{"id":56567,"date":"2014-11-20T10:08:26","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T15:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=56567"},"modified":"2014-11-20T10:36:25","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T15:36:25","slug":"hunter-asks-unanswered-questions-about-bergdahl-ransom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56567","title":{"rendered":"Hunter asks unanswered questions about Bergdahl ransom"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Washington Times<\/a>, Bill Gertz reports that California Congressman Duncan Hunter is continuing to ask the Obama Administration about the failed ransom payment that the Department of Defense paid to a member of the Haqqani network of terrorists for the release of Bowe Bergdahl, the hostage they held for five years. Since it is the policy of the US government to not pay ransoms to terrorists;<\/p>\n

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday that Mr. Obama \u201ccontinues to believe, as previous presidents have concluded, that it\u2019s not in the best interest of American citizens to pay ransoms to any organization, let alone a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the reason for that is simple: We don\u2019t want to put other American citizens at even greater risk when they\u2019re around the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s spin on the payment is that the money was not technically a ransom. Instead, defense officials are claiming the cash was intelligence money paid to a source for information that would lead to the release of Sgt. Bergdahl.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, the fellow to whom the government paid the ransom absconded with the funds, and then in addition to the money, we also released five hardened terrorists.<\/p>\n

Officials said the Bergdahl ransom was an unspecified large amount of money and that the exchange was handled by the Army\u2019s elite Delta Force anti-terrorism squad. The FBI also was involved in the ransom payment attempt and was waiting inside Afghanistan\u2019s border with North Waziristan when the release failed, confirming that it had been a scam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, whoever it was that stole the cash bought many happy endings at the goat farm. The US is starting to look like the world’s nerdy victim in all of our foreign policy dealings.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Washington Times, Bill Gertz reports that California Congressman Duncan Hunter is continuing to ask … Hunter asks unanswered questions about Bergdahl ransom<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}