Hillary Clinton on Monday night defended the Obama administration’s decision to trade five Afghan detainees from the Guantanamo Bay facility for a captive U.S. soldier.
The former secretary of state was asked at an event outside of Denver whether she would have traded five terrorists for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was detained in Afghanistan for nearly five years, according to CNN.
“This young man, whatever the circumstances, was an American citizen — is an American citizen — was serving in our military,” Clinton said, as quoted by the Associated Press. “The idea that you really care for your own citizens and particularly those in uniform, I think is a very noble one.”
Republicans have been sharply critical of the deal as a violation of the law and as negotiating with terrorists. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called for a Senate hearing into the release of the detainees, whom he referred to as the “Taliban Dream Team.”
Clinton did not explicitly say whether she would have gone through with the prisoner swap, according to CNN. She downplayed the controversy surrounding the deal, however, by pointing out that American allies, including Israel, had previously conducted similar exchanges.
She added that restoring Bergdahl’s health was the most important issue at hand so that the U.S. could get as much information as possible from him about his time in captivity.
“That, I think, is valuable in and of itself,” Clinton said, as quoted by CNN. “As we are drawing down our troops and ending the longest military engagement in combat in American history … we need as much intelligence as we can get about what is happening inside the Taliban.”
I am surprised the Republicans haven’t insisted that the soldier be water boarded to extract all information about his capture and imprisonment. If he had sent emails lamenting that his fellow soldiers weren’t ruthless enough, would he be a RightWing darling now?
Exactly. And yeah, I’ve been waiting for Graham to get up off his fainting couch and say Bergdahl should be yanked out of “that cushy hospital” and sent to Gitmo for some good old-fashioned “de-briefing.”
One more thing: Graham’s statement that those five were “the Taliban Dream Team” is yet another statement without any facts to back it up. These guys are “the worst of the worst”, as Grampy Insane described them? Okay, then: Tell us who they were and what they did, so we can all be outraged. Otherwise, shut your fucking pie hole, because this was the same kind of prisoner exchange the Israelis do every day with the Palestinians. “Dealing with terrorists” is selling arms for hostages, and where have we heard that before?
And Reagan never negotiated with the Ayatollah?
I can certainly understand members of Bergdhal’s platoon having negative feelings toward a guy who vanished one night. What I can’t understand is media exploiting those other soldiers and their valid feelings, years after the fact, to advance some unstated political agenda of the moment without any real regard for those soldiers.
Mrs. Clinton has to understand, from today’s poisonous environment, that what Bill faced will pale compared to what the forces of darkness plan for her.
Hillary made a nice distinction between “your own citizens and particularly those in uniform” and the conservative chicken hawks, prisoners of their own ideology.