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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...

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...

A lawyer for one of the so-called Taliban Five released from Guantanamo Bay wants his client to be compensated for his detention at the facility. Khairullah Khairkhwa is said to be the most senior of the men exchanged for US soldier Bowe Bergdahl. He is described in US government documents, that were released by WikiLeaks, as being of high risk and high intelligence value. But lawyer Frank Goldsmith says Mr Khairkhwa was a Taliban political figure, and hadn't been charged with any offences by US authorities in the 12 years he was detained in Guantanamo Bay. SBS reporter Kristina Kukolja...

President Obama has been trying to close Gitmo for years, which means finding a way – any way – to free the terrorists from that prison. Regrettably for Obama, try as he might, he has been unable to obtain Congressional approval to release Gitmo detainees back onto the battlefield to recommence the murder, mayhem, and destruction. Thus far, the United States Congress thinks it is in the best interest of the American people to keep highly dangerous Taliban fighters locked up for as long as possible. Barack “I won” Obama thinks otherwise. That’s why founding member of the Taliban Khair...

(CNSNews.com) – In a Jan. 13, 2012 letter to leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees on, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised that Congress would be consulted and all legal requirements would be met before any prisoners were transferred from the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The 2012 Defense Authorization Act--and subsequent Defense Authorization acts--required that the administration notify Congress 30 days before releasing or transferring any prisoner from Guantanamo. “I want also to make clear that any transfer from Guantanamo will be undertaken after consultation with Congress and pursuant to all legal requirements for transfers, including those spelled...

Most reliable reports suggest that five years ago, as the battle against the Taliban was fully underway, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl voluntarily left his post after becoming disillusioned with what he viewed as the enormous damage the United States had done to Afghanistan. In other words, he deserted. He may have defected; that is unknown for the moment. In recent days, the Administration has justified releasing five top terrorist commanders to return to the battlefield (after a fig-leaf stopover in Qatar) on the grounds that Bergdahl was still an American soldier, and America does not leave its people behind. The President's...

The mother and father sit at the kitchen table in their Idaho farmhouse, watching their son on YouTube plead for his life. The Taliban captured 26-year-old Bowe Bergdahl almost three years ago, on June 30th, 2009, and since that day, his parents, Jani and Bob, have had no contact with him. Like the rest of the world, their lone glimpses of Bowe – the only American prisoner of war left in either Iraq or Afghanistan – have come through a series of propaganda videos, filmed while he's been in captivity. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607#ixzz34APXclT2 Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone...

The following is mostly satire. The Bergdahl transaction was the biggest deal, this past week. It was so big that it is the only scandal this administration and the President didn’t learn about from reports in the media. It was so big that they trotted out the known liar Susan Rice to explain it. The hapless Ms. Rice also said that PFC Bergdahl served his country with “honor and distinction” which undoubtedly is her view of her own service in government. Ms. Rice explained that the NSA is too busy spying on ordinary Americans to know what the hell really...

A field report made public through Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diaries disclosures provides a raw account of the first hours of the search for then-private Bowe Bergdahl, and includes initial Taliban and U.S. accounts of his behavior the night he was captured. “Geronimo reported a B Co missing soldier after he did not show up for the 0900 morning roll call at Mest OP, grid 42SVB 59236 47877 Yahya Khail District, Paktika. A full search was ordered,” the report begins, noting that “all remaining units had reported 100% accountability.” Forty minutes later, “Pathfinder and tracking dog team arrived at Mest OP...

....Panetta, who was in the Cabinet for four of the five years Bergdahl spent in Taliban custody, said he opposed a swap for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he was Defense secretary. “I said, ‘Wait, I have an obligation under the law,'” Panetta said during a lunchtime address at the Hart Energy Developing Unconventionals DUG East conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. “If I send prisoners from Guantanamo, they have to guarantee they don't go back to the battlefield. I had serious concerns.” He said talks fell apart because the Taliban “asked for five...

It just keeps getting crazier and crazier… Barack Obama is going to release Osama Bin Laden’s personal bodyguard from Gitmo because the prisoner says he wants to build a milk and honey farm. Abdel Malik Wahab al Rahabi was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden before he was captured. Now Obama wants to let him go. The New York Post reported: If you thought President Obama’s release of five top Taliban commanders in exchange for POW Bowe Bergdahl was bad, wait until you see what his Gitmo parole board plans. Desperate to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison by the end of...

If you thought President Obama’s release of five top Taliban commanders in exchange for POW Bowe Bergdahl was bad, wait until you see what his Gitmo parole board plans. Desperate to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison by the end of his term, Obama quietly is giving “get out of jail free” cards for the flimsiest of excuses. One al Qaeda suspect captured in Afghanistan is considered reformed because he took up yoga and read a biography of the Dalai Lama. Another is eligible for release because of his “positive attitude.”

The Obama administration gave the parents of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl extraordinary insider access to the military’s hunt for their son by having them take part in a series of secure video conferences with senior commanders as well as White House and State Department officials. A former government official involved in American hostage issues said he had never heard of giving a family such access and questioned whether sensitive information could have been conveyed to Robert and Jani Bergdahl and somehow leaked out. A family spokesman said he knows of no such breach. Soon after Sgt. Bergdahl went missing in...

A former U.S. intelligence official, who worked on covert operations throughout the Middle East and Latin America, claims the scuttlebutt among Beltway security experts is that there may be an a abrupt end to the freedom of the Taliban terrorists released from Guantanamo Bay's detention center, he intimated on Sunday. "With all the negative publicity generated by [President Barack] Obama's Taliban prisoner swap for an Army sergeant, Bowe Bergdahl, the Commander in Chief is being offered plans for covert operations to 'terminate with extreme prejudice' the five terrorists now living relatively free in the Arab nation [of] Qatar," said the...

President Barack Obama is moving ahead with his push to close the Guantanamo Bay prison despite the uproar over the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for a captured American soldier, an administration official said Thursday. The Periodic Review Board has determined that more former 'forever prisoners,' including one who says he has been reformed by practicing yoga and another who was a bodyguard for Bin Laden but now wants to start a 'milk and honey farm' are fit for release to their homelands or repatriation. Ghaleb Nasser al Bihani, 35, told a parole board in April that he had read...

Some of the men held here for more than a decade have been drafting plans for work and marriage on the outside or studying languages, preparing for a not-too-distant future beyond the coiled razor wire that surrounds the U.S. prison perched at the edge of the Caribbean Sea. Until the past week, they had good reason to believe their ticket out might be imminent, if not home then at least to another country. President Barack Obama and others in the administration say they are committed to closing the Guantanamo detention center and military officials say they can resume transfers at...

Obama bundler Jodie Evans, far left, protests in Yemen with al Qaeda tied group al Karama, June 17, 2013. Photo via al Karama. Obama bundler Jodie Evans and Code Pink, the leftist group she co-leads, have been found to be working with a group whose leaders have recently been declared terrorists and al Qaeda supporters by the Treasury Department. This is not the first time the Democratic Party allied group has been caught in bed with terrorists. As this writer has reported over the years, Code Pink works with terrorists, state sponsors of terrorists, the Democratic Party and President Barack...

No ‘reform’ too absurd for Obama to spring Gitmo detainees By Paul Sperry If you thought President Obama’s release of five top Taliban commanders in exchange for POW Bowe Bergdahl was bad, wait until you see what his Gitmo parole board plans. Desperate to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison by the end of his term, Obama quietly is giving “get out of jail free” cards for the flimsiest of excuses. One al Qaeda suspect captured in Afghanistan is considered reformed because he took up yoga and read a biography of the Dalai Lama. Another is eligible for release because of...

You were already thinking it. Treason. For Richard Nixon, it was a cover-up surrounding illegal wiretapping. For Bill Clinton, it was lying under oath about sex with an intern. Obama thinks he’s untouchable. He believes he’s above the law. Evidently, he’s right. What will it take for our spineless U.S. Congress to impeach this tyrant? This is way beyond partisan politics. This is about justice. This is about the safety of the American people. Barack Hussein Obama is America’s biggest threat to national security. He is “an enemy within.” It’s official. America is no longer a constitutional republic. Under this...

Here is a picture of Mohammed Fazl with some of his trophies. He is one of the five Taliban released from Gitmo in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl. "Are freed Taliban members dangerous? 'All these guys are pretty old now,' says analyst" - LA Times WARNING: This picture is blurred but still should not be viewed without caution.http://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Mohammed-Fazi.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Fazl