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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Right Didn’t Mind When Bush Paid a Ransom to Terrorists
Michael TomaskyRepublicans are howling (with no proof) that Obama paid a ransom for Bowe Bergdahls freedom. Funny. They werent howling when Bush actually did it.
The Bowe Bergdahl story moves to the hearing stage this week, so well be treated to the sight of preening House Republicans trying to press Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on when it was that he, too, started hating America. Meanwhile, over in the fever swamps, speculation is growing about an alleged ransom the Obama administration may have paid to bring Bergdahl home. That Ollie North, of all people, started this talk is one of those laugh, cry, or shoot-the-television moments that now assault our synapses with such regularity; its like Judas calling John or James a traitor, or Bernie Madoff aspersing Warren Buffett as a swindler.
North aside, the charge is picking up steam. Fox News reported that a ransom was on the table last year. The Free Beacon the other day quoted a senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, who speculated that a cash payoff to the Haqqani Network, Bergdahls captors, surely had to be involved; the whole story made no sense otherwise. Get the picture? The typical evidence-free allegation, oxygenated by rife speculation from the usual suspects, who have no knowledge of anything but just want to get a meme started. So far, among elected officials, only House GOPer Steve Im Even Too Out There for Texas Republicans Stockman has uttered the r-word.
But what starts with Stockman rarely ends with Stockman. And so I predict this charge is going to become a central talking point on the right in the coming days and weeks. Why wouldnt it? Its as high-voltage an allegation as Republicans can muster up. It carries, in its crude form, a subtext not only of colossally naive misjudgment but quite possibly of treason: the idea that not merely did the Manchurian president pay too high a price in the form of the Taliban Five to get back a good-for-nothing deserter, but now he (the theory will go) paid cash money to an evil terrorist network, thus helping to finance the groups operations against America. As North, who knows whereof he speaks on the subject of abetting terrorists, put it: Was there a ransom paid? Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?
This would all be quite shocking if proved true, right? And maybe even legitimate grounds for impeachment. Funny, thoughit somehow wasnt either of those things in 2002, when the Bush administration did it.
We turn now to the Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf terror networkIslamic fundamentalist, al Qaeda-linked, occupant of a slot on the State Departments official terrorist-organization list since Bill Clinton put it there in 1997was rampaging around the southern archipelago and taking Westerners hostage. Two such hostages were an American husband-and-wife missionary team, Martin and Gracia Burnham. They were kidnapped in May 2001. Their captivity was a pretty big story for a while, but then came September, and the inferno of Lower Manhattan.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/10/the-right-didn-t-mind-when-bush-paid-a-ransom-to-terrorists.html
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