And the hits keep coming
There are so many revelations coming so fast in the Bergdahl story that I can’t keep up with them and still manage to do a few other things, such as visit with people and have dinner.
So I’m putting up this thread for readers to post links to breaking stories if they want to, and to discuss them. Right now I just read this one, a good example of how—despite my supposed lack of surprise about whatever outrage Obama commits—he still manages to outrage me:
The deal to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban detainees held by the U.S. military nixed a broader effort by the Department of Defense to include other U.S. citizens held by the Taliban and its allies, according to a top congressional aide.
The Department of Defense had a “broader goal” of including Caitlan Coleman of York , Pa., her baby who was born in captivity and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, in a deal to free Bergdahl, said Joe Kasper, chief of staff to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.
Among Americans held captive is Warren Weinstein, a contractor from Rockville, Md., who was abducted in 2011 in Pakistan and is detained by al-Qaeda militants aligned with the Taliban.
“The DoD was looking at this in the whole scope of things, to deal with these people as well,” Kasper told USA TODAY in an interview Thursday. “Instead of five for one, why not five for five?”
The following quote made me think, WTF?:
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said Thursday the idea of negotiating for the release of hostages was never seriously discussed. “It is longstanding U.S. policy not to make concessions to hostage-takers,” Hard said.
So what did we just do for Bergdahl? Oh, I see, he wasn’t a hostage so they weren’t hostage-takers:
The exchange for Bergdahl was consistent with that policy because he was “a combatant detained in the course of an armed conflict,” and “not a hostage,” Harf said. “His status as a missing or captured soldier is distinct from someone who, for example, may be a civilian hostage.”
No, he wasn’t “a combatant detained in the course of an armed conflict.” He purposely walked off the base, after sending his stuff (like for example his uniform) home, and either intentionally or accidentally fell right into the arms of the waiting Taliban.
Hrm….
Well, whatever. If you see a Democrat, take it out on em.
Remember Obama warned us. He has a pen and a phone and he isn’t afraid to use them.
And why shouldn’t he. Through a growing list of abuses and usurpations congress has been at best complacent if not incompetent. And Holder believes that Obama’s only failings have been in not being more radical and acting quickly enough. This is just a beginning. We’ll see more of this on a daily basis.
We are nearing the proverbial tipping point. The scale will tip only one of 2 ways. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Since the begining of this I wanted to give Bowe Bergdahl the benefit of the doubt. With ALL of the accounts from fellow soldiers and reports and such I’ve
come to the conclusion this soldier IS at best a deserter.
If he walks free in the end all is lost in my not only Obama (really who gives a flying flip about o anyway) but more disturbing the military process of discipline.
Presidents come and go but to loose our faith in the military to do the right thing would be a disaster to our nation.
Comrade Hussein Zero is going to profane the beaches of Normandy with his presence tomorrow.
Please, please, God, inspire those attending to stand and turn their backs on him as one — in silent scorn.
Bergdahl is at best an imbecile, but that’s stretching the benefit of the doubt way past the screaming and passing out from intense pain point. He’s a deserter. It really doesn’t matter why he deserted, the fact that he did is enough–him asking about his weapon and equipment prior to walking off establishes that this was a premeditated act. Perhaps not very well premeditated, but premeditated nonetheless.
I understand how one can be frustrated with an assignment or a unit, BTDT, but in the end as bad as his unit might have been (and as a veteran I have really serious misgivings about the Rolling Stone article; it smells like the kind of lazy, cliche-bound “exposes” done during and shortly after the Vietnam War), nothing excuses leaving one’s unit in the way he did. The fact that good men got killed and wounded trying to recover this sorry POS makes his actions even worse.
Where things get dicey is whether or not he simply deserted or if he defected. His unit found itself faced with a more effective enemy response to their tactics after Bergdahl’s capture; this may have been due to breaking under interrogation and/or torture, or he may just have gone over to the other side. This will be sorted out later, but the Army is now faced with a very real PR problem–how do you prosecute a deserter whose parents were greeted at the White House at a photo op to celebrate the return of a captured POW?
And Papa Bergdahl certainly did his son no favors either by his Muslim prayer consecrating the White House to Islam at that ceremony or by his comments on social media.
This business is going to get a lot uglier in the weeks to come. Obama seriously miscalculated the optics of his photo op, and whether or not the current military leadership is angered by his slap in the face I can tell you that more than a few veterans are. This one certainly is….
The traitor had renamed himself Abdullah and declared jihad on US soldiers, James Rosen has said, secret documents show.
This creep is not a POW. He is a traitor who left to join the taliban. He calls America evil. Obama negotiated with terrorists to bring back a jihadist.
But he killed Seal Team 6. He did not want them to come home.
That POS president has no right to defile the beaches at Normandy
Between this and the VA scandal I think the only people who wear or ever wore a military uniform who are not pissed off at this miserable excuse for a president are senior officers who have decided to be politicians rather than soldiers. Colin Powell, call your office….
Dems in Congress are not happy, “weary” according to the NY Times, especially since election day is not all that far away. This is sweet:
“too needy” and they need that “stroking”. One thing you can say about Obama and his crew — they are pretty much non-partisan in their disdain for anyone outside their tight circle.
Only when people suffer will they ever desire to change themselves for the better. Torment is the key to rebirth. As for a soul, so will it be for the nation. Let Torment be the New Social Justice. Let the Light of Heaven shine down upon the unbelievers.
That’s what I wrote after Zombie made an interesting comment here. And “unbeliever” would be the Krauthammers that think they know better than me what’s really going on in the world.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2013/06/08/and-you-thought-rich-radicals-was-an-oxymoron/comment-page-1/#comment-162197
Only a year ago. My conclusion has not changed. But for those interested in what I thought and wrote back when my emotions were at a higher level of intensity, just read the comments at the link and follow it through.
But he killed Seal Team 6. He did not want them to come home.
Rumors and some sources lead me to believe that Benghazi was the result of arms smuggling to Libya, specifically anti air launchers given to AQ rebels in Libya to kill Qaddafi’s air force.
Which weren’t returned, but instead sold or transfered to Afghanistan. Thus Seal Team Six might very well have been killed by an American stinger or a Soviet equivalent sold by the American regime, after their identity was leaked (same as the CIA station chief’s id).
So far, based on what I’ve seen, the main Dems defense (ie, cover story) for Obama’s action is the notion that the US, specifically the US President, has an absolute policy to pay any price — no matter the consequential harms and dangers to us, our allies, the common people who’ve depended on US-led security, and anyone else terrorists might target moving forward — to repatriate a captured soldier, including military deserters.
In that regard, Obama seems to be crafting a novel policy on the fly around the senior Taliban leaders release.
During my service in Korea, I learned that over the years, upwards of a 100 US soldiers, most of whom profiled just like Bergdahl — drifting, disaffected, depressed, etc — deserted/defected across the DMZ to a new life in north Korea with much the same rationale as his. I believe it was one of the minor reasons that our troops were pulled off of direct guard duty on the DMZ.
Given its large needs and wants, I presume there are deals north Korea would have made with those military deserters as trade chips if the US assigned as high a value for their repatriation as Obama claims to have assigned to Bergdahl.
In other words, before Bergdahl, I don’t recall that US repatriation of US military deserters being an absolute policy, no matter the price in consequential harms and dangers.
In addition, the nature of Obama’s senior Taliban leaders release is striking.
No indefinite detention. But no trial of any kind, either. They weren’t transferred from Gitmo to Afghanistan’s custody or at least transferred to a 3rd party in careful concert with Afghanistan.
Obama simply released them back into the community despite the Taliban’s undisguised intent and ongoing acts to restore their terroristic rule over Afghanistan, in addition to any other long-term negative impacts on the War on Terror.
Obama isn’t just trying to ‘end the war’, which is a false concept anyway. He’s trying to lose it.
Ann Barnhardt: Why I’m considering quitting.
Read the whole thing.
rickl,
http://doingdemocracy.com/
The activist game is the only social-political game there is.
rickl…
Barnhardt needs to revisit her history library.
1) Barry is walking an ancient path of folly. While, no doubt, he feels safe behind his Secret Service details, any historian would remind him that from classical China to classical Rome the Big Man was normally liquidated by his own security detail. The common man and top government officials never laid a glove on the Big Men. This is a record that spans thousands of years and many governments, many cultures.
2) As impressive as Big Government seems from DC, it can, and has, break down literally overnight. At no time does anyone at the top of the heap see it coming. They never do. Gorby was just as surprised as Louis XVI. In both cases, they’d run out of ‘the stash.’
3) Barry is surely dreaming of living it large after (?) leaving office in 2017. But as Gorby and Louis could tell, a failed president should count himself lucky if he can work the speaking circuit.
4) Barry is destroying the Democrat party far faster than he is the USA. Being the ultimate political parasite, Barry is bleeding Democrat coffers white — while driving White voters out. At this time the Democrats have erected a spending empire that can’t be financed.
5) Which leads us to the inevitable (economic) passive resistance sure to lie directly ahead. Weirdly, Barry is now utterly dependent upon his political opponents to fund his extravagances. His voting bloc is now reduced to direct welfare + AA feather-bedders + crony-capitalists. As Yeltsin discovered (1998) all of them get gutted during a fiscal crisis.
6) Immigrants flood in for a Lotto win. They will flood out when the payout machine breaks down. (Rather like the Vandals departing Rome after picking up their pay-checks ‘in kind.’ They’d never have made the trip if Rome wasn’t a flaming dead-beat.)
7) Under emergency conditions all of the zany policies enacted by Mr. Executive Order will be repealed overnight. Some ‘adjustments’ will skirt the US Constitution — certain to be suspended during such a period of national (financial) emergency. This extra-legal license will be justified on the basis of Barry’s own flaming violations of the US Constitution.
8) With every reduction in American economic vitality its ability to vector domestic taxation onto the world stage will abate. Right now this extraordinary power is all that is keeping Barry’s ‘stashist faction’ afloat. This WWII legacy is prone to catastrophic collapse. (That’s the historical model for economic implosions.) Like the career of a gun-fighter the end is intrinsically abrupt.
More generally, Barnhardt is too close to the action… and has rhetorical fatigue.
BTW, traitors can’t be hostages.
Abdullah/ Bowe Bergdahl needs to be an object lesson.
Great points well stated. {CLAP CLAP CLAP} Bravo!
Beverly said:
“Comrade Hussein Zero is going to profane the beaches of Normandy with his presence tomorrow…”
Well then, he won’t be profaning Midway with his presence. 4-7 June 1942.
So we’ve got that.
Speaking of Normandy, not all the boys of Pointe du Hoc were Army types.
http://darbysrangers.tripod.com/id110.htm
“…Lt. Col James E. Rudder C.O. of the Provisional Ranger Force called on assistance from the Satterlee. The Satterlee drew just over 17 feet of water; and coming as close as possible to the action…
…The Satterlee defied every rule of safe naval operation during this combat to support the 2nd. Ranger Battlion and the mission.
The Destroyer laid in volley after volley and turned and made more parallel passes until Rudder spoke into his radio again; ‘Very Nice Shooting!…Don’t Go Away…'”
Not even Comrade Zero’s presence can defile it.
Little known fun fact: the scout/observation squardrons of the US cruisers and battleships supporting the invasion traded in their SOC Seagull biplanes and OS2U Kingfishers for Spitfires, due to the expected German aerial resistance. I believe it’s the only time in WWII when the USN flew Spitfires.
For neo-neocon, who it strikes me would appreciate some Andrew Sisters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT_PClBc8vE
OS2U Kingfishers on ASW patrol in the Tasman Sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLKt6jcCXFg
Here’s a hit on Hollywood by O’Keefe. Wonder if he has the funding and agents to do one on Berg.
rickl: God knows I feel like Barnhart. But we have to accept that people are the way they are, and that things that were *obvious* to us in 2008 were not to the vast majority then. We need to keep trucking while the sheeples’ eyes gradually open at long last.
On Islam and kidnapping for ransom, this is from today’s WaPo:
“Beyond a hatred of Western education, economic motives may have also driven Boko Haram’s recent abduction of the schoolgirls. A robust and terrifying slave market hums in Nigeria and neighboring countries. “Kidnapping has become one of [Boko Haram’s] primary funding sources, a way to extract concessions from the Nigerian state and other governments, and a threat to foreigners and Nigerian government officials,” according to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. It is worth “millions of dollars in ransom money.”
Boko Haram, for example, was paid $3 million when it freed a French family last year.”
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
It’s just Islam, folks; just the way they do things. Our great Emir knows this and plays that game. Boko Haram may well be spending some Qatari money, as are the five monsters released to Qatar by our Emir.
I agree with blert and Don Carlos.
The problem has always been the people, and the people are slow to change. Mainly, they don’t pay attention until the incompetence hits them in their wallet; then, they get angry.
So far, Obama has done as well as possible in delaying the economic effects of his agenda. But that time has passed. The new EPA rules are almost guaranteed to drive the U.S. into explicit recession…probably before the election.
The people aren’t going to like that.
It’s too bad that people won’t look ahead, but that’s the world we live in.
Barnhardt needs to take a break and come back refreshed.
It’s just Islam, folks; just the way they do things. Our great Emir knows this and plays that game.
It’s not just Islam, the homosexual rapists in Hollywood have bought a few of them when they were overseas. It was always a possibility before, but the dots are tenuously connected now.
–Last year, child actor Corey Feldman sounded the alarm on rampant pedophilia in a brave, scathing memoir. He recounted how his best friend and co-star, the late Corey Haim, was sodomized by an older male on the set of their hit film “Lucas.” The boys, fed cocaine by a string of predators, attended parties with Hollywood talent manager and child actors’ rep Marty Weiss. Now a registered sex offender, Weiss pleaded no contest in 2012 to lewd acts on a child under the age of 14. The victim, another young child actor, alleged Weiss sexually assaulted him between 30 and 40 times from the age of 11.
–Registered sex offender Jason Murphy, a Hollywood casting agent, had kidnapped and molested an 8-year-old boy before joining the industry.
