out in the State of the Union address, he won the elections he ran in and is not running for anything else. Because this is the type of embarrassment that even the guy who won reelection in the face of the Benghazi cover-up might have trouble with.
The Army cannot bow even to its commander in chief on this one. Bergdahl surely has such a tall stack of evidence piled up against him that the Army had no choice but to court-martial him, and given how much that "preponderance" had to be to indict him, knowing it would create embarrassment to the president, there's no doubt he will be convicted.
At the same time, the five Taliban leaders -- Mullah Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Mohammed Nabi Omari -- all of whom were considered high risks to be back in action fighting against the USA -- are back, released to Qatar and already, or soon to be, filling the leadership vacuum in the Taliban.
Barack Obama is an incredible danger to the security of the USA, as we are reminded every moment he is allowed to open the Gitmo doors and send back to the Middle East the leaders of the evil that rules in many places there. It is simply incumbent on this Congress to slam the gate and stop the releases, the exchanges and every other action that returns these people to the hatred and violence they helped spawn.
No, Mr. Obama, you won your elections; but the Bergdahl case is going to cloud that legacy, fictional though it be, that you and your sycophants in the press have created for you. You stupidly released five major threats to the security of your citizens, in exchange for a deserter whose rightful punishment would have been to remain in the hands of his captors.
For Heaven's sake, Mr. President, please, please go outside that yes-yes echo chamber you live in and get some real experts in there to start advising you.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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