WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is welcoming the release of the lone U.S. solider held in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
During an appearance Saturday in the Rose Garden, Obama says that while Bergdahl was gone, “he was never forgotten.” The president was joined at the White House by the soldier’s parents, Bob and Joni Bergdahl.
Bergdahl was turned over by the Taliban earlier Saturday in exchange for the release of five Afghan detainees who were held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Obama says the U.S., quote, “does not ever leave our men and women in uniform behind.”
Bergdahl’s father thanked all those who took part in his son’s recovery, saying it was difficult to put his feelings into words.
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The Guardian has an extraordinary and moving interview with the soldier’s father. It makes me proud to be American once again, and leaves me wondering how, over the past forty years, we’ve allowed the people now in charge to take the country from such men and women:
And let me be clear, by that question I do not mean the slightest criticism of President Obama, a brilliant and good man working under difficult circumstances to try to fix some of what’s gone wrong or been destroyed.
“…zero tolerance for violence, but we can occupy two countries…”
-Bob Bergdahl
Both can’t be done.
We need to get back to the value that has bound us as a nation, and still binds us as a people across time, across ancestry, across region… zero tolerance for violence.
Excellent video; thought-provoking!
Ah, I see one of the NYT trolls has decided to grace us with a visit.
OK…first of all, you need to get over your ego. Negotiating to free a captive US soldier is not “giving in to terrorists,” unless your self-image is so fragile that any departure from Dick Cheney’s paranoid worldview is considered a “surrender.” And just so you know, only crazy people and assholes think that.
Second, I don’t think praying to James Madison is going to help anything. Heh, just kidding…I know you were referring to the conservative Christian God / Ted Nugent Jesus as the “maker of our Constitution.” You’re wrong again, but that’s less disturbing than what came next…No, not the impeachment part. That’s just silly. Get it through your head, troll…Impeachment is not going to happen. As in Not. Gonna. Happen. And it won’t have anything to do with Congress’ courage, but with law and actions meriting impeachment and a bunch of other shit you don’t understand, but pretend to.
No, the part where you really distinguished yourself as having gone the Full Retard is the “maybe our military will have something to say about whose in power, hmmmm?” You know who talks like that (other than 3rd graders who don’t understand the difference between “whose” and “who’s”)? Terrorists. People who can;'t get their way through normal, democratic means. People whose positions and ideas are so abhorrent to the majority of society that they need to implement violence to get their way.
So…consider yourself cordially invited to fuck off. And take your “Real Americans” with you, asshole.