Obama and the release of the Gitmo prisoners in exchange for Bergdahl: coming home to roost
As if America’s stupidity and humiliation were not already enough, we now learn this:
When President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan.
In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul.
Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile…
Earlier this year, one of them, Khairullah Khairkhwa, actually sat across the table from President Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Moscow, where Khairkhwa was part of the official Taliban delegation that negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.
The outrages of the Obama administration are so numerous that it can be hard to keep them all in awareness, but Bergdahl and the Gitmo releases were big news at the time. I, like so many others, covered the story in quite a few posts. In one of those posts I wrote this, for example:
I don’t pretend to know all that much about what Qatar plans to actually do with [the five released Gitmo prisoners], but the country is both a Wahabi stronghold and a dictatorship. Chuck Hagel had the following to say on the subject:
“The United States has coordinated closely with Qatar to ensure that security measures are in place and the national security of the United States will not be compromised. I appreciate the efforts of the Emir of Qatar to put these measures in place…”
Reassured? I’m not…
If the released prisoners—who have not been officially identified yet—are in fact the five men on the above list, I can’t imagine that they’ll be stopped from doing a lot of damage unless they are kept for life in another highly secure prison, and maybe not even then. But it sure doesn’t sound as though that’s going to happen.
In that post, written in May of 2014, one of the five on the list was “Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served in various Taliban positions including interior minister and had direct ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.” That is the man described in today’s article this way: “The mastermind of the regime change is former detainee Khairkhwa, the Taliban mullah whom Obama released from Gitmo even though the Pentagon classified him as too dangerous to release.”
This was entirely foreseeable, and I don’t think that Obama failed to understand what he was doing. It’s even worse that this was done in order to free deserter Bergdahl, who himself was culpable. Why did Obama do it? Because he wanted to:
In 2015, Obama tried to cover Bergdahl in the glory of a war hero, even inviting his parents to the Rose Garden to celebrate the news of his release. The former president maintained he only freed five Taliban leaders to free a soldier who, in the words of his National Security Adviser Susan Rice, served “the United States with honor and distinction.”
But they knew better. They had to have: The Pentagon itself refused to list Bergdahl as a POW. That’s because an internal 2009 Army report found he had a history of walking off his post and more than likely deserted. It also found he shipped his laptop back home to Idaho, and left a note expressing his disillusionment with the war, before ending up in the arms of the Taliban.
Obama had access to this intelligence long before he made his Taliban deal. So why did he trade a known deserter – and likely enemy sympathizer, if not collaborator – for five enemy commanders whom he acknowledged posed a national security risk? Simple: To justify the release from Gitmo of five “forever detainees,” who otherwise would never have been released and would have delayed achieving his promise to antiwar liberals to withdraw from Afghanistan and empty Gitmo.
He wanted to release them and was determined to do so. Bergdahl was an excuse. By any rational determination, the price paid by the US was way too large. I can only assume that Obama wanted to pay it.
Qatar functions as the piggy bank for Sunni terrorists, like Hamas, the way Iran functions for Shiite terrorists. It is much worse as a terror funder than the Saudis.
Turns out India opened backdoor negotiations with the Taliban in Feb 2021. The US joined in March. In early July, Biden sent a special envoy to participate in negotiations with the Talibs in Moscow. One of the Talibs in Moscow was Khairullah Khairkhwa. It was at this meeting that the timetable for Allied withdrawal from Afghanistan was agreed for September.
The Taliban ran into a problem. Afghan forces, mayors, and governors surrendered too quickly moving the government takeover plans into August. The cause of the surrenders was that soldiers were not being paid or fed, mayors and governors were not getting support and instructions from Kabul. Military commanders and government officials were taking payrolls to deposit in overseas accounts or taking it in cash before they split, and selling the supplies – food, ammo, guns – on the black market. Soldiers simply refused to follow orders from the criminal commanders. So everything happened very quickly. Even the Taliban was caught by surprise.
Did anyone here know about the negotiations taking place since March? I didn’t. I read it today on Al-Jezeera where the reporters were wondering what was going on. Read this and “Related” for things we did not hear in America — https://tinyurl.com/ymefacdj .
The best I can figure is the world is missing rock n roll whistling — https://youtu.be/CMy6PaZT7_g
In his defense, the guy really knows how to throw a birthday bash.
And none of the sophisticated party goers came down with the WuFlu; oopise, they did. Unexpected, unforeseeable, almost karma.
“Afghan forces, mayors, and governors surrendered too quickly moving the government takeover plans into August.”
I have seen this reported as well.
I don’t take this very seriously as now Neo trying to scare every one in her room…
This remind me with this case:
U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed
The $400 million payment to Iran was American diplomacy at its finest
Don’t forget that Obama canned like about 200 high ranking military. You can bet they were the ones who weren’t toeing his line.
