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  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    ATF pushes bullet ban, threatens top-selling AR-15 rifle

    By Paul Bedard
    Published February 26, 2015
    Washington Examiner

    It’s starting.

    As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.

    The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is proposing to put the ban on 5.56mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela’s, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president.

    Now they are doing an end run and trying to ban a specific "caliber" which by their convoluted thinking will cause the demise of certain fire arms. I guess the next attempt at a specific "caliber" will be the 9MM. It all makes perfect sense to me and I think obozo should issue more executive orders like a ban on Chevrolet's and Red cars. But, please don't do a thing about the boarders and the drugs coming in from mexico and china. I mean don't do something that will have a real impact and make sense. No No No can't be realistic...
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Holder Admits ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Claim Was Bogus

    By Neil Munro, Daily Caller

    The “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan used by Democrat activists since August 2013 is a complete falsehood, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder admitted Wednesday. He acknowledge the faked story as he released the Justice Department’s investigation of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo. “I recognize that the findings in our report may leave some to wonder how the department’s findings can differ so sharply from some of the initial, widely reported accounts of what transpired,” Holder said at the press conference. However, Holder declined to criticize the TV-media frenzy — and the claims by local African-American protesters — that spread the false claim that the dead youth, Michael Brown, had his hands up shortly before his was shot by police officer Darren Wilson. Instead, Holder suggested the media and Americans recognize the fakery. “It remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly,(most especially holder and a couple of others) and be accepted so readily,” he said.


    Didn't someone on here say he knew it was a cover up and we knew it was a cover up?



    Yea Yea Yea it is an old story. But like the 4 dead Americans in Benghazi it ain't over until the truth is out there. Because unlike billary clintinista the truth does matter.
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    jd50ae:
    Holder Admits ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Claim Was Bogus

    By Neil Munro, Daily Caller

    The “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan used by Democrat activists since August 2013 is a complete falsehood, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder admitted Wednesday. He acknowledge the faked story as he released the Justice Department’s investigation of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo. “I recognize that the findings in our report may leave some to wonder how the department’s findings can differ so sharply from some of the initial, widely reported accounts of what transpired,” Holder said at the press conference. However, Holder declined to criticize the TV-media frenzy — and the claims by local African-American protesters — that spread the false claim that the dead youth, Michael Brown, had his hands up shortly before his was shot by police officer Darren Wilson. Instead, Holder suggested the media and Americans recognize the fakery. “It remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly,(most especially holder and a couple of others) and be accepted so readily,” he said.


    Didn't someone on here say he knew it was a cover up and we knew it was a cover up?



    Yea Yea Yea it is an old story. But like the 4 dead Americans in Benghazi it ain't over until the truth is out there. Because unlike billary clintinista the truth does matter.


    Did cnn or msnbe cover this? I was too busy shoveling climate change from the steps to watch.
  • Bob LukenBob Luken Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,664
    jd50ae:
    jd50ae:
    Holder Admits ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Claim Was Bogus

    By Neil Munro, Daily Caller

    The “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan used by Democrat activists since August 2013 is a complete falsehood, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder admitted Wednesday. He acknowledge the faked story as he released the Justice Department’s investigation of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo. “I recognize that the findings in our report may leave some to wonder how the department’s findings can differ so sharply from some of the initial, widely reported accounts of what transpired,” Holder said at the press conference. However, Holder declined to criticize the TV-media frenzy — and the claims by local African-American protesters — that spread the false claim that the dead youth, Michael Brown, had his hands up shortly before his was shot by police officer Darren Wilson. Instead, Holder suggested the media and Americans recognize the fakery. “It remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly,(most especially holder and a couple of others) and be accepted so readily,” he said.


    Didn't someone on here say he knew it was a cover up and we knew it was a cover up?



    Yea Yea Yea it is an old story. But like the 4 dead Americans in Benghazi it ain't over until the truth is out there. Because unlike billary clintinista the truth does matter.


    Did cnn or msnbe cover this? I was too busy shoveling climate change from the steps to watch.
    Speaking of news outlets and how they only tell you what they want you to believe,......... Today, during the first twenty minutes of the NBC Today show they spent the first thirteen minutes on two plane crashes, followed by just one minute on Hillary Clinton's email scandal. And if that wasn't bad enough it was a complete fluff piece by Andrea Mitchell. Well, at least as much fluff as she could make of a scandal. She first went out of her way to point out that despite reports to the contrary, State Dept officials had not yet concluded that Clinton had "violated Sate Dept. policies". Next the bulk of the one minute report outlined how Clinton's opponents can use this against her. No critical thinking required here. Even though everybody is picking on her, Hillary's still awesome.
  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    Bob Luken:
    Hillary's still awesome.
    She's so awesome she will prolly sell twice as many pardons as her old man.

