Hillary Clinton told ABC’s old drunk Diane Sawyer that it doesn’t matter if Bergdahl was a deserter or not. You simply bring him home at any cost. This is almost like Hillary Clinton’s ‘what difference does it make’ moment. Hillary Rotten Clinton made these comments when she was out trying to pimp her failure of a book.
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| Hillary Clinton: It doesn’t matter if Bergdahl deserted |
According to one intel estimate last year, four of the five Taliban freed to obtain Bergdahl’s release are expected to return to the battlefield. Now, you tell me: Was today’s decision to charge him made with the White House’s (grudging) support or effectively against their wishes? I can see it both ways. Obama took a beating in the media once Bergdahl’s comrades started coming forward to accuse him of desertion. The outcry was loud enough that maybe O thought he had no choice at this point but to seek formal charges, to show that Bergdahl wasn’t going to enjoy a double whammy of having his freedom purchased at great cost and being let off scot free on a desertion charge. This is damage control, in other words, a gesture towards accountability. On the other hand, it would have been far better for Obama politically had the Pentagon declared that there’s not enough evidence to prove willful desertion, notwithstanding the dubious circumstances in which Bergdahl went missing. As it is, the White House — and the presumptive Democratic nominee — are going to eat mountains of shinola for very stupidly insisting last year that it doesn’t matter why Bergdahl went outside the wire. We bring our people home, even if they trotted into the enemy’s camp, even if the price is letting hardened killers back into Afghanistan.
But maybe none of this matters. The deeper point of the Bergdahl swap, as Sean Davis reminds us, was to create a pretext for starting to empty Gitmo. Getting Bergdahl back wasn’t as important as getting the Taliban out. The desertion charges don’t change that, although it’s a safe bet that the next time the White House sends jihadis back out into the field in a swap, they’ll vet the American on the other side a bit more closely. Anyway, exit question: What are the odds that Obama will pardon Bergdahl? Seems hard to believe he’d take even more heat over this fiasco by letting him go free after he’s been credibly accused by so many soldiers not only of deserting but of indirectly costing several troops their lives during the ensuing search. But then, we already know that O’s in the “WGAF” phase of his presidency; letting Bergdahl go will anger people, but he can spin it with some nonsense about how poor Bowe’s suffered enough, how it’s time to move on, etc. Which, for the White House, it is. The sooner they can put this clusterfark behind them and move on to the next clusterfark, the better.