[RC] The Great Prisoner Swap : 5 Terrorists for 1 Deserter

[BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community]

 
Bergdahl Uproar Has WH in Damage Control  Mode
By _Alexis Simendinger_ 
(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/alexis_simendinger/)  -  June 4, 
2014http://www.realclearpolitics.com
 
 
What could be more uplifting? Amid a national uproar over veterans’ health  
care, President Obama would surprise Americans and the steadfast parents of 
Army  Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl by celebrating a soldier’s negotiated rescue from 
the  Taliban’s clutches after five long years. 
As the Afghanistan War lumbered to what Obama vowed last week would be a  “
responsible” end, the last American POW from that conflict would come  home.


That was the script, but the rest of the story sent the White House  
scrambling into its third day of damage control Tuesday. Obama found himself  
spending part of his day defending his decisions even though he was traveling 
in 
 Poland. Back home, the president’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and 
deputy  national security adviser, Tony Blinken, went to Capitol Hill seeking 
to quiet  accusations that the president ignored statutory instructions to 
alert Congress  in advance about such prisoner swaps. Lawmakers urged 
investigatory  hearings. 
Behind the scenes, White House staff members hastened to marshal support 
from  advocacy groups and military representatives, including a statement from 
Gen.  Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and another 
from  Secretary of the Army John McHugh. The president’s communications team 
unearthed  earlier, contrasting statements from some GOP lawmakers as a way 
to use partisan  politics as an explanation for the blowback. 
The price of retrieving Bergdahl via U.S. Army Special Forces was  
one-for-five, meaning the administration agreed to trade five terror suspects  
selected by the Taliban from the prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for the  
adventure-loving Army volunteer from a small town in Idaho. 
It was not without risks, known risks. 
In fact, the commander-in-chief, who vowed in 2008 to close Gitmo, knew 
that  in 2011 and 2012, when talks with the Taliban wobbled before breaking 
off, that  some lawmakers objected to the administration’s efforts, arguing 
against  negotiations with Taliban extremists, and warning that Gitmo 
prisoners, if  released, would work anew to kill Americans and U.S. allies. 
At the White House, where the president shared his lectern Saturday with  
Bergdahl’s parents (who happened to be in Washington on a previously planned  
trip and did not know until hours before that their son was safe), Obama 
was  familiar with Bob and Jani’s go-anywhere/stop-at-nothing efforts to 
secure their  son’s release, officials acknowledged. 
Bob Bergdahl, among many of his other public efforts on behalf of his son,  
supported a citizen petition that attracted _9,239 signatures_ 
(https://www.facebook.com/SgtBoweBergdahlPetition)   calling for the U.S. 
rescue of 
Bowe. It had been sent to the White House. 
But by Tuesday nearly _13,000 irate citizens_ 
(https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions)  had  signed another petition 
posted to the White House 
website calling for the  administration to “punish Bowe Bergdahl for being 
AWOL/desertion during  Operation Enduring Freedom.” 
Obama was familiar, too, with the Defense Department’s examination of 
reports  dating to the time of Bergdahl’s capture that he had deserted his unit 
or was  AWOL shortly before he was taken prisoner, setting off a search and 
rescue  mission that resulted in the deaths of six fellow soldiers. 
The president also privately knew for almost a week that a prisoner swap 
with  the Taliban was tantalizingly close to being concluded, administration 
officials  said. Obama and his team opted not to alert lawmakers, or 
President Hamid Karzai  in Afghanistan, because they feared leaks would scuttle 
talks that relied on the  government of Qatar as the middleman. And if that 
happened, they worried that  the release would slip away, perhaps for good. 
During a week in which Obama hailed an end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan,  
defended the contours of his foreign policies during a West Point 
commencement  address, and accepted the resignation of his Veterans Affairs 
secretary, 
 four-star Gen. Eric Shinseki, the president imagined that the rescue of an 
 American POW would be cheered, rather than condemned, especially by 
active-duty  military and veterans. 
But the trade-offs, motives, and peculiar White House communications 
invited  scrutiny of Sgt. Bergdahl’s service record, of the politics of his 
bearded  father, of the adage that Americans “leave no soldier behind,” and the 
 
conventional wisdom that the United States refuses to negotiate with 
terrorists  because doing so encourages future seizures of personnel. 
Dempsey and other administration officials conceded that a full examination 
 of Bergdahl’s service record in Afghanistan and his capture are pending, 
and  could result in potential punitive action by the Defense Department. 
That  possibility, they argued, is entirely separate from the merits of 
securing his  release and return to the United States. Bergdahl, 28, is 
expected to 
recover  for an unspecified period of time at Brooke Army Medical Center in 
San Antonio,  Texas. 
Meanwhile, lawmakers lost no time in questioning the administration’s  
actions, _arguing  that by law_ 
(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/gop-lawmakers-prisoner-exchange-violated-law-23943779)
  their assent was required 
before detainees are transferred from  the Guantanamo detainee facility in 
Cuba. _White  House aides apologized_ 
(http://www.aol.com/article/2014/06/03/white-house-apologizes-for-no-notice-on-bergdahl-pow-swap/20905999/?icid=main
g-grid7|responsive-test1|dl1|sec1_lnk2&pLid=483857)  Tuesday for the tardy 
notifications on Capitol Hill,  explaining to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair 
of the Senate Select Committee on  Intelligence, that offering Congress a 
30-day advance notification had been  impossible. 
The president’s team believes notification requirements in law do not  
constitutionally bind Obama’s decisions as commander-in-chief, and do not  
require the president to obtain Congress’s express approval. 
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Blinken, joined by other members of 
the  national security team, explained the “unique circumstance” of Bergdahl’
s  release to lawmakers. 
An NSC official would not comment directly to describe Blinken’s  
conversations, but told RCP that following Bergdahl’s release Saturday,  
officials 
from the White House, State and Defense departments, and the Office of  the 
Director of National Intelligence were in “close touch” with members of  
Congress and their staffs, and would continue those discussions. 
Appearing on MSNBC Tuesday while standing on the White House lawn, Blinken  
said the administration remained confident that Qatar would keep “a tight 
check  on the activities and the movements” of the five Afghan prisoners who 
were flown  there from Cuba. “We have the assurances we need from the 
government of Qatar,”  he said, deflecting a question about Qatar’s record of 
supporting terror groups  such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. “We’ll be 
watching very carefully,” he  added. 
That won’t be enough for Republican lawmakers, who want hearings on the  
matter, backed by House Speaker John Boehner. In a statement, the speaker said 
 the administration consulted him and key congressional chairmen in late 
2011 and  January 2012 about the possibility of a prisoner exchange. But 
reactions were  negative, and lawmakers expected the administration to consult 
them anew, should  an opening present itself again to retrieve the Army 
sergeant, Boehner said. 
The speaker said the White House opted not to consult lawmakers in recent  
days because “the administration knew it faced serious and sober bipartisan  
concern and opposition.” 
At the prospect of new GOP-chaired hearings and a military decision about  
Bergdahl’s service performance in Afghanistan at a later date, 
administration  officials patiently defended Obama’s intentions -- despite 
their 
weariness after  a seemingly endless spring of rolling domestic messes. But 
they 
also invented  scorched-earth, straw-man arguments in which they maintained 
that administration  critics would have preferred that Bergdahl “rot” in a 
Taliban prison. Privately,  they vented that saving a soldier who might not be 
a saint, in exchange for five  prisoners perceived as evil since 9/11, was 
more of a public relations challenge  than they’d bargained for. 
“I wouldn't be doing it if I thought that it was contrary to American  
national security,” the president told reporters Tuesday. His comments came  
during a news conference in Warsaw at the start of a week in which he’ll mark  
the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, where 9,387  
Americans remain buried. 
“We saw an opportunity. We were concerned about Sergeant Bergdahl's health,”
  he added. “We had the cooperation of the Qataris to execute an exchange 
and we  seized that opportunity. And the process was truncated because we 
wanted to make  sure that we did not miss that window.” 
No matter how Bergdahl served his country in Afghanistan, volunteering to  
wear the U.S. uniform means his country could not forsake him, 
administration  officials said. “Regardless of the circumstances, whatever 
those 
circumstances  may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if 
he's 
held in  captivity,” Obama said. “Period. Full  stop.”

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