The Bergdahl Controversy

[Elfdart]

Obama broke the law in regards to how the prisoners were released. He released them to a government that by all reports is not putting any real effort into containing them.

You must have skipped civics class. The President can release any prisoner in the custody of the U.S. Government and needs no permission from Congress, the courts or anyone else to do so.

[Ziggy Stardust]

None of the articles contradict anything in his post.

So you haven't read them either? Or is the problem a lack of comprehension? Many of the posts and linked articles in this thread refute his entire argument (i.e. that the release is illegal, that Bergdahl was without-a-doubt a deserter, and that the prisoners were indisputably war criminals). At this time, all we really know is that Bergdahl was probably breaking a rule (but it isn't clear exactly what he was doing and how bad it was) and that the prisoners were slapped with trumped up charges and never brought to trial, and were on schedule to be released anyway.

[Patroklos]

The articles do no such thig, at most they are simple damage control rags claiming those problems are either technicalities or irrelevant, they do not however claim those things did not happen.

It is a simple fact two of the released prisoners are wanted for war crimes by other actors. You can hem and has all you want about how they are not charged or how they should have been , that does not change the fact that they are wanted for those crimes.

You can bitch an moan all day about how you think the reporting criteria for prisoner release us unconstitutional but the fact remains there is a law on the books that requires it that has not been commented on by the Supreme Court. Until they declare it unconstitutional or a lower court stays it it is the law of the land, period.

Thats just two examples of your wishful thinking standing in for reality. You can have an opinion about facts, you can't ignore them.

[Crossroads Inc.]

3. How dangerous are the Taliban who were released?

In 2012 John McCain called the Guantanamo Five “the worst murderers in human history,” according to Rolling Stone.

The five men, who are now in Qatar and barred from traveling for a year, do not really live up to their monster billing, however.

Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Mullah Noorullah Noori, Mullah Mohammad Fazl and Mohammad Nabi Omari had been in Guantanamo Bay since the early days of the war.

Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analyst Network spent weeks researching the five men’s biographies in 2013, and came up with a much more nuanced picture.

“It is mystifying to know where the Guantanamo Bay authorities got the idea that Khairkhwa was known, in their words, as a ‘hardliner in terms of Taliban philosophy.’ During the Emirate, he was considered one of the more moderate Taliban in leadership circles,” she writes.

Noori and Fazl had negotiated surrender of Taliban fighters to General Abdul Rashid Dostum in November, 2001, based on what they believed was a promise of safe passage home. Instead, hundreds of Taliban fighters were massacred, and Fazl and Noori were arrested.

Wasiq was taken in a sting operation — according to Clark, he was cooperating with the US at the time and was trying to arrange reintegration with the new government. Instead, he was arrested and sent to Guantanamo.

The Guantanamo Docket, a project of The New York Times based on the WikiLeaks documents, also yields some interesting information.

Omari, for example, was a minor Taliban figure who said he was selling used cars when the war started. He also claimed that he was given $500 and a cell phone by a CIA officer named Mark and told to go find Mullah Omar. When he failed to deliver, he was arrested.

Not a very impressive background for what the media are calling the “worst of the worst.”

So... Tell me again about these horrible "War Crimes" they have perpetrated?

[Patroklos]

What does any of that have to do with two of them being wanted by non US entities for various attrocities? I get that these facts are inconvenient for you and you are free to think they are unimportant. That doesn't mean you get to deny them.

Think about it, your post says nothing about one of these guys other than he was cooperating with US authorities over something entirely different at another point in time, does that clean his record somehow? Why should non US authorities give a shit about that?

[General Zod]

The articles do no such thig, at most they are simple damage control rags claiming those problems are either technicalities or irrelevant, they do not however claim those things did not happen.

It is a simple fact two of the released prisoners are wanted for war crimes by other actors. You can hem and has all you want about how they are not charged or how they should have been , that does not change the fact that they are wanted for those crimes.

You can bitch an moan all day about how you think the reporting criteria for prisoner release us unconstitutional but the fact remains there is a law on the books that requires it that has not been commented on by the Supreme Court. Until they declare it unconstitutional or a lower court stays it it is the law of the land, period.

Thats just two examples of your wishful thinking standing in for reality. You can have an opinion about facts, you can't ignore them.

It's like Bill Clinton getting a blowjob all over again. If they were wanted for such terrible crimes how come they were going to be released anyway?

[Darth Tanner]

Maybe a silly question but does the US hand prisoners over to non US entities without reason or evidence? Seeing as they have been in Gitmo without charge for years and yet America did not hand them over despite a rather pressing political need to close the camp would imply its not as simple as you suggest.

[Grumman]

If they were wanted for such terrible crimes how come they were going to be released anyway?

Even according to your own cite, you cannot say that. They were neither part of the group that were approved for transfer, nor the group that were going to be prosecuted - they were part of the middle group where the US had not decided what they'd do with them.

“There are three buckets of people in Guantanamo that remain,” Harf said. “There are those who are approved for transfer. That’s 78. There are about 30 who have been referred for prosecution in some way. These five are in that middle bucket and were unlikely — might have been, but unlikely — to be added to the group that was going to be referred for prosecution.