Ever since the United States swapped five Taliban prisoners for our lone U.S. POW, Republicans have been leading a crazed charge of attacks at the Obama administration for daring to negotiate with the Taliban.
Sen. John McCain: "These are the hardest of the hard core. These are the highest high-risk people, and others that we have released have gone back into the fight,"
Michael Hayden: "I would frankly be uncomfortable with those folks being able to communicate, those folks being able to take visitors and those folks being able to leave after a year. They're very dangerous people. There's a reason they were still at Guantanamo."
Rep. Mike Rogers: “If you negotiate here, you’ve sent a message to every al Qaeda group in the world -- by the way, some who are holding U.S. hostages today -- that there is some value now in that hostage in a way that they didn’t have before,” Rogers said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning. “That is dangerous.”
Sen. Ted Cruz: Now we make deals with terrorists. And the question going forward is, have we just put a price on other U.S. soldiers? What does this tell terrorists, that if you capture a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists we’ve gone after?”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz: I think it actually weakens us. I think it puts people in harm's danger in the long term. Negotiating with terrorists I think is not something we should be doing.
John Bolton: "The president has sent the Taliban an unmistakable signal that he will pay any price to get the United States out, and that's a signal that's bad for Taliban and al Qaeda to hear and our adversaries around the world," Bolton opined. "And perhaps even worse, it is despicable for a president of the United States to grant moral equivalence to these terrorist in Gitmo compared to an American service member. The idea that there's any equivalence at all between and American soldier and a terrorist, I think, is reprehensible."
Republicans make believe that this is the first time in history the U.S. has done something like this, but as I've noted before, Reagan's Iran-Contra debacle was also about negotiating with terrorists to free Americans.
How quickly they forget world events or anything that has to do with leaders who's name is not Barack Obama. Here's a story from 2006 that will shed some light on their wankery.
Why Israelis believe one soldier is worth 1,000 Palestinian prisoners
Israel is freeing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis, in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by Hamas in 2006. How and why has the controversial deal come about?
Militants captured the young sergeant in June 2006 after tunneling into the Jewish state and attacking an Israeli army outpost. Israel immediately launched a military incursion into Gaza to rescue Shalit, then 19, but failed to free him.
Shalit's captors, affiliated with the Islamic Hamas government, demanded a prisoner swap, but the Israeli government said no -- at least in public.
Until Tuesday, when Shalit was freed and returned to Israel, he was held incommunicado by Hamas, which controls Gaza.
I imagine those Palestinians who were serving life sentences for their attacks on Israel were believed to be the worst of the worst so why have I never heard a Conservative criticize Israel about any of their hostage negotiations? Aren't they sending horrific messages to the entire world that it's open season on them now? And it was Netanyahu who brokered that deal. How have Republicans responded to him after that deal was struck you ask?
In May of 2011, when there was some tension between the US and Israel over some foreign policy disagreements, Republicans showed their love and respect for Israel's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu over their own president.
ABC News counted Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations during his address to Congress – in contrast to the 25 that Obama received during his State of the Union address earlier in the year.
Then again, most Israeli leaders can count on a warm reception on the American political stage, especially when they praise its politicians and bash its enemies, such as Iran. For the US representatives and senators present, their cheers were a risk- and cost-free way of supporting Israel, which remains a pivotal ally as well as a powerful domestic constituency.
As many have already noted, this is their new Benghazi scandal, but what about consistency, truth and facts? I'm not about to critic how Israel negotiates for its soldiers since they have a long history in doing so, but if Republicans are going to jump on the Obama administration for rescuing one of its own as so many others have done before them then they better look in the mirror and the media should hold their hypocrisy up for a full examination by the American people.