Go away fool. No one here is buying what you’re selling.
BTW, labeling you a fool is giving you the benefit of the doubt.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/17/daughter-of-exiled-afghan-president-ashraf-ghani-living-artist-life-in-nyc/
“He wanted to release them and was determined to do so. Bergdahl was an excuse. By any rational determination, the price paid by the US was way too large. I can only assume that Obama wanted to pay it.”
Yes…And he wanted the US to pay it multiple times with interest.
Does anyone have any doubt how badly 0 hates the country that perhaps elected him president twice?
No, I have no doubt. The Bergdahl thing was theater for Obama. It allowed him to demonstrate his contempt for the people that elected him.
“Holy Crap on a Cracker” With all of the stuff I am seeing right now about the sell outs all I can remember is the Alex Carras quote in ‘Blazing Saddles’, “Mongo is just a pawn in the great game of life.” It appears that I have had no idea who or how much we have been sold out for as a nation however I am not a happy person today. I tend to see lots of unearned dollars given to politicians behind every decision that went against our nation. Look at the politicians who are living way beyond their paychecks and pensions in every party. My friends this is ‘Old Testament’ shit going on once more, again and again, avarice and greed.
May Our Lord have Mercy on Our Souls.
Contemplating my mush head friends and relations cranking up their rationalizations why they were right to support Biden.
Laugh? Cry? Still working on it.
Certain that facts will not influence their ratiocinations.
When OUR revolution comes, Obama is gonna be right up there on the list, isn’t he?!
Not to make excuses for Obama but what in hell are we doing holding five “forever detainees” at a military base in Cuba to begin with? If those guys committed offenses that merited life sentences, they try them and lock them away in a federal prison. But holding people captive forever because we’re afraid of what they MIGHT do? Keeping them in a military base in a foreign country because our own behavior was so bad there’s no known standard of justice we could convict them with?
Again, not to let the Lightbringer off easy but let’s not fool ourselves that things weren’t going off the rails a long time before he showed up.
Mike
Mbunge
Far as I know, the discussion about Gitmo was concerning the public–which may have included some annoyed Muslims–interest in having these clowns in the federal prison down the street, whichever street it happened to be. As in NIMBY.
Additionally, another reason was the left’s shifting assertions. These guys were POW so they should be treated as such. But POW are held until the end of the war. So these guys aren’t POW. In which case they may not be covered by international law, see francs tireurs. Nope, can’t just shoot them because they’re POW-lite. They should be tried. Problem with that is if they’re convicted, they’re in a world of hurt which would not please the left So….tribunals are not just. Need…something else.
Maybe being unorganized, uninformed, irregulars shooting at our guys is okay. But some of them were killing local civilians which is hard to justify. So…keep them until some sympathetic POTUS lets them go.
Gitmo wasn’t out of sight/mind but it made being a poopyhead about it logistically more difficult.
MBunge:
I wrote a lot of posts on that at the time, but I no longer remember the legal details. But the problem was a legal one (to the best of my recollection). I recall that, if they had been tried and imprisoned in the US, they would be subject to certain rights in connection with the legal discovery process and the appeal process. This would be true even as non-US citizens, if they were tried here. It would give the enemy too much information. Later Congress passed a law forbidding the trials and detentions to be held here.
Here’s some info:
The left kept up a drumbeat of legal cases and claims that the inmates were being mistreated in various ways. Guantanamo became a big propaganda issue right from the start.
OldTexan:
Yes, it’s hard to assimilate all the awful information, even for those of us who had already become profoundly disillusioned. The only good I can see coming from it is if it opens enough eyes of those who were in denial. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
The world laughs at us while democrats still indulging on their self aggrandising of how presidential biden’s speech last night and how big a sacrifice he had to made having to spare 10 minutes of his long awaited vacation to deliver this historical address
MBunge,
I agree that there should never have been “forever detainees”.
They should never have been imprisoned in Guantanamo.
The proper way to deal with them was a quick military trial and a quick military execution.
BTW, the Geneva Conventions do NOT apply to jihadists. As they have no identifying clothing declaring themselves to be combatants.
Using weapons lubricated with “Silver Bullet Grease” which contains pig fat. Ensuring, by their own beliefs declared by Allah in the Qur’an… that they will never see even one virgin.
Obviously the executions would be uploaded to a public website for future jihadist’s edification. Remove the incentive and recruitment will plummet.
Obama was a closet Muslim. His apology tour in the ME was a huge tell. The jihadis hate our culture. So do the progs. They’re fundamentally allies in that way.
Obama’s deal with Iran was a total disaster. The Bergdahl deal the same. He allowed the hollowing out of our manufacturing capacity – sending jobs to China. All in all his foreign policy was a disaster fort the U.S.
