If Bowe Bergdahl walked off of his post and was helping members of the Taliban with infantry tactics and bomb making, what can you possibly say as an Obama supporter?

The rule of war for the united states is, We never leave anyone behind. If he did something illegal, the army will deal with him.

How about we wait until he is actually convicted of desertion before we start condemning the president?

@FlyingWolf that’s why I started with If.

Then he is a hero for supporting the taliban freedom fighters.
Al Qaeda are your friends, they fight for freedom from the great satan’s oppression.

The only Americans against him are the ones in the middle and southern states who don’t believe they are ponds to capitalism and still think it’s all about “patriotism.” They would rather this man have died a POW then for him to have come back to his family and have his father go on national television with his Muslim beard and thank everyone.

That is 100% the Red Blood American way!!

…helping members of the Taliban with infantry tactics and bomb making…

And the evidence for this is…?

Bring him back, then figure the rest out. He may have walked into town to find a prostitute. Who knows?

I’m sure that it would have been much simpler for the President, politically, to have ignored the whole mess and said and done nothing at all. There was no clamor that I’m aware of to free Sgt. Bergdahl, so leaving him to languish in al Quaeda custody (or whatever) would have cost him very little among those who already support him, and would not have made his opponents much more vocal than they already are.

And while his motives may not have been purely altruistic: “We can’t leave a single soldier behind!” and all that – I’m sure that he wants to get on the better side of all of the US veterans who feel betrayed by the growing scandal of the VA situation – he did take an action that might end up costing him more than it gains him.

That’s part of the no-win situation that presidents sometimes find themselves in.

Of course, there’s always the “what did he know and when did he know it” angle – I doubt that his briefings on the topic went into great detail about the sergeant’s day-to-day actions leading up to his desertion / capture – his biggest problem seems to be that he broke the law (again). (The botched job of briefing the president seems to be a very common failure within his entire administration.) That failure and his habit of breaking laws that he deems to be inconvenient to him seem to be his most common failings, in fact.

You’re getting all your info of the Net, right? He just got released. Wanna wait at least a few more days before making a definitive judgement?

@Pachy Where are you getting your info?

That Obama would’ve been blasted for leaving a POW behind had he not done what he did, and would’ve been blocked and blamed had he done so in any remotely bipartisan way such as involving Congress in any fashion, even an informational memo.

There’s two separate issues here; the negotiated release of a POW and the Conservative agenda to crucify Obama and anyone more liberal than Glen Beck. Nothing can be done about the latter, so why not bring one of our soldiers back home?

Silly you. An obama supporter will always defend obama and walk the Party Line.

They will say it is better to get him back to the US alive than to have to watch a video of him getting his head sawed off with a bread knife after his value as a bargaining chip is gone.

And I have to agree with that. I am absolutely no admirer of the President, but he has decided to retreat from the Middle East, and that means getting everybody out before the shit hits the fan. The Pentagon said in 2010 it was a sure thing he abandoned his post. That means he is a deserter and a weenie at worst, a loser at best. But I don’t think he deserves to be butchered or burned alive which is what his former keepers are inclined to do. He ought to have his day in a military Court.

Having said it, if he gets some sort of hero’s welcome and dodges an inquiry and Court Martial I will be really pissed.

@BeenThereSaidThat and Obama detractors will always attack, and your point is? If Bergdahl died at the hands of the Taliban, Obama would have been crucified for that. It is a lose lose for the president. I for one am proud that President Obama put the life of this young man above politics, regardless of the circumstances of his capture.

@JHUstudent , I don’t believe for a second that the “if” is there because you haven’t already condemned Mr. Obama. This is kind of like Karl Rove immocently floating the idea that Ms. Clinton might have brain damage.

Also, I respect the heck out of @josie‘s perspective – I wish I could give a hundred great answers.

What @josie said.

“Mission Accomplished”, while standing on a flight deck?

I am an Obama supporter, but I worry about the implications of negotiations with terrorists, violating the law on congressional notification, and releasing these 5 prisoners. I have been talking to friends who have a better background with this kind of thing, and I am trying to resolve my concerns, but it isn’t a given, regardless of what @BeenThereSaidThat says.

I find myself in the very peculiar position of being on the side of both the President and @josie.

At the very least, this is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario. I am an independent voter, and I sure as hell would never want to be president of anything.

