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The controversy surrounding the circumstances under which Bowe Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban continue to rage on. Lost in that debate is the fact that, for the first time, the White House successfully negotiated with the Taliban. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been one of the more vocal critics of the president. He told Fox News that the terms of the Bergdahl deal amount to a significant change in U.S. policy toward terrorists. “Ambassador Rice basically said to you, ‘Yes, U.S. policy has changed. Now we make deals with terrorists,’" Cruz said, referring to comments made by National Security...

ARLINGTON, Va. – As controversy grows over the release of five hardened Taliban detainees in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the Obama administration is considering springing yet another prisoner from Guantanamo Bay.

Susan Rice, United States National Security Advisor under the Obama administration, said that Bowe Bergdahl 'served the United States with honor and distinction.' Sounds like praise to me. But Chuck Hagel, who said very recently that Americans should not pre-judge Bowe Bergdahl, seems to take one line with - I guess "regular" Americans - and another with Susan Rice. Hmmm... Should Hagel and Rice both say that Bowe Bergdahl should be neither judged nor praised until all the facts are in? Funny how some WH aides can accuse Bergdahl's fellow soldiers of 'swift boating,' but won't tell people to not...

If Obama could exercise his authority as to bring home the son of Bob and Jani Bergdahl, why not use it to bring back some of America's lost honor and release a few good cleared men?So President Obama, like many presidents before him and no doubt many to follow, has employed a routine end-of-hostilities POW swap. For five Guantánamo prisoners, he has managed to bring Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl home. Bravo. But while Republicans do their level best to Benghazi-fy this rather uncontroversial news, the real story on Gitmo is elsewhere. Lost in the kerfuffle over the Bergdahl-Taliban swap is one...

Fox News reporter James Rosen claimed intelligence sources have told him not only that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl willingly collaborated with the Taliban, but that his involvement with the terrorist group may be “as serious as you can imagine.” Rosen spoke with Bill O’Reilly Wednesday night about his ongoing conversations with intelligence and Pentagon officials regarding both old and new investigations into Bergdahl’s likely desertion and possibly treasonous activities. “My reporting has shown that the intelligence community also undertook a separate [from the Army] investigation of Sgt. Bergdahl,” Rosen explained, “both his final period of active duty that culminated in...

Just when it seemed like the outrage on the political right over Benghazi had subsided to the point where only the announcement of House hearings put it back in the headlines, the exchange of captive U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay came along. Now President Obama finds himself amid another foreign policy and national security controversy with fresh legs that even features Susan Rice — the White House official who played a prominent early role in the Benghazi controversy — making an encore. While it's still too soon to know whether the trade for...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Among the most tantalizing mysteries surrounding Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s departure from his U.S. military base in 2009 is this: Was he trying to find the Taliban? Or did he simply wander away and get captured? Politicians and members of the military have criticized the Obama administration’s decision to swap five jailed Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, saying the soldier may have deserted. Until now, few details have emerged about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance from his base. But The Washington Post has reached Afghan villagers who spotted Bergdahl shortly after he slipped away from his base. To them, it’s clear something...

BOSTON (AP) — A bomb threat charge has been dropped against a man accused of placing a backpack with a rice cooker near the Boston Marathon finish line on the anniversary of last year’s deadly bombing. Suffolk County district attorney’s spokesman Jake Wark said Tuesday the state could not prove Kevin Edson communicated a clear threat with an explosive device.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Todd: White House was 'caught off guard' MSNBC’S Chuck Todd observed Tuesday that the White House was “caught off guard” by the disastrous public roll out of their prisoner exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Todd and Andrea Mitchell agreed that the White House had likely thought there would be “some euphoria around this, the only POW that was remaining in Afghanistan, that there would be a rally around the flag. That didn’t happen.” “They were expecting criticisms of Gitmo, criticisms of the detainees that were chosen,” Todd said. “They did not expect this criticism of the attempt to...

