Tag: bergdahl controversy
Army Names General To Investigate Bergdahl’s Disappearance

Army Names General To Investigate Bergdahl’s Disappearance

By David S. Cloud, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Army said Monday it had named a two-star general to investigate the disappearance and capture of Sergeant Bowe R. Bergdahl in Afghanistan, a possible step toward a formal finding that he left his base without authorization.

Major General Kenneth R. Dahl, who formerly served as deputy commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, will investigate the “the facts and circumstances surrounding” Bergdahl’s capture in June 2009, when he left a combat base near the Pakistani border and was taken prisoner, eventually falling into Taliban hands.

Bergdahl was exchanged last month for five Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and is now receiving treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

In its statement Monday, the Army said Dahl will not interview Bergdahl until the team of doctors and therapists who are treating him give their permission. “No timeline for completion of the investigation has been set,” the statement said.

“The Army’s top priority remains Sergeant Bergdahl’s health and reintegration,” it added.

Pentagon officials said that Dahl’s primary task is getting Bergdahl’s account of what happened to him during his nearly five years in captivity.

A previous investigation in 2009, which has not been made public, concluded that Bergdahl left his post without permission after growing disenchanted with the Army and the war in Afghanistan, according to officials familiar with the findings. Bergdahl has said in a video released by his captors that he was captured after falling behind on a patrol.

“These types of investigations are not uncommon and serve to establish the facts on the ground following an incident,” the Army said in a written statement.

Dahl will have access to the 2009 investigation, the Army said.

The prisoner exchange has prompted sharp criticism of the Obama administration by some Republicans in Congress who contend that the deal violated a U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists and that the U.S. gave up too much to get Bergdahl back.

But Obama and top Pentagon officials have responded that they believed the deal was their last chance to get a possibly ailing Bergdahl back and that not doing the swap of prisoners would have breached a longstanding practice of getting back members of military who are taken captive.

Dahl is deputy commanding general of 1st Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He served as deputy commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division in southern Afghanistan in 2010-12, and returned in 2012 as a deputy commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan, according to his Army biography.

Photo via AFP

In Bergdahl Case, ‘Conservatives’ Ignore Basic American Principles

In Bergdahl Case, ‘Conservatives’ Ignore Basic American Principles

What the Bowe Bergdahl saga demonstrates beyond question – to anyone who still nurtured any doubt – is that the Republican right will junk just about any basic American value to satisfy its hatred of Barack Obama. Fair play, due process, respect for families and the military: To most if not all so-called conservatives, none of these fundamentals matters nearly so much as the urge to undermine the nation’s first black president. Which is another reason, among many, why they no longer deserve the honorific “conservative.”

In the matter of Bergdahl, a military officer held by the enemy in Afghanistan and released in a trade of prisoners, the right-wing fakers who call themselves conservative are trashing ideals that they routinely claim to hold sacred.

The American military code of conduct has long assured all service personnel that if captured by the enemy, “you may rest assured that your government…will use every practical means to contact, support and gain release for you and for all other prisoners of war.” Leaving aside the moral imperative that is the foundation of this policy, which predates the current military code by centuries, it is a simple military necessity. Support the troops? The morale of our fighting men and women would be severely damaged if they came to believe that the U.S. government would not do everything in its power to bring them home from captivity – regardless of any questions about their conduct. (Arizona senator John McCain, who has written forthrightly of his shame about his own conduct as a Vietnam POW, surely should be able to explain why.)

Our national commitment to rescue American captives extends beyond those in uniform to any citizen who has been kidnapped or seized by a hostile force. That was certainly the excuse when the president most revered by the right – Ronald Reagan – handed over advanced weapons to a terrorist regime in the Iran-contra deal. It is a commonplace observation that if a Democratic president had committed the same offenses, he and his cohort would have been denounced for treason, and perhaps rightly so. Yet while the Republicans want to impeach Obama for releasing five Taliban geezers, they would still stamp Reagan’s image on coins and bills, raise monuments to his memory, and emblazon his name on every edifice in the country.

Prominent voices on the right now insist that Bergdahl was unworthy of rescue, because his capture allegedly occurred after he deserted his post. None of the loudest wingnuts registered this complaint until after the White House secured his release; indeed, many of them were agitating for the Obama administration to save Bergdahl until this week. Today they declare with equal volume and fervor that he is a “traitor” who should have been left to rot with his Taliban captors.