With the little we do know about what really happened, there is this: The administration would have been criticized for leaving a POW behind, especially if he were to get injured, sick or die while in captivity. The administration is already being criticized because Guantanamo is still open, anyway; so releasing 5 prisoners serves the dual purpose of reducing the population there and getting a POW released. One report stated that although these were high-ranking officials in the organization, they were already fairly old when they were imprisoned, and the organization has been through so much change, that it is unlikely that they’ll be reinstated to their former positions.

Beyond that, I think it’s too early for judgement to be passed on this case, because I think there’s a whole lot about this case that we do not know and may not know for quite some time.

Whether or not he is a deserter is a matter to be decided by Court Martial in accordance with the UCMJ anyways, so I utterly fail to see how those allegations have any bearing… except amongst those who feel that the law is something that should only be enforced selectively.

I can say that that is a big if.

I condemn the president regardless of how the investigation goes. He did, in fact, negotiate with terrorists. I believe that the guy is a deserter from what I’ve read. The soldiers who were there have no reason to lie, do they? This whole thing really smells badly.

@CWOTUS ” There was no clamor that I’m aware of….....” That is precisely what we should be worried about.

@MollyMcGuire The problem here is that many would only bother with the first five words of your post, and apply it to any issue; the JFK assassination, cancer…

With that sentiment flying around, it’s really hard to tell fact from fiction, aside from the fact that other presidents have done similar stuff without nearly as much outrage. This whole thing is more partisan than necessary, and if President Obama did do something wrong, too many years of “crying wolf” has cost his detractors too much credibility.

I read this morning that Obama apologized for it yesterday. I still have not read that article.

@jca The apology was for not giving any advance information about the prisoner exchange. No one has apologized for making the exchange.

@dappled_leaves: Yes, I have since read it.

@JHUstudent what Pachy is saying is, wait for a definitive investigative report brought forth by some reputable newspaper with actual reporters like the New York Times or Washington Post. Twitter, FaceBook, and non trained journalist are plaguing the internet with it’s false premise allegations

@pleiades Confirmation bias trumps facts though, so if you’re already predisposed to hating Obama, you’ll have less than zero interest in reputable sources.

Just curious, what about the hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners W released? Where was the outrage then? And why are people convicting this guy without due process, especially those who claim to love the Constitution (including due process)?

@jerv Yes, well… speaking of “where was the outrage when…”, these stories are pretty hilarious:

Angry Republicans forgot their old angry tweets supporting POW

Politicians delete digital praise of Bowe Bergdahl release

I’m sorry I ever participated in a flame-bait question that included the phrase ”...what can you possibly say as an Obama supporter?” I wish I had just reported it as the flame-bait that it is, and been done. I’ll now unfollow and belatedly flag.

@MollyMcGuire I condemn the president regardless of how the investigation goes. I think you would condemn the president no matter what he did.

@ibstubro That probably would have been the smart thing, though flagging can lead to cries of, “Censorship!”.

@jerv I’m convinced, since there is so much outrage just by looking at the Face Book feeds, I’d day the ratio is 80/20 in favor of him being a deserter, it’s gotta make me wonder if there are false Face Book accounts sounding off. They are getting a ton of likes as well which is truly sad for me to call myself an American at this point.

@pleiades “which is truly sad for me to call myself an American at this point.”
Just at this point? I’ve felt that way for a long time :P

@pleiades Quite possibly, but that’s for the military justice system to decide.

@beachbum76 I would not condemn him for tendering his resignation.

What we are seeing is the fallout of a failed, ongoing, illegitimate, undeclared war. One of the “conservative” talking heads I heard today is that this is a diversion, to take attention away from the VHA scandal. Can’t we see that these incidents are both related? There has been mention of the few members of the US military that may or may not have been killed as a result of Berghdahl’s alleged desertion; there has been no mention in the media of the 5,281 US military casualties since our first involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Advances in field medicine have enabled more of the 50,000 plus wounded from the “war on terror” combined wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to survive their battlefield wounds, resulting in an overloaded, underfunded Veterans’ Health Administration. You look at the lack of funding—(can you say “sequestration?) and you add to that the thousands of veterans, not only of the current wars, but also the 26 other wars and operations in which we incurred military casualties since WWII, and you see where the real problem is.

@Yetanotheruser Don’t bring facts into this. We’re supposed to be condemning Democrats here! :p

@jerv oops! Do you think the facts are too harsh? I’m trying to be nice, I really am!