Team Hillary is all over the place vis-à-vis the Bergdahl deal.
First, the former secretary of state cautiously defended it. Then, after the White House was caught flat-footed and endlessly criticized for releasing the Taliban Five in exchange for a possible traitor, a “former senior administration official” claimed that Hillary raised serious objections to any deal with the Taliban during her years at State. Curiously, too, around the same time, three former State Department officials also told the Daily Beast that if she did strike a bargain, it would have been way less conciliatory to Sgt. Bergdahl's captors.
Now, however, she’s ostensibly back to outright defending the president's decision, taking a page out of Rep. Jackie Speier’s (D-CA) handbook by both downplaying the Taliban’s influence and asserting that the Taliban Five pose no real danger to the United States. You see, in her view, these monsters only threaten the national security interests of…Middle Eastern countries, or something:
Three points: (1) The United States has troops stationed in Afghanistan. Freeing these Gitmo detainees, in other words, directly puts American lives at risk. (2) Top spies in the intelligence community have already testified that four out of the five Taliban commanders now tasting freedom will almost certainly (once again) wage war against the United States. (3) Members of Congress have raised serious and sober objections to the deal, in large part because it threatens the safety and security of all American citizens.
For what it's worth, members of the military overwhelmingly opposed letting these terrorists go. And, based on the reasons outlined above, it's easy to see why.
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