How Many More Americans Will Die Because of Obama's Bergdahl Terrorist Swap?

Is it more important for Obama to fulfill a campaign pledge to close Gitmo than to protect American lives?

So, Bowe Bergdahl was officially charged with desertion from the Army in Afghanistan and "misbehavior before the enemy." The only surprise here is why it took so long to make it official. The best guess is that Obama was hoping interest in the case and the scandal it caused would wane. It didn't.

What's really amazing here is how completely incompetent and out of touch this episode makes Obama and his team appear. Tom Bevan, writing at Real Clear Politics walks us back:

Travel back with me, dear reader, to a magical and sunny time. It was only 10 months ago, on a glorious June morning when President Obama called the White House press corps together in the Rose Garden. There, our smiling president proudly announced that the United States had secured the release of an American serviceman held captive in Afghanistan for five years.

Flanked by the grateful parents of returning Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the president lauded his administration’s “ironclad commitment to bring our prisoners of war home.”

The soldier’s father, Bob Bergdahl, read a prayer; the young man’s mother, Jani, hugged the president. It was a story that could please all Americans: parenthood (quite properly) trumping partisanship.

Yet even as White House image-makers touted the picture of a concerned commander-in-chief looking out for the troops, a nagging bit of foreshadowing interjected itself into the narrative. For starters, the senior Bergdahl’s prayer was delivered in Arabic and began with a blessing from the Koran. While his son was in captivity Bob Bergdahl had grown his hair and beard long, Taliban-style, and now he also sprinkled his remarks from the White House lectern with a few words of Pashto, the language of Bowe Bergdahl’s captors.

More disconcerting still were the terms of the deal securing the soldier’s release, which the president referred to only fleetingly.

“As part of this effort, the United States is transferring five detainees from the prison in Guantanamo Bay to Qatar,” Obama said. “The Qatari government has given us assurances that it will put in place measures to protect our national security.”

Then we were treated to National Security Adviser Susan Rice delivering yet another of her big lie performances for the media when she went on Sunday shows to declare:

RICE: :[Bergdahl] ""an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield...served the United States with honor and distinction."

At least she didn't blame it on a You Tube video!

But Rice and Obama HAD TO KNOW that the story of Bergdahl wasn't as they portrayed it. From the Wall Street Journal:

The Associated Press has reported that an internal Pentagon investigation in 2010 found “incontrovertible” evidence that he had walked away from his post. Journalists also uncovered an exchange of letters in which the soldier wrote to his father “the title of U.S. soldier is just the lie of fools,” that he was “ashamed to even be american,” and that “the future is too good to waste on lies.” Replied father Robert: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”

All of this would have been known to President Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice when the Administration decided to swap Sgt. Bergdahl for five Guantanamo Bay detainees—all top Taliban leaders—in May 2014.

The Journal asserts that Obama's focus here was on finding a way to release terrorists from the Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo). Apparently he thought he could just bluff his way through the Berghdahl swap.

SIX MEN DIED for BERGDAHL: HOW MANY MORE?

But what Tom Bevan called Obama's Bergdahl "fairy tale" unraveled when we learned that Bergdahl didn't just desert but that Americans died trying to rescue him.

Above are the men who were killed searching for Bergdahl. Their families didn't get an appearance in the White House Rose Garden with Obama. No top Administration officials praised their service or their sacrifice. Only the sad stories of their families remain.

What's worse is that the predictable consequence that trading for hostages would only mean more hostages and more lost American lives has already come true. The family of Kayla Mueller, murdered by ISIS, says that after the Bergdahl swap the negotiations to get Kayla released became impossible.

And soon, these top five Taliban generals will go back to the battlefield without any restriction. They will be free to take up the fight once again. How many more Americans will die as a result?

Obama continues to put politics above good policy in the war on terror. He ignores the consequences, which are obvious to most others, in a dogmatic pursuit of an ideological agenda. The only achievement he can boast is of the weakening of America and putting more lives at risk for the sake of his deluded ego!\

UPDATE: Boston Herald "Susan Rice should resign... now!"