By Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff, August 28
Congress knew President Obama harbored a deep desire to free prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. That was, after all, one of his campaign promises.
Obama-brokered exchange for Bergdahl was illegal -- where’s the outrage?
That’s why lawmakers passed legislation in 2013 explicitly requiring the secretary of defense to notify Congress “not later than 30 days before the transfer or release” of any individual from the terrorist-detention facility.
So when the president ordered the Pentagon to secretly and unilaterally release five seasoned jihadists from Guantanamo in exchange for suspected deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in May, it was widely assumed the president broke a law that he himself signed.
The first members of Congress weren’t informed of the operation until May 31 – the day of the transfer.
In what could have been a five-second segment on The People’s Court, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office officially informed congressional investigators that, yes, the prisoner exchange broke the law.
What’s more, the GAO said, the expense of nearly $1 million to pay for the transfer using a wartime account that hadn’t been expressly earmarked violated an appropriations law called the Antideficiency Act.
The Rogue President strikes again, batting away those pesky and annoying laws like gnats at a summer cookout.
“The president’s decision is part of a disturbing pattern where he unilaterally decides that he does not have to comply with provisions of laws with which he disagrees,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said after the GAO report.
Obama and the Pentagon maintained then, and now, that immediacy and secrecy were crucial to saving Bergdahl’s life.
More hogwash.
Obama was desperate for something – anything – that could be construed as a foreign policy win. It’s likely he imagined bringing the six-year POW home would boost his sagging support and deflect attention away from his administration’s
numerous scandals.
But then Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers revealed an inconvenient truth – one which the Pentagon knew all along: Bergdahl, they said, fell into Taliban hands after he willingly and knowingly abandoned his post in the eastern Afghanistan province of Paktika on June 30, 2009.
Nearly three months after the fact, the exchange is still stupefying: five senior Taliban leaders for one soldier – a buck private at the time – who wandered away from his base unarmed and into enemy hands.
The 30-day notification was supposed to include “an explanation of why the transfer or release is in the national security interests of the United States.” That no such explanation was given before or after is a sure sign of the dubiousness of the arrangement.
“It’s not hard to imagine that the president didn’t notify us until after the fact because he knew the proposed transfer would have been met with opposition,” Collins said.
Bergdahl is presently performing administrative duties at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio while the investigation into his capture is conducted.
The five Taliban he was exchanged for are supposed to remain in Qatar for a year as part of the agreement. One of them, Noorullah Noori, has already pledged to return to the Afghanistan battlefields to kill more Americans.
The Republican-led House Armed Services Committee voted last month to condemn the president for the swap. While the nonbinding resolution expresses relief for the Bergdahl’s safe return, it disapproves of the exchange and faults Obama for failing to notify Congress as required by law. The full House is expected to consider the measure in the fall.
When it came to the disposition of Guantanamo prisoners, Congress realized in 2013 it couldn’t trust Obama to do the right thing. This year, he proved them right.
So when the president ordered the Pentagon to secretly and unilaterally release five seasoned jihadists from Guantanamo in exchange for suspected deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in May, it was widely assumed the president broke a law that he himself signed.
The first members of Congress weren’t informed of the operation until May 31 – the day of the transfer.
In what could have been a five-second segment on The People’s Court, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office officially informed congressional investigators that, yes, the prisoner exchange broke the law.
What’s more, the GAO said, the expense of nearly $1 million to pay for the transfer using a wartime account that hadn’t been expressly earmarked violated an appropriations law called the Antideficiency Act.
The Rogue President strikes again, batting away those pesky and annoying laws like gnats at a summer cookout.
“The president’s decision is part of a disturbing pattern where he unilaterally decides that he does not have to comply with provisions of laws with which he disagrees,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said after the GAO report.
Obama and the Pentagon maintained then, and now, that immediacy and secrecy were crucial to saving Bergdahl’s life.
More hogwash.
Obama was desperate for something – anything – that could be construed as a foreign policy win. It’s likely he imagined bringing the six-year POW home would boost his sagging support and deflect attention away from his administration’s
numerous scandals.
But then Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers revealed an inconvenient truth – one which the Pentagon knew all along: Bergdahl, they said, fell into Taliban hands after he willingly and knowingly abandoned his post in the eastern Afghanistan province of Paktika on June 30, 2009.
Nearly three months after the fact, the exchange is still stupefying: five senior Taliban leaders for one soldier – a buck private at the time – who wandered away from his base unarmed and into enemy hands.
The 30-day notification was supposed to include “an explanation of why the transfer or release is in the national security interests of the United States.” That no such explanation was given before or after is a sure sign of the dubiousness of the arrangement.
“It’s not hard to imagine that the president didn’t notify us until after the fact because he knew the proposed transfer would have been met with opposition,” Collins said.
Bergdahl is presently performing administrative duties at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio while the investigation into his capture is conducted.
The five Taliban he was exchanged for are supposed to remain in Qatar for a year as part of the agreement. One of them, Noorullah Noori, has already pledged to return to the Afghanistan battlefields to kill more Americans.
The Republican-led House Armed Services Committee voted last month to condemn the president for the swap. While the nonbinding resolution expresses relief for the Bergdahl’s safe return, it disapproves of the exchange and faults Obama for failing to notify Congress as required by law. The full House is expected to consider the measure in the fall.
When it came to the disposition of Guantanamo prisoners, Congress realized in 2013 it couldn’t trust Obama to do the right thing. This year, he proved them right.
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