(CNN) - Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow was the team leader with Bowe Bergdahl the night Bergdahl disappeared. "Bergdahl is a deserter, and he's not a hero," says Buetow. "He needs to answer for what he did." Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He's looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban. "I heard it straight from the interpreter's lips as he heard it over the radio," said Buetow. "There's a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is re-establishing a law enforcement group to fight those it designates as domestic terrorists, with an announcement expected on Tuesday, Department of Justice officials said. Following hate-motivated shootings such as the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence of such criminals on a national level, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The group will coordinate cases that involve Americans who may be spurred to violence for political or prejudicial reasons.

@daqeqa Agree! "Democracy" is a cult in the West. I think most of afgs see law in terms of sharia not secular democracy, man centric laws.

If President Barack Obama hoped his deal with the Taliban to bring back Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl would be a political boon in the midst of the VA scandal, he is in for a big surprise. Soon after Obama revealed that Bergdahl was to be released, we learned the president agreed to release five of the most hardcore Taliban fighters from America’s terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay in exchange. “While not as well known as Guantanamo inmates like 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Taliban 5 were some of the worst outlaws in the U.S. war on terror,” Eli Lake...

"When the men pull up in a convoy of black SUVs, they receive a warm reception, with lots of hugs from the awaiting supporters The release of the video comes after the Taliban declared 'victory' And President Barack Obama was accused of endangering Western lives by exchanging the five 'hardened terrorists' At least one detainee is accused of presiding over a mass killing

Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript to Ambassador John Bolton’s address at the Freedom Center’s 2014 Texas Weekend. The event took place May 2nd-4th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. Daniel Pipes: Please join me in welcoming John Bolton. (Applause) John Bolton: Thanks, Daniel. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I’m always delighted to be able to be part of a Freedom Center event. The work that everybody does is just so important, and becomes more important. So for all of you who are supporters, believe me, it’s support that’s put...

Does the WH believe that all terrorists are equal, it's just some terrorists are more equal or rather worse than others? If the Obama administration is willing to use third parties (such as Qatar) to procure the release of individuals such as Bergdahl, and in the process, undesirables such as the 5 GITMO detainees are released, then the issue isn't the use of third parties, the issue(s) rather are which terrorists will the WH consider for release/swapping? If the WH says that they won't ever swap Al Qaeda for U.S. soldiers because AQ are terrorists (and they are terrorists --...

So, we have Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl released in exchange for five of the most notorious Taliban held in Guantanamo, the place Obama keeps saying he wants to empty. This certainly helps to empty it. The five men will now be held by Qatar, which has reassured us they’ll be in secure conditions but won’t say what those conditions are, except that they can’t travel out of the country for a year. Qatar is a Wahabi country, by the way, with a history of assisting Islamic movements worldwide. Obama has been winding down the Afghan War, and one of his stalled...

As Twitchy has reported, President Obama ordered the release of five Gitmo detainees to secure the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from his Taliban captors in Afghanistan. Recently, a tweet was published from the account of Bowe Bergdahl’s father, Robert, which stated a desire to see all Gitmo detainees released. Here’s the tweet from Bob Bergdahl’s account, which was published May 28 and deleted Saturday night (at the time of publication the deletion of the tweet has not been acknowledged on the account): @ABalkhi I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of...

Flashback: A reminder about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion problem By Michelle Malkin • May 31, 2014 08:51 PM While many people jumped aboard the Bowe Bergdahl bandwagon, I was not one of them. His release today in exchange for five Taliban commanders who had been in custody at Gitmo underscores troubling questions that have persisted since his alleged abduction. Longtime readers will recall questions raised here about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance. Here’s a flashback from my July 20, 2009 blog post:

Three years ago, a 23-year-old soldier walked off his base in Afghanistan and into the hands of the Taliban. Now he’s a crucial pawn in negotiations to end the war. Will the Pentagon leave a man behind? Bowe's own tour of duty in Afghanistan mirrored the larger American experience in the war – marked by tragedy, confusion, misplaced idealism, deluded thinking and, perhaps, a moment of insanity. And it is with Bowe that the war will likely come to an end. On May 1st, in a surprise visit to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, President Obama announced that...