{"id":51700,"date":"2014-06-19T11:59:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T15:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=51700"},"modified":"2014-06-19T11:10:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T15:10:21","slug":"congress-hearing-on-bergdahl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=51700","title":{"rendered":"Congress’ hearing on Bergdahl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derek sends us a link to Fox News<\/a> in regards to yesterday’s hearing about the appropriateness of trading five high value prisoners for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl;<\/p>\n

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing was an open forum to discuss the prisoner swap, and featured testimony from lawmakers, soldiers who served with Bergdahl and Andy Andrews, the father of a soldier who was reportedly killed during the search for Bergdahl. No Obama administration officials appeared at the hearing.<\/p>\n

Cotton, R-Ark., criticized the rationale behind the trade. He said the Obama administration\u2019s assertion that it made the trade in order to never leave a comrade behind is \u201cinsulting and offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we made those promises to each other, we didn\u2019t promise we would exchange five stone cold terrorists for each other,\u201d Cotton, a veteran himself, said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., echoed Cotton\u2019s concerns, saying the swap makes Americans less safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also there was Specialist Cody Full, a former mate from Bergdahl’s unit. From CNN<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Spc. Cody Full, who was Bergdahl’s roommate before their deployment and served closely with him at the base, said at the hearing that he has no doubt Bergdahl deserted and that the desertion was pre-meditated.<\/p>\n

“Knowing that someone you needed to trust deserted you in war and did so on his own free will is the ultimate betrayal,” Full told members of two subcommittees of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

Mike Waltz, who commanded an Army Special Forces unit in eastern Afghanistan when Bergdahl was captured, told subcommittee members that all military resources in that part of the country were redirected to search for Bergdahl and that the Taliban capitalized on that effort to launch attacks.<\/p>\n

“They began feeding false information into our informant network in order to lure our forces into a trap,” Waltz said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n