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(VIDEO-AT-LINK)U.S. Army Sgt. Evan Buetow, Bowe Bergdahl’s former team leader, said that Bergdahl appeared to be in better shape after his captivity than the members of his squadron who had to search for him. Buetow stated that in the video of Bergdahl’s release into US custody “he actually looks a little bigger than he was when he left and I thought we all looked a lot worse than he did out there looking for him.” He added Bergdahl “looked pretty good. He looked big, he looked healthy.” Buetow also reiterated his earlier statements that he thinks “it is abundantly clear...

Full Title: Taliban commander exchanged for Bergdahl coordinated with al Qaeda to attack Northern Alliance the day before 9/11 One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda's plans leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban's army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his detention at Guantánamo, did not have a hand in planning the actual 9/11 hijackings. Along with a notorious al Qaeda leader, however, Fazl did help coordinate a military offensive against...

<p>Soon we shall get to the bottom of the swap of five Taliban kingpins from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for one Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.</p>

"These five guys are not a threat to the United States," says Clinton. "They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody." Last week President Obama traded the Taliban 5, who were being...

The buck stops with the president. Or maybe it's the secretary of Defense. As the fallout grows over the controversial Taliban prisoner swap, White House officials are emphasizing that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was the one who "signed off" on the deal -- a move one Republican lawmaker suggested is an effort to shift blame. "I hope they're not just pushing him out to be a fall guy for this," Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told Fox News. According to a congressional source, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken refused to answer directly when asked point-blank during a briefing with House...

People are arguing about what the United States got out of the deal that swapped five top level terrorist leaders for one American soldier who was, at best, absent from his post in a war zone. Soldiers who served in the same unit with him call him a deserter. The key to this deal, however, is less likely to be what the United States got out of the deal than it is about what Barack Obama got out of the deal. If nothing else, it instantly got the veterans' hospitals scandals off the front pages of newspapers and pushed these...

Secretary of State John Kerry's dismissive "baloney" response to whether five Taliban members released from Guantanamo pose a risk to American troops is receiving pushback from, of all places, Obama administration officials.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)It’s been a week, and the Bowe Bergdahl beat goes on. The story has been dominant in the news, even on shows that typically shy away from heavy news—as well as from news that reflects poorly on the Obama administration. This morning, for example, on NBC’s “Today Show”—not exactly a hotbed of hard-news-focused right-wingers—White House correspondent Kristen Welker reported that the Obama administration is “facing increasing anger,” adding, “Members of Congress are furious” at the “shifting stories from the administration.” And she cited a new poll showing that just 29 percent of Americans approve of swapping Taliban fighters for Bergdahl....

WASHINGTON - The House Armed Services Committee will investigate the Obama administration's swap of an American prisoner held for five years for five Taliban leaders that caused a political firestorm over the lack of congressional notification and fears the high-level Taliban could return to the Afghanistan battlefield. "We ought to look at the price," Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the panel, told reporters after administration officials held a tense 90-minute, closed-door briefing for House Democrats and Republicans. Officials from the White House, State and Defense departments and the intelligence community defended the exchange of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who...

Although she’s been there for the president multiple times in the past defending his policies, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) now claims that since attacking the president over the Taliban prisoner exchange, she’s been left out of the loop. She told Politico on Monday that she’s received a phone call from Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken a week ago, apologizing for an ‘oversight’ in not notifying her beforehand about the exchange of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in return for the release of five senior Taliban officials, but since then she hasn’t received any personal outreach from the president or any other...

FInal approval for the prisoner exchange that freed Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was made by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, members of Congress learned on Monday from administration officials. 'They indicated (it was) Secretary Hagel (who made the final call),' Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) said after a classified briefing, ABC points out. 'It was the president of the United States that came out (in the Rose Garden) with the Bergdahls and took all the credit and now that there’s been a little pushback he’s moving away from it and it’s Secretary Hagel?' Last week, Hagel said the swap was a unanimous...

The ever-shifting maze of lies and evasions billowing out of the Obama Administration over the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange hits an astonishing new low, as Obama has apparently decided it’s time to hide under his desk and blame Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel for the whole thing. Thus does a “triumph” become a disaster in the span of less than ten days. By the end of the week, Obama will be claiming he didn’t learn about the Bergdahl swap until he saw people talking about it on a TV news show. snip One of the reasons President Hagel is taking...

How many excuses has the White House produced for not complying with the statutory requirement to notify and consult with Congress before releasing detainees from Gitmo? We’ve had enough to get to the point where they’re recycling the older ones. First we heard that there wasn’t enough time to notify Congress, followed by a claim that Bowe Bergdahl’s health was so bad he could have been dead within days. When that didn’t work, the White House then claimed that the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if the deal leaked, which no one bought, and so we’re back to the we-had-no-time...

Old and busted: The Taliban 5 swap was a demonstration of authority by a Commander in Chief who isn’t afraid to act and make the final decision. New hotness: Hey, Chuck Hagel had the final call on the swap!

Facing growing skepticism on Capitol Hill about its decision to swap five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House told lawmakers at a classified briefing late Monday night that some of the freed militants were political figures, not hardened soldiers, according to lawmakers who attended the session. In the past several days, the administration has rolled out a number of reasons to justify swapping Bergdahl, a potential deserter, for the five Taliban officials. White House officials said they had concerns about Berdgahl's health, felt an obligation to never leave a soldier on the battlefield, and feared the militants...

The last question asked at Monday night's closed-door briefing of members of the House of Representatives was a simple one: Who made the decision to transfer five top Taliban officials held at Guantanamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the return of the Taliban's lone American POW, Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl? According to Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, the Obama administration's briefers told he gathered House members that the person responsible for the decision to make the deal was not President Obama but Chuck Hagel, the secretary of defense. "Now wait a minute, are you...

Right on the heels of Allahpundit’s post from last evening comes a poll — a pair of polls, actually — from Reuters that may suggest President Obama’s numbers haven’t quite bottomed out yet. First, on overall approval, O’s at (38/55) with a (-19) intensity gap — via Phil Kerpen: Reuters/Ipsos: Obama Approve/Disapprove 37.5/55.1 Strongly 15.6/35.0 pic.twitter.com/vXi07of5T2— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 9, 2014 That’s from their rolling presidential approval tracker, which has pegged Obama’s job approval deep underwater for months. In that sense, AP’s thesis from yesterday remains intact: The president’s ratings haven’t suffered that badly from the VA mess...

If nothing else, l'affaire Bergdahl brings into sharp focus one of the problems that has bedeviled the entire "war on terror" concept from the beginning - that there's no agreement on what it is. Is it a war? Is it a counter-terrorism campaign? Is it law enforcement, in which the "accused" are "brought to justice" and tried in regular courtrooms with all-American dream-team legal representation? The Afghan end of this thing is the nearest to a conventional war there is. A sovereign state was invaded and its government toppled. But the toppled party never quite went away, and they're assuredly...

Classified #Bergdahl briefing just finished. WH officials say Secy. Hagel made the final call on #Bergdahl swap.

A new public opinion poll shows that veterans oppose Obama’s decision to trade five Guantanamo detainees for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl by overwhelming numbers. According to the poll conducted by USA Today and Pew Research, 68 percent of veterans polled said that Obama made the wrong decision. Only 16 percent supported the decision. Forty-three percent of respondents said that Obama was wrong to make the deal, while 34 percent said that it was the right thing to do...