Discussion for article #223497
I donât care what the other videos show! I only care what the video Fox shows me says!
4 Likes
While it is always amusing to hear a Rethug say the word âfactsâ, there is nothing amusing about the incendiary political machinations ginned up domestically by the GOP and an increasingly unwatched old media terrified of being on the wrong side of anything thought to be patriotic.
Hasnât the media that brought us âUFO Balloon Boyâ and Dubyaâs fake war yet learned to stick a toe in the water before jumping into the pool?
I hope NBC gets some heat for not masking Special Forces faces in the exchange footage and I hope the soldiers who violated their nondisclosure/secrecy oaths by speaking to the broken media will be punished.
8 Likes
Who you gonna believe? Fox News, or your lying eyes?
5 Likes
So basically, their knee jerk opposition to Obama has them arguing that the death of an American soldier in the hands of the enemy was just one part of the equation. And if he had died in captivity you know who would have been blamed as a murderer for not doing enough to get him back. Every time I think they could not be more crazed or stoop even lower, they prove me wrong.
16 Likes
There was no point in telling Congress anyways. They would have made the same stink they are now even after being told this stuff in confidence / classified manner, and, probably would have ended up with the Taliban just killing this guy or putting out tons of videos of them torturing him.
Just donât see the benefit.
4 Likes
The depravity of Republicans and conservatives has no limits.
6 Likes
Whatâs more, you know damn well that Rogers (or McCain, or Graham) would have run over his own mother to get to a RW reporter and leak the deal, and then run over his grandmother to get on a Sunday chat show and denounce the deal.
I repeat: They want to impeach Obama for this? Bring it, bitches!
10 Likes
Câmon, who you gonna believe â John Sununu or your lyinâ eyes?
1 Like
Iâll give you another prediction based on their track record: If Bergdahl dies in the hospital, at least one Teahadist moron will claim that he was murdered to cover up what really happened! Darrell Issa will have to change his pants, because thereâll be stains on the front and the back!
4 Likes
The GOP canât for the life of Reagan understand why Obama completed this deal. Over the last 6 years Obama has basically made decisions well over the heads of his opponents. As in this case they are left barking at the moon. Health, last prisoner, whatever, they canât keep up. We are in Poland, back on Ukraine.
2 Likes
Can anyone answer this: Given that the Army know that Bergdahl had gone AWOL and was in the Talibanâs hands, why would he be promoted from private to sergeant? This is an odd tidbit to this case.
5 Likes
And the depravity of our drone fetish president?
The Army has made no such claim about Bergdahl going AWOL.
You have no idea what all the circumstances are, and until you do, shut your piehole about what Bergdahl did or did not do.
3 Likes
Happen to catch Congresswonan Blackburn,and somehow while this rescue video was the topic of conversation,Benghazi got brought into the conversation.Yikes!!!
Anyone remember the Terri Schiavo case? I mentioned this the other day. Terri Schiavoâs husband wanted his brain-dead wife to be removed from life support. All hell broke loose due to âsanctity of lifeâ conservative reaction. Suits, were filed - you can look it up. The U.S. Congress got involved. Ex-Sen. Bill Frist was the mob leader for the Senate Republicans, ostensibly because he was a doctor [but a no-longer practicing thoracic surgeon, not a neurologist] attempting to establish via video, no less, that Terri Schiavo, declared by her neurologists to be in a persistent vegetative state was not, in fact brain dead, because, well because, we just KNOW, weâre sure that she smiled at us. Frist was convinced, from watching a video, that she was not brain dead and was responding to visual stimuli and noised this from the Senate Floor. After she was released from life support, an autopsy showed that she was blind, her brain had shrunk to half itâs normal size, her visual center had been destroyed. There was egg on faces afterward, for a nanosecond, maybe.
And to me this is similar to whatâs happening with Bergdahl. These right-wingers donât have all the facts and they are making pronouncements, not as if they did have access to the facts, but as if the facts themselves were never necessary to begin with because everything to them is self evident on itâs face.
This whole damn excercise in conservative assholery surrounding Bergdahl is entirely congruent with the âRed Queenâ attitude of âsentence first, verdict laterâ. This is symptomatic of almost everything these people say or do.
âMen, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that
they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one
by one.â â Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds
5 Likes
First of all, Congress was informed about this swap over two years ago when it was first proposed. As reported by Rolling Stone magazine, back in early 2012 the debate between Senators supporting and opposing this swap came to a boil in January of that year, when administration officials went to Capitol Hill to brief a handful of senators on the possibility of the prisoner exchange. The meeting, which excluded staffers, took place in a new secure conference room in the Capitol visitor center. According to sources in the briefing, the discussion sparked a sharp exchange between Senators John McCain and John Kerry, both of whom were decorated for their service in Vietnam. McCain, who endured almost six years of captivity as a prisoner of war, threw a fit at the prospect of releasing five Taliban detainees.
âTheyâre the five biggest murderers in world history!â McCain fumed
Kerry, who supported the transfer, thought that was going a bit far. âJohn,â he said, âthe five biggest murderers in the world?â
McCain was furious at the rebuke. âThey killed Americans!â he responded. âI suppose Senator Kerry is OK with that?â
McCain reluctantly came around on the prisoner exchange, according to those present at the meeting, but he has continued to speak out against negotiating with the Taliban
Second, it was lawful for the Administration to proceed with the transfer notwithstanding the notice requirement in Section 1035(d) of the FY14 NDAA.
First, there is no question that the Secretary made the determinations required to transfer the detainees under Section 1035(b) of the FY 2014 NDAA. Section 1035(b) states that the Secretary of Defense may transfer an individual detained at Guantanamo to a foreign country if the Secretary determines (1) that actions have or will be taken that substantially mitigate the risk that the individual will engage in activity that threatens the United States or U.S. persons or interests and (2) that the transfer is in the national security interest of the United States.
The Secretary made those determinations.
With respect to the separate 30-day notification requirement in Section 1035(d), the Administration determined that the notification requirement should be construed not to apply to this unique set of circumstances, in which the transfer would secure the release of a captive U.S. soldier and the Secretary of Defense, acting on behalf of the President, has determined that providing notice as specified in the statute could endanger the soldierâs life.
In these circumstances, delaying the transfer in order to provide the 30-day notice would interfere with the Executiveâs performance of two related functions that the Constitution assigns to the President: protecting the lives of Americans abroad and protecting U.S. soldiers.
Because such interference would significantly alter the balance between Congress and the President, and could even raise constitutional concerns, we believe it is fair to conclude that Congress did not intend that the Administration would be barred from taking the action it did in these circumstances.
The President also has repeatedly expressed concerns regarding this notice requirement. For example, the Presidentâs FY14 NDAA signing statement indicated that âSection 1035 does not, however, eliminate all of the unwarranted limitations on foreign transfers and, in certain circumstances, would violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The executive branch must have the flexibility, among other things, to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.â To the extent that the notice provision would apply in these unique circumstances, it would trigger the very separation of powers concerns that the President raised in his signing statement.
In these unique circumstances, in which the Secretary of Defense made the determinations required by Section 1035(b) and in light of the Secretaryâs assessment that providing notice as specified in Section 1035(d) could endanger the soldierâs life, the Secretary of Defenseâs failure to provide 30 daysâ notice under Section 1035(d) was lawful.
12 Likes
Nothing depraved about taking out someone who publicly renounces their citizenship, joins al Qaeda and helps them carry out attacks in my view.
3 Likes
No kidding. It would be Vince Foster on steroids.
And if those fact trails donât come out weâll say they did and/or say it doesnât matter because what Obama did was wrong because nothing Obama does is right.