So much for the American principles of due process and presumption of innocence – which happen to be among the very ideals that are supposed to differentiate us from our enemies. Libertarians and conservatives always fiercely claim to uphold due process, especially when one of their ilk is in the dock. But for some curious reason, those principles don’t always apply when a Democrat is president. Thankfully, in the view of the Commander-in-Chief and the U.S. Army, which maintains jurisdiction and custody over Bergdahl, due process apparently remains in force, which must be why he was promoted to sergeant while a prisoner of war.

However angry Bergdahl’s former comrades may feel, and however his actions may have justified their anger, they will likely have an opportunity to testify about him if the Army pursues a court martial. That would be the appropriate forum to sort out the facts about Bergdahl’s conduct – not a Twitter lynching party or a kangaroo court held by Bill Kristol on Fox News Channel. The proposal that we should leave a soldier in the hands of the enemy, based on suspicions or rumors of disloyalty, is disgusting on many levels, and should infuriate anyone who boasts of his devotion to the Constitution.

A decent respect for military families – owed to the sacrifices and hardships they confront – is another conservative virtue that the right no longer deems convenient. Whatever anyone thinks of Bowe Bergdahl (or his father’s Duck Dynasty-style beard), Robert and Jani Bergdahl have faced the same heartache as any captured soldier’s parents – and they have done nothing to deserve the sudden torrent of partisan abuse. The swinish Glenn Beck — a self-styled super-patriot who spent his youth snorting cocaine and swilling booze while others served their country — is eagerly leading the effort to demonize the Bergdahls.

In years past, the venerable taboo against abusing the reputation of an Army veteran, especially a former prisoner of war, to pursue a political vendetta would have been too powerful to ignore. Today we see the Republican right eagerly mobilizing its entire media apparatus — complete with cheesy Washington public relations flacks and sleazy fundraising appeals — to mount a bitter campaign against Bergdahl and his family.

Of course, the true target is Barack Obama. Everything and everyone else, from the beleaguered Bergdahls to respect for due process and the military code, even conservatism itself, are all just so much “collateral damage.” The radical right will not desist until it has all burned down.

AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan

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Despite Administration Denials, Lawmaker Thinks Obama Wants Cuba Spy-Swap

Despite Administration Denials, Lawmaker Thinks Obama Wants Cuba Spy-Swap

By Marc Caputo, The Miami Herald

MIAMI — After news broke about President Barack Obama’s prisoner swap involving five Taliban Guantanamo Bay detainees, many wondered about the fate of another person, this one locked away in Cuba: Alan Gross, the U.S. government contractor believed by many to have been railroaded on trumped-up spy charges.

The Obama administration says it is not negotiating for Gross.

Yet U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican Cuban exile leader, doesn’t think the administration is being honest.

“I seriously believe the administration is considering a swap,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “The administration has shown itself not to be faithful to the law and is not to be trusted.”

For instance, Ros-Lehtinen said, the administration two years ago briefed her and other members of Congress in a closed-door intelligence briefing on the proposed swap of the five Taliban for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, a likely deserter during his tour in Afghanistan.

Ros-Lehtinen, House Speaker John Boehner and others objected to negotiating with terrorists.

“They said: ‘We hear you loud and clear.’ And two years later, what do we have?” she asked. “A prisoner swap.”

In between, Congress passed a bill that would require notification of any Guantanamo prisoner transfers 30 days in advance. Obama, in signing the law, issued a signing statement to essentially give him wiggle room to ignore that under unique circumstances.

Obama, as a candidate in 2007, criticized the prior administration’s use of signing statements, saying, “I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

In the case of Gross, Ros-Lehtinen issued press releases earlier this week in English and Spanish mischaracterizing news reports about Gross, who was arrested in Cuba in 2009 after Cuban authorities said he possessed satellite telephones and other banned communications equipment. Gross said the equipment was intended for the Jewish community on the island.

Ros-Lehtinen’s press release said that “news reports” indicated the administration “may be considering” a swap with Cuba: Gross in return for the three remaining “Cuban Five” espionage convicts imprisoned in the United States.

The news reports at the time said Obama wasn’t considering it.

Ros-Lehtinen’s Spanish-language press release was more off the mark, saying that Obama “is considering” a swap.