But tonight, I’m experiencing similar PTSD symptoms as from the betrayal of South Vietnam by our Democratic Congress. I’m so angered by the unthinking stupidity of Biden’s disaster in Afghanistan. Did no one mention that it makes sense to get all the non-combatants out of the country before you pull the military out? Did no one mention we should destroy the forts we built there before we leave? Did no one think that maybe we should bring our more advanced weapons home? Had none of the officers on the ground mentioned how dependent the Afghani army was on air support and how that was dependent on the maintenance of the aircraft – which was done by Western contactors who had left? I’m no military genius, but I can see huge holes in the planning.
Lives will be unnecessarily lost. The honor and reputation of the USA has been badly damaged. We are much less safe as a nation than we were three days ago. I’m deeply angry and depressed. My country is failing to protect its citizens
and to honor promises made to Afghanis. It’s humiliating.
This country needs to quit worrying about trivial things like gender pronouns, phony racism, social justice, etc. and begin to shoulder the burden of protecting its citizens, promoting law and order, securing our borders, bringing jobs back to the U.S., and accepting that a meritocratic society is the only way forward.
I hope I can sleep tonight. Last night was not a good one.
The US have long time negotiate with Taliban in Doha, those talk never made public and whats al those long talk.
So now Taliban allowed to takeover their homeland agin.
Is this due to their strength on the ground?
Or there under the table repetitive.
Whats ware me the repetitive Bin Laden ?
@ Geoffrey Britain
“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.
“They invaded Afghanistan… and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work… and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea… let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen.
“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.”
https://www.dawn.com/news/847153/us-created-taliban-and-abandoned-pakistan-sayshillary
Indigo+Red,
That Picasso painting of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is one of my favorite works of art. Very poignant.
FB,
Congratulations, what a remarkable (and overnight!) improvement in your grammar…
We know the history and hindsight is not a crystal ball. Regardless, how we got to 9/11 is irrelevant to the Xiden administration’s betrayal.
Let no one remain foolish enough to believe that Obama ever had America’s best interests at heart; his entire raison d’etre was to destroy the American ancien regime from within. He learned this at the feet of his left-wing mother and the grandparents she dumped him on to raise as well as his putative father, the drunken Kenyan “diplomat,” not to mention his Islamic upbringing in Indonesia with the Soetero clan. All this was fertilized by his associates in Chicago, Ayers and Dorhn and “Reverend” Wright. He imbued deeply the lessons of “community organizing” as preached by, among others, Alinsky. He climbed the ladder of political success by lying about everything he held dear, and because the mush-headed, virtue signalling white voters, after years of propagandizing by left-wing ideologues in the press and popular media, bought his lies and voted him into every office he sought, right up to and including the presidency. Even after his ulterior motives were broadly displayed, moronic, brain-washed white voters returned him to office for a second term. During that time, his goals expanded from merely destroying the nation as it had been previously composed to include provisioning for his future economic well-being. He arrived in Washington, DC relatively penniless (except for the finances supplied by his husband Michelle’s make-work, affirmative action job in the Chicago hospital system and such graft as he was able to collect from his fellow grifters in the corrupt Chicago political scene–see, e.g., Tony Rezko), but shortly after leaving office found multi-million dollar ventures awaiting him, including ghost-written, multiple edition “autobiographies,” deals with media companies (see, e.g., Netflix) and the wherewithal to purchase an $8,000.000.00 home in Kalorama and a $12,000,000.00 beach-front home in Martha’s Vineyard. How it is possible for anyone with any functioning intellect to believe he was/is anything other than a self-aggrandizing, anti-American, anti-Christian con man and globalist exceeds my capacity to comprehend.
“How it is possible for anyone with any functioning intellect to believe he was/is anything other than a self-aggrandizing, anti-American, anti-Christian con man and globalist exceeds my capacity to comprehend.”
Yep.
Out of a misplaced sense of guilt “we” elected a half-white, half-African Muslim to be President.
Shockingly … it didn’t work out.
Well, looks like it’s time to start biting finger nails again.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9904031/Afghanistan-evacuation-Chaos-Kabul-airport-women-beg-troops-help.html
Kabul evacuation flights take off EMPTY as Taliban close off airport and make it impossible for Western ex-pats to get through – while fighters REFUSE to let Afghans through meaning hundreds are being left behind every day
Evacuation flights are leaving Kabul near-empty after Taliban fighters encircled the airport in a ring of steel
Military jets able to carry hundreds of people are instead ferrying dozens – in one shocking case a German plane with space for 150 people departed the Afghan capital with just seven on board
Afghans say the Taliban are blocking anyone who doesn’t have a foreign passport getting to the airport, while foreigners say they have been caught up in the crush and are unable to get through
Western nations vowed to take more than 100,000 Afghan refugees – pledge that appears increasingly hollow
Geoffrey Britain
Vey smart discovery
British paras are leaving the airport to escort some refugees to the evacuation flights. This has caused shouting matches with US troops who accuse the Brits of sabotaging their “deal” with the Taliban. Could anything be more nauseating than this behavior by US troops ? What is going on ? Who is ordering this ? Austin ?
