NY Times story reveals negotiations leading to the Bergdahl deal and my comments about it

Behind P.O.W.’s Release: Urgency and Opportunity - NYTimes.com  Fascinating background story shows the Bergdahl exchange had been negotiated for over a half year.  When the deal was reached, the Administration acted quickly.  Was Bergdahl really sick? There appears to be evidence he was, in spite of the the armchair  diagnoses carried on by politicians and talking media heads who have no access to his medical and psychological well being.

 In any case, once the US troops ceased combat operations, there was little possibility that there would be enough forces left to find and free him or that he would live that long or that the negotiations would fail , making Bergdahl losing any value to the Taliban and would be disposed of, killed by them. So...the administration worked quickly thinking that their actions would be  a PR positive.  How wrong they were.  Pres. Obama must beginning to think that no good deed goes unpunished.

Today the argument from the supporters of the exchange is that the Taliban brass in Gtmo for 12 years were not a threat as the opponents of the exchange charge because they were getting old. Threats, too, were made by US military that if they left Qatar and joined the militants, special forces would shoot to kill; capture and imprisonment were no longer an option.

No one yet has seen this exchange in the wider terms of the wind down of the war and the need for the new regime to make peace with the Taliban or to continue prosecuting the war on their own.  The broader question is that when the US totally withdraws from Afghanistan in two years, what then with the Gtmo detainees not charged with crimes but just kept as, whether you call it not, prisoners of war and kept from the field of combat for the duration.  That is a hot potato that will be handed off to Obama's successor and perhaps both the GOP and HIllary Clinton should hope that Obama takes the fall for them.



Sen. Saxby Chambliss  (R-GA) on Morning Joe (MSNBC) today shot holes in most arguments posed by opponents of the deal, including knowing of no proof that 6 soldiers died searching for Bergdahl and that the Senate was not informed of the negotiations.  Indeed he got an apology from the administration for the failure to give the 30 days notice and acknowledged he knew about the earlier negotiations. He did reaffirm that he thought the 5 for i deal was a bad one.  Chambliss is not running for re election and is freed from having to toe anyone's line.  For that his views carry  a great deal of weight that he is speaking what is on his mind.