Ros-Lehtinen acknowledged the error, but she said it doesn’t matter. She believes the administration is talking quietly with Cuba.

She pointed to a Tuesday back-and-forth between a reporter and State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki , who was asked repeatedly about Gross. In a final question, a reporter asked whether “the administration is still opposed to any deal with the Cubans for Alan Gross that involves the three remaining Cuban Five?”

Psaki: “Nothing has changed in that case, no.”

So, in public, Obama and Ros-Lehtinen have the same position.

Ros-Lehtinen said Psaki’s prior “evasions” — before the reporter asked about “any deal with the Cubans” — suggested that something else was going on.

So who’s right?

“We’ll see in two years,” Ros-Lehtinen said, referring to the end of Obama’s term.

AFP Photo/Jim Watson

Bergdahl Prisoner Exchange Sparks Bipartisan Backlash In Congress

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday battled a bipartisan storm of criticism over President Barack Obama’s decision to order the exchange of Taliban leaders for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.

Senior lawmakers from both parties are questioning the administration’s justification for acting without first consulting members of Congress and whether the deal put the nation’s security at further risk.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said in a statement Tuesday that members of Congress had not been briefed on the possibility of such an exchange with the Taliban since January 2012, and that there was “every expectation that the administration would re-engage” if diplomatic negotiations rekindled. The White House was aware that “it faced serious and sober bipartisan concern and opposition” to the idea, Boehner said.

“The administration has invited serious questions into how this exchange went down and the calculations the White House and relevant agencies made in moving forward without consulting Congress,” Boehner said.

Republican aides are promising “rigorous” oversight, particularly in the House when it returns from recess next week. House Armed Services Committee chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) has invited Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to testify before the panel on June 11.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) defended Obama’s action, saying Wednesday that the president “acted honorably in helping an American soldier return home to his family.”

“Unfortunately, opponents of President Obama have seized upon the release of an American prisoner of war — that’s what he was — using what should be a moment of unity and celebration for our nation as a chance to play political games,” he said in remarks on the floor. “The safe return of an American soldier should not be used for political points.”

But other Democrats are among those expressing serious concerns. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the administration’s justification for not notifying members of Congress before the exchange, casting doubt upon its contention that Bergdahl’s deteriorating health justified quick action.

“As I understand, he was undernourished — not necessarily malnourished,” Feinstein told reporters after a closed briefing of the committee. “Unless something catastrophic happened, I think there was no reason to believe that he was in instant danger. There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call, and say, ‘I know you all had concerns about this.'”

Feinstein also said she had received an apology from White House deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken for not contacting her until after the mission was successfully completed.

“I strongly believe that we should have been consulted, that the law should have been followed. And I very much regret that that was not the case,” she said.

A Boehner aide said that when the Defense Department called Saturday morning to notify the speaker — a call that came less than an hour before Bergdahl’s recovery was announced publicly — it was acknowledged that they were “acting inconsistent with the law.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he got a heads-up call Saturday from the White House. Reid was notified Friday, making him perhaps the only senior lawmaker given advance notice.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, said he received a call Monday expressing regret.

“I haven’t had a conversation with the White House on this issue in a year and a half,” he said Tuesday. “Now, if that’s keeping us in the loop, then, you know, this administration is more arrogant than I thought they were.”

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) said he recalled briefings with the administration about possibly releasing senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo as part of an effort to begin political reconciliation talks — an idea he said he strongly opposed. But, he said, those briefings did not include a discussion of Bergdahl.

Levin, who said there was an attempt to notify him about the operation Saturday, said his colleagues should not be surprised that the administration acted as it did, because Obama “put us on warning” last December with a statement he issued after signing the defense authorization bill. In the signing statement, Obama said he intended to exercise his powers as commander in chief and, if necessary, “to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.”

“Does that change the law? No. But does that assert that he has authority under the Constitution? Yes,” Levin said.

An administration official said the White House, State Department, Defense Department and the office of the Director of National Intelligence have “been in close touch with members of Congress and congressional staff” since Bergdahl was recovered.

“Over the coming days, our engagement with Congress, both at a member level and staff level, will continue,” the official said.

In addition to the Intelligence Committee briefing Tuesday, House staff will receive a formal briefing Wednesday, with others planned for both members of the House and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee next week.