Mike K:
I linked the twitter feed about that on another thread, here.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/08/17/who-will-ever-trust-the-us-again/#comment-2571461
“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.
The people we financed were later known as ‘the Northern Alliance’. The Taliban did not exist during the period the United States was financing the Afghan insurgency.
I still can’t get over that we twice elected a POTUS who hates our country and it’s people so much.
Can we impeach Obama?
Out of a misplaced sense of guilt “we” elected a half-white, half-African Muslim to be President.
Obama is not a Muslim and his acquaintance with his father or anything African has been minimal. His signature is a spiteful and secretive disposition. His attitudes are perfectly unremarkable among the sort of bourgeois professional / academic / NGO apparatchik nexus in which he has lived his life. That’s our problem – TWANLOC. He does differ in a couple of respects. Most academics don’t give a rip about celebrities and most academics are satisficers as far as their material possessions go. They cannot be bought once they have a certain portfolio of pleasant things, because more stuff doesn’t add to their utility or enhance their amour propre. It was reported in 2008 that Lawrence Summers had a 12 year old car; I’m gonna bet the sticker price on his house is 1 / 10th that on Obama’s house.
G Brit.
Agree 100%. Nearly all those people detained at Gitmo should have been executed long ago. That’s what we did to the Nazis.
And now KSM and the others are all going to go free.
“Out of a misplaced sense of guilt “we” elected a half-white, half-African Muslim to be President.”
All that is not what did the damage or is predictive, it’s the ideology that BHO brought into the Executive that did the damage, but instead focus on the external characteristics. Otay.
“Obama is not a Muslim”. Um no. If it’s still on YouTube, there is a video of Senator Obama beginning to talk about his Muslim religion. Georgi Boy Stephanopolis quickly corrects him, “ Don’t you mean your Christian religion?” Do you know anyone who would accidentally refer to his Muslim religion?
Paul in Boston:
No. That’s a misinterpretation of what Obama said. But there’s enough wrong with Obama without that.
Here’s what actually happened and what Obama said. Now, Snopes certainly isn’t always on the up and up, but in this case I agree with what the site says. Many years ago I did my own research on it (at the moment I can’t find where I wrote about it) and came to the same conclusion.
And here’s a 2010 post where I talk about Obama’s religion more generally.
The “Northern Alliance” has now supposedly become the Panjshir resistance though the link to Wiki may be removed as they state at the top of the page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panjshir_resistance
Art Deco @ 3:21pm,
“… his acquaintance with his father or anything African has been minimal. “
He wrote a 403 page book, “Dreams of my Father” which deals with his travels to Africa in search of his father, his ancestors and his legacy!
“The people we financed were later known as ‘the Northern Alliance’. The Taliban did not exist during the period the United States was financing the Afghan insurgency.”
“The “Northern Alliance” has now supposedly become the Panjshir resistance though the link to Wiki may be removed as they state at the top of the page.”
https://youtu.be/WboggjN_G-4
Art Deco on August 18, 2021 at 3:11 pm said:
The Taliban did not exist during the period the United States was financing the Afghan insurgency.
AD, Thank you for your sentence
OBL was with the Taliban, during the Russian invasion, I don’t know where you live and I don’t know if you heard at that time or if you know there was a huge campaign lead by Saudi clerics and in other Muslim countries to give support, donations even call for Jihad in Afghanistan to fight the invader (Russia).
Most Friday prayers called for support for Afghanistan Mujahedeen and donations for them, this might be led by OBL’s Clerics /Followers at the time, at the same time US was behind OBL/Afghan Mujahedeen supporting them with weapons and other support in that battle there.
I tell you this, I was in the region, heard those Friday prayer calls went to another Jordan heard same calls went to a western country that calls repeated in those mosques on western land!!
It was huge campaigning at the time.
Then Russian defeated all things turned up down and we got AL Qaeda ……
So how much truth in that call whether before or after I think that not the key point here the seeds were thrown there and those seeds grown and harvested again, today we seen a lot of those bad guys with sick minds who thinks Jihad is their mission in the world to cover their criminality toward other race and human.
Simply it’s not Islam and Western world nor clash of civilisation, only wiled criminals have sick minds the world join together to fight them as on-hand one heart.
Taliban name
In Afghanistan, the source of the name is coming from Talib (Student) who study Quran/Religion those who will be ending like Clerics or Religousmen.
So Taliban nickname those “Talib’s” who lead the Mujahideen against Russian invasion.
The Pashtun were the backbone of Afghan insurgency at the time got support from Saudi and other gulf countries due to Madrasah that expanded during the 60s-70s in that area
The hidden roots of Wahhabism in British India
God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad