You have to give the Republicans one thing in that they are consistently authority worshipping, anti-American, whiny, torture loving, warmongering media whores who no matter what the issue always have their eyes on whipping up the rabble for their next election. Take the just completed swap by the Obama regime of five of the occupants of the American concentration camp at Club Gitmo for captured US serviceman Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The outrage was as fake as it was predictable and just in time for the Sunday morning propaganda shows too. Even the strangely out of the limelight uber-fascist, right-wing talk radio bound Congressman Mike Rogers slithered out from whatever rock that he has been hiding under to appear on CNN's State of the Union with the insipid blathering sow Candy Crowley this morning.
The reemergence of Rogers was inevitable given the all-in National Security State establishment smearing of the patriotic whistleblower Edward Snowden after his NBC interview earlier this week - much of which was left on the cutting room floor including his comments on 9/11 being preventable - and the outgoing House Intelligence Committee boss is a fountain of lies and innuendo on that particular topic. I excerpt the following from the CNN rush transcript of today's appearance with Crowley:
REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-MI), CHAIR, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I mean, obviously, we should be happy for the family. They have gotten their loved one back. That's very, very important.
The methodology and what we used is very troublesome. Remember, al Qaeda in the Maghreb...
CROWLEY: And by the methodology, you mean...
ROGERS: Negotiating with terrorists.
CROWLEY: OK.
ROGERS: Remember, this was an individual who was held by a terrorist group in another country, Pakistan. We know that to be true.
Across Northern Africa, the number one way that al Qaeda raises money is by ransom, kidnapping and ransom. We have now set a price. So we have a changing footprint in Afghanistan, which would put our soldiers at risk for this notion that, if I can get one, I can get five Taliban released.
And the problem is, the way we're changing our footprint means we get less intelligence. And that's already starting to happen. And we will get more degradation of the ability to collect intelligence to even stop force protection efforts for our soldiers. That's why so many of us are so concerned about what really is a break with U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
AND
[following video from Susan Rice)
CROWLEY: Congressman, she said, look, the DOD, the Pentagon went to the Justice Department, asked them if it was OK given the laws surrounding who needs to be consulted about the release of these Gitmo prisoners and the Justice Department said, fine.
ROGERS: Well, there a reason that Congress is involved by law, by statute, by constitutional authority in these decisions prior to the notification has to be -- to keep Congress currently informed, number one. And the reason is you don't want to talk to each other about something as sensitive as this. That's why Congress is involved in these issues. And it happens frequently on some very sensitive issues.
Everything from the Osama bin Laden raid which was briefed to those members of us with the clearances literally months and months in advance and followed up to the day of the raid. So some notion that this was so secretive and so sensitive that it couldn't happen is just wrong.
And you know, she said she notified. I'm mystified by that. They didn't notify Congress appropriately and here is why. Other places that we have let the Gitmo prisoners go to these particular countries, by the way, which we paid them to take them, has been a disaster. It hasn't worked, which is one of the things that last year we brought up to them, it's not working.
So, if we're ever going to continue this, you need to change it. Well, they didn't like the advice and counsel they got from Congress and apparently decided they were going to go their own direction. I always think that's dangerous, just like the secret negotiations with Iran has huge consequences with our allies, this is going to cost huge consequences as well.
And I just don't understand why you wouldn't engage with people who have done this for a long time and bring, I think, good advice and counsel could have alleviated some of the problems that they're going to get into in the next days and months ahead, including the risk to our U.S. soldier.
Just the standard issue horseshit and lip-service to putting American servicemen and women at danger when the REAL thing that puts them in peril are the wars that Rogers and his fellow swine in Congress continue to bring home the bacon for their backers who profit enormously off of death. In any sane country guys like Mike Rogers would not only be barred from holding public office but mocked as the corrupt stooges of the blood barters and military contractors that they truly are. Unfortunately we don’t live in one. The other loudmouths bitching about "dealing with terrorists" are legion and more will be jumping on the bandwagon when Monday's RNC talking points email hits their inboxes. The hypocrites will spend days inveighing against the "Kenyan" in the White House over this one.
But the biggest fraud in America when it comes to military heroism, Senator John McCain oozed his typical angry and deranged character traits in denouncing Obama for negotiating the release of Sgt. Bergdahl. The official statement issued by McCain is as follows from his website:
“I am pleased that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is finally being returned safely to his family and loved ones after nearly five years of captivity. All Americans share in the joy that the Bergdahl family feels today and for which they have waited so long.
“I have been informed that, in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl’s release, the Administration is now in the process of transferring five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to Qatar. These particular individuals are hardened terrorists who have the blood of Americans and countless Afghans on their hands. I am eager to learn what precise steps are being taken to ensure that these vicious and violent Taliban extremists never return to the fight against the United States and our partners or engage in any activities that can threaten the prospects for peace and security in Afghanistan. The American people, and our Afghan partners, deserve nothing less.”
The psychotic old war criminal loves to have it both ways and in terms of sheer loathsomeness is right up there with his Vietnam era cohort John Kerry. McCain has a long and sordid history of talking out of both sides of his mouth with the most recent example being his palling around with neo-Nazis in Kiev right before the overthrow of the democratically elected leader by such elements. He also has built his career off of exploiting his time in Nam, not that dropping bombs on women and children, getting shot down, taken prisoner and then currying favorable treatment from his captors at the expense of other guests at the Hanoi Hilton whose fathers weren't admirals in the US Navy. His comments about Sgt. Bergdahl also show that the no soldier left behind military code of honor doesn't resonate with McCain, it was he who shamefully worked to sink efforts to find US prisoners of war in Vietnam. I excerpt the following from an article by Sydney Schanberg "McCain and the POW Cover-Up" that was re-published by The American Conservative in 2010:
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.
The article is well worth the time spent reading it although anyone who is awake knows that truth about McCain and his political career built on the myth that he was some kind of war hero but the bigger question on his participation in the POW cover-up is why?
Despite all of the angry bullshit dispersal exercises undertaken by the rancid Republicans all of that squealing and demagoguery about "not negotiating with terrorists" is laughable. These are the same people after all who have no qualms about arming Islamist militants, cannibals and al Qaeda affiliates in Syria nor throwing in with neo-Nazi goons in Ukraine. They are liars and always will be liars. When it comes to liars though, one need not exclude their reigning king who sits upon the throne at 1600 W. Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama could give a rat's ass about the troops and that includes Sgt. Bergdahl but like their more overtly fascist counterparts, Democrats too have elections upcoming in November so this is good public relations on their part, cynical as hell but it plays to the rubes.
In the end it all comes down to the festering boil on the ass of Uncle Scam at Guantanamo Bay - Republicans HATE losing their holy site for torture and Obama won't close it down because despite the power to do exactly that with a simple executive order he is a hypocrite of enormous proportion. The Republicans real problem is that after the trade that they will have five less live bodies to subject to torture - time to get the rest of them out of there close that filthy offshore future penal colony down - forever.
So good for Sgt. Bergdahl, as much as I am opposed to the ongoing series of money-making, fucking wars launched by both the Democrats and the Republicans the man has done his duty and deserves to come home. The political scrum that the degenerate swine in this country and their bought and paid for media only spits on the troops with their continuing use of them as nothing more than props and political footballs.
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