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U.S. House Condemns Obama For Releasing ‘Taliban Five’

U.S. House Condemns Obama For Releasing ‘Taliban Five’

Washington (AFP) — U.S. lawmakers slammed President Barack Obama Tuesday for failing to notify Congress before releasing five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo in exchange for an American POW.

U.S. officials, fearing for the life and health of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who had been held captive for five years, swiftly negotiated for his release in a controversial May swap that fueled a major political dust-up in Washington, as critics accused Obama of sidestepping Congress.

The House of Representatives voted 249 to 163 on a non-binding resolution “condemning and disapproving of the Obama administration’s failure” to comply with rules requiring a 30-day notification to Congress before releasing detainees from the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Twenty-two Democrats joined a unanimous Republican side in voting for the resolution, which also noted the potentially severe national security repercussions of the deal that was brokered by Qatar.

“By negotiating with terrorists, the Obama administration encouraged our enemies,” House Speaker John Boehner said shortly after the vote.

“By setting free five top Taliban commanders from U.S. custody, the Obama administration made Americans less safe.”

Bergdahl, the only U.S. soldier captured by the Taliban since the war began in 2001, disappeared when he left his post at a forward operating base in Afghanistan.

AFP Photo/Mladen Antonov

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Released Afghan POW Bowe Bergdahl Completes Treatment, Takes New Army Post

Released Afghan POW Bowe Bergdahl Completes Treatment, Takes New Army Post

By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was held captive for five years in Afghanistan until he was traded May 31 for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo, has completed his U.S. military-led reintegration and has been assigned to an army unit in Texas to continue his military service.

Senior Pentagon officials told McClatchy that Bergdahl, who was promoted from private first class to sergeant during his captivity, has been assigned to Army North headquarters at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Houston in Texas. The posting will allow him to remain near the military doctors who’ve treated him through his reintegration process at San Antonio Military Medical Center.

He is likely to receive some leave time during his new assignment, the officials said.

His new assignment will be his first opportunity to work alongside his fellow soldiers, some of whom have accused him of desertion, claiming he left his post in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009 and that troops died searching for him after he was taken prisoner. His trade for the five Taliban, who had been in Guantanamo for more than a decade, also brought angry denunciations from some members of Congress who opposed their release.

By now, Bergdahl likely is aware of the controversy that swirled around his release, though details of how he was introduced to events that took place during his captivity have not yet emerged. He has been in an outpatient program at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Houston since June 22 and has been seen at restaurants and shops around San Antonio, often accompanied by members of his medical team, who specialize on helping prisoners of war reintegrate into society.

Doctors treating him have said they allowed him to pick where to go on such trips to help him regain confidence in making his own decisions after years of life as a Taliban hostage.

As part of his reintegration, Bergdahl has spoken to other soldiers about his experiences while a Taliban prisoner, but the U.S. military has not provided any details of the circumstances behind his capture, citing an ongoing investigation led by Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl. Bergdahl has not yet been interviewed by Dahl.

Doctors who treated Bergdahl, citing patient confidentiality, have not shared with Dahl the contents of their conversations with Bergdahl.

The military has not said what role Bergdahl’s parents, who led the public campaign for his release, have played in his treatment. In the early weeks after his release, the military said he had not spoken to his parents. It was unclear if that was because he was not ready to speak to them or had chosen not to.

According to a 2012 Rolling Stone piece, Berghdal sent an email to his parents in the days before his capture expressing his disdain and disillusionment with his military commanders, saying he longer believed in the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

“The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting,” the Hailey, Idaho, native wrote his family, according to the Rolling Stone piece.

Bowe Bergdahl To Return To U.S. On Friday

Bowe Bergdahl To Return To U.S. On Friday

Washington (AFP) – The American soldier released by Afghan insurgents in a swap with the Taliban will return to the United States on Friday after undergoing medical treatment at a military hospital in Germany, a U.S. defense official said Thursday.

Bowe Bergdahl was “expected to arrive on Friday” at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, a U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

AFP Photo

What Matters Most: Bringing Bowe Bergdahl Back

What Matters Most: Bringing Bowe Bergdahl Back

Those who object to President Barack Obama’s recent prisoner exchange raise a bracing question: How many Taliban terrorists is one freed U.S. soldier worth?

That question lies at the heart of the backlash that President Obama has received after doing what many of his critics have been urging him to do: take action to free U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held prisoner by the Taliban for the past five years.

The objections come mainly over the way he did it: He traded five high-ranking Taliban detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, whom many sources call the most dangerous U.S. detainees on the island.

Yet the president makes no apologies, he says, for following the time-honored American military ethos: Leave no man or woman behind. The big dispute, his opponents fume, is over the price.

But what, I ask, is the alternative? When a civilized country is drawing down a military action, as the U.S. is withdrawing from Afghanistan, it does not leave its soldiers behind, even if big questions surround them like the current uproar around Bergdahl.

We are not, for example, like Joseph Stalin. After beating Adolf Hitler’s army in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Russian dictator was offered a high-value POW, his own eldest son, in exchange for a captured German field marshal. Yet Stalin refused. “I will not trade a marshal for a lieutenant,” he is reported to have said. The son, famously unloved by his father, would die in a German prison camp.

At the other, more honorable extreme, it’s hard to beat the risks taken by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he approved the release three years ago of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners — including convicted terrorists responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths — to free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli sergeant who had been held captive by Hamas for five years.

It was perhaps with that in mind that the Obama White House appears to have underestimated the political blowback that they would receive for the Bergdahl swap. Team Obama was ready for questions about the likelihood that the five released detainees would return to battle in Afghanistan, after a year under the supposedly watchful monitoring of Qatar’s government. The risk is real. But after a dozen years in custody at Guantánamo, their ability to return to command positions has been weakened by changing times, drone strikes and other military actions — some of which could be taken against the former detainees if they return to their old jobs.

Where Team Obama appears to have been caught off-guard is in the furor against Bergdahl. Otherwise, for example, National Security Advisor Susan Rice probably would not have gone on Sunday morning talk shows describing Bergdahl as having served with “honor and distinction.” Too many questions surround his record, as a media feeding frenzy soon exposed.

He was called a traitor and deserter by members of his platoon, whose rage is not hard to understand. Walking away from your fellow soldiers violates more than written military law. It breaks the crucial bond of mutual trust, reliance and interdependence that is at the core of military culture and the “warrior brotherhood,” for men and for women.

Yet not being liked by your fellow soldiers is damaging, but not illegal. By most accounts, Bergdahl did his job and performed like a quirky, adventurous oddball who kept to himself in a culture that can be unforgiving to nonconformists.

He also walked away twice before, once during training in California and once in Afghanistan, but he returned both times on his own. Was he on another one of his dangerous walkabouts in 2009 when he walked into the arms of the Taliban? Was he AWOL, which is a minor offense, or a deserter, meaning he did not intend to return?

GI Bowe is coming home. Perhaps now he can tell his side of the story. If he broke laws, he should be prosecuted. If a real court martial is necessary, it would be better than his current court martial by news media.

(Email Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

AFP Photo

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