I don't know if CNN thinks they're losing too many of their viewers to Fox these days or what their reasoning has been for either their choice of hosts and the guests that frequent their shows, but they sure as hell look like they're doing their best to keep up with them in the crazy department when you've got right-wing nut Frank Gaffney and disgraced former Speaker of the House and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich as their supposed voices or reason to argue over foreign policy and the prisoner swap for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
This is who they decided to put up against cohost Stephanie Cutter and former Gov. Bill Richardson, who has actually got some experience negotiating with people that our government doesn't necessarily like.
When asked about whether we should have gotten something in exchange for these prisoners at Gitmo that we were probably going to have to let go anyway because we were no longer going to be able to justify holding them there without a trial for much longer, Gaffney countered by saying that this "war" of ours with Afghanistan is going to go on forever, whether we say it ended or not, unless of course our Kenyan usurper in chief decides he wants to "surrender" to our enemies.
CUTTER: Welcome. The first question goes to you. The war in Afghanistan is about to end towards the end of the year. Here's what John Bellinger, who served under President Bush as counsel to the NSC and to the State Department, said about the end of the war and what it means for these prisoners, and he just reiterated this comment to Wolf on "THE SITUATION ROOM."
He said, "It is likely that the U.S. would be required as a matter of international law to release them shortly after the end of 2014, when U.S. combat operations cease in Afghanistan."
So these guys were probably going to be let go anyway. Even General Dempsey said this was likely our best last chance to rescue Sergeant Bergdahl. Isn't this a logical conclusion to the war? That we're nearing the end of the war, we do prisoner exchanges? These guys were going to get let go. Why wouldn't we want to get something out of it, get our own guy back?
GAFFNEY: A lot of suppositions there. We may be towards the end of this war. Unfortunately, it isn't entirely up to us. The other side gets a vote.
The president says we're ending it, but the only way one side can end a war unilaterally is by surrendering. The president by his own plan says we're going to have American forces in some numbers in considerable harm's way in the crosshairs, specifically of the Taliban for at least two more years. I think this is premature at best to be replenishing the ranks of the senior leadership of the Taliban, including some of those that have been the most murderous, not just of Americans but also their own people.
Somehow the words endless occupation never manged to make their way into the conversation on this show. These talking heads want to sit and argue about whether we should have tried to get a POW back or not when the discussion we ought to be having is why in the hell we went in there in the first place and whether it was justified and whether these prisoners at Gitmo ought to be being held without a trial.
They say they can't try them, which means they were probably tortured, which conveniently continues to be left out of this conversation as well. Instead we're treated to war mongers who never met a bomb they didn't want to drop on a brown person's head pissing and moaning about our president having to figure out how to clean up the mess they created without everyone on the right going insane and calling him "soft on terror' or aiding and abetting the terrorists because he doesn't want to keep people locked up for the rest of their lives without ever seeing the inside of a court room.
Now that it looks like the administration has figured out a way to justify getting more of these prisoners out of Gitmo that the right is going to have trouble arguing with, look for the carping out of them to continue to get more shrill.
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