–Boy band impresario Lou Pearlman was a con artist and sleazeball who hosted sleepover parties wearing only a towel and solicited massages from young male singers. “Certain things happened, and it almost destroyed our family,” boy band star Nick Carter’s mother told Vanity Fair years ago. “I tried to warn everyone.”
–Former child actor Todd Bridges, of “Diff’rent Strokes” fame, says he was abused by his agent.
–Former teen pop princess Debbie Gibson has spoken of “older male record executives” who hit on her while she was still underage.
–Despite disturbing and longstanding allegations of molestation and rape, directors Woody Allen and Roman Polanski still enjoy professional acclaim and adoration of their peers.
–Perv fashion photographer Terry Richardson continues to enjoy the support of Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus despite years of allegations of misogyny, manipulation and sexual misconduct against young models.
If all of these sickos had been Catholic priests, college fraternity members or charter school teachers, we wouldn’t have heard the end of it. Perhaps the social justice awareness-raisers in the Hollywood left should take a break from pointing fingers at everyone else – and put a stop to the monsters in their own midst.
That’s from one of the links off Brand, that I collated together with a few on my blog.
As for why Santa Rog killer goes active, look at what else is going on.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/04/3731277/5-arrested-in-gang-rape-of-hollywood.html
Because they work for the LEft or are children of LEftists, they are immune until their crimes can no longer be covered up. Same for Hollywood’s rape of children.
They are ALL in it, together.
The head scratcher for me is Obama’s seeming contempt for this war and his rush to surrender. This was HIS war, but his behavior and rhetoric imply he was thrown into a terrible mess that he’s had to clean up. Yes, it’s a theme he’s used throughout the rest of his presidency, but this paritcular issue he campaigned for, promoted, and personally sent people to get shot at. From the start, he hamstrung them with rules of engagement that exposed them to unnecessary risk without any particular goal in mind except to show some presence. It was a gross misuse of the military and he sacrificed precious lives for personal optics.
Which is why it is puzzling to me he didn’t care more about making sure he came out of this looking good. I keep coming back to incompetence, and primarily laziness, but it is hard to believe he’s not been criticized more for this god awful exploitation of lives and treasure so he could turn over Afghanistan to the Taliban. He’s got nothing to show for it, not even the image he was looking to promote.
If letting the Taliban take over was what he originally wanted, he could have done nothing at all and it would have happened faster. And to say this was done to humiliate Americans is not a great argument – he’s done more damage to his own precious image, his crediblity, and his name than he has done to our country. This stunt with Bergdahl and the exchange is a very convoluted way of doing what he simply could have done with executive order, with less controversy. Had he closed Gitmo 5 years ago and walked away from Afghanistan, there would have been a lot of criticism, but it would have been consistent with ending the so-called Bush era, and he would have survived the criticism – but he seems not to understand that his image and his judgment are truly damaged.
All he has accomplished by going to war with the intent of losing, trading low level deserters for high level terrorists, and god knows what else he’s “planning”, is to show what a selfish, arrogant sociopath he is. His own party know this now, and so do most of the media. They’re not going make it seem as bad as it is because they need to protect Hilllary’s chances, but I don’t believe most of them still think he’s done the country or his party any favors.
Somehow I don’t think that this image of an incompetent, or at best, vindictive America hater was what he expected a few years ago when he stood before the throngs of adoring fans, between the Roman pillars. I think he believed that most people would see his world vision of America the concilliatory, the repentent, the apologetic as a new awakening with him as the great leader who ushered it in. He expected to be loved embraced for these policies and this abortion of a foreign policy his presidency has implemented.
But I’m sure there are those who strongly disagree, that he never cared about his image, or his legacy and knew this would be how it all ended. I’m not so sure.
Afghanistan was the Left’s con, to make people believe Democrats were patriots. In reality, they wanted failure on both fronts, to help out their Islamic Jihad allies.
he’s done more damage to his own precious image, his crediblity, and his name than he has done to our country.
Several millions in a year from the speaking circuit, post PResidency, is damage?
Some of us would like that kind of damage.
southpaw,
You underestimate the power and elasticity of narrative. The truth is only one competing narrative and narrative is elective truth.
If they could spin the Iraq mission with its long open source background, they can spin anything.
The narrative may be elastic, but the necks of Leftists aren’t particularly.
blert, 5:33 am — “His voting bloc is now reduced to direct welfare + AA feather-bedders + crony-capitalists.”
Crank in those whose self-image compels them to vote for the hip dude, L-I-V naifs, ideological/academic leftists, illegal voters (including “voters” who do not exist and never did), and cemetery denizens galore across the fruited plain, and you’ve got a winning combination.
Also add in 19 million fake zombie votes and multiple college runners voting.
The “19 million fake zombie[s]” are the “cemetery denizens across the fruited plain”.
In other words, we are in violent agreement.
Unfortunately, they won’t stay in their cemeteries. The necromancers keep calling them out and putting them in the brains of Democrats.