  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    jd50ae:
    ... the truth does matter.
    What, exactly, out of all we've seen in our lifetimes, gives you the misguided impression truth matters?
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    A Serial Pooper Is On the Loose in Akron, Ohio (Yes, You Read That Correctly)

    Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy By Josh Feldman, Mediaite.com

    Go ahead and get your infantile giggling out of the way. I’ll wait.

    Ahem.

    There’s a serial pooper (okay, stop laughing) going around Akron, Ohio and has been, um, defecating all over the place for years. Police say these incidents have occurred as far back as 2012.

    There have been 19 officially-reported incidents, but there are plenty more incidents that have gone unreported so far
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Please Explain 100,000 Deferrals For Illegal Aliens

    by HANS A. VON SPAKOVSKY, National Review

    There has been a flurry of procedural developments in the lawsuit filed by 26 states in a Texas federal court against President Obama’s amnesty plan for 5 million illegal aliens. On March 19, Justice Department lawyers — and officials of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — will be in the hot seat at a hearing scheduled by Judge Andrew Hanen. Sitting in the dock, they will have to explain whether they misled (others might say “lied to”) the court. Or, as Hanen put it in formal judge-speak: “be prepared to fully explain to this Court all of the matters addressed in and circumstances surrounding” the “Advisory” filed by the government on March 3.

    Many lawyer jokes play off the premise that lawyers are congenitally incapable of telling the truth. But in reality, lawyers have an obligation to be honest in their dealings with a court: They have to tell the truth. Under the American Bar Association’s Model Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3,(remember billary is a lawyer) attorneys have an ethical obligation of “Candor toward the Tribunal.” They shall not knowingly “make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer.”
  • RainRain Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 8,761
    I like to keep it simple. If you are here illegally, you have no rights aside from basic human rights...IE we won't cut your head off while we keep you in a special jail until we can ship your ass out. We're also not sending you back to where you came from, we're sending you to Guantanamo and from there you can arrange your own transport home. Until then, you get to make big rocks in to small rocks for what our people make doing prison jobs. You get a 6 x 10 cell with no tv or $hit. "Well they're the only ones who do jobs Americans won't!" That's because you can't pay an American $2.50 an hour to pick oranges.
  • Bob LukenBob Luken Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,664
    Rain:
    I like to keep it simple. If you are here illegally, you have no rights aside from basic human rights...IE we won't cut your head off while we keep you in a special jail until we can ship your ass out. We're also not sending you back to where you came from, we're sending you to Guantanamo and from there you can arrange your own transport home. Until then, you get to make big rocks in to small rocks for what our people make doing prison jobs. You get a 6 x 10 cell with no tv or $hit. "Well they're the only ones who do jobs Americans won't!" That's because you can't pay an American $2.50 an hour to pick oranges.
    Meanie!
  • 0patience0patience Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,767
    Sorry JD, but I'm too lazy to find an appropriate thread, so I'm piggy backing on your's. Mandatory voting transformative?

    So I'm confused by this. If it is mandatory to do anything, do you still have freedom?
    Opinions?
  • jimmyv723jimmyv723 Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 1,497
    More people would vote if it actually made a difference. The whole system is broken and the way it is set up is to be confrontational and divisional which gets nothing done. Then the men and women voted in don't even make the decisions based on what the people want but based on the most they can get from Corporations and Lobbyists. Money runs this Country not people and until that changes than some people will feel it isn't necessary to vote. Not to mention that the Electoral College and not the People vote the President in and that Election is basically just the choice of the lesser of two Evils. We've basically come full circle and have become exactly what our Founding Fathers fought against in the first place.
  • Amos UmwhatAmos Umwhat Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 2,523
    jimmyv723:
    More people would vote if it actually made a difference. The whole system is broken and the way it is set up is to be confrontational and divisional which gets nothing done. Then the men and women voted in don't even make the decisions based on what the people want but based on the most they can get from Corporations and Lobbyists. Money runs this Country not people and until that changes than some people will feel it isn't necessary to vote. Not to mention that the Electoral College and not the People vote the President in and that Election is basically just the choice of the lesser of two Evils. We've basically come full circle and have become exactly what our Founding Fathers fought against in the first place.
    Bingo!
  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    The rest is sadly true. Nothing to vote for but mud slinging and broken promises. Meanwhile, the real work gets done by lobbyists buying graft hungry congressmen. Government is a scheme by which the rich and powerful enhance their pilth and power.

    Those well intentioned statists here who always favor more and more and more government spending and regulation and high sounding programs take note: What you create is not hope and change, but more of the same.

  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Amos Umwhat:
    jimmyv723:
    More people would vote if it actually made a difference. The whole system is broken and the way it is set up is to be confrontational and divisional which gets nothing done. Then the men and women voted in don't even make the decisions based on what the people want but based on the most they can get from Corporations and Lobbyists. Money runs this Country not people and until that changes than some people will feel it isn't necessary to vote. Not to mention that the Electoral College and not the People vote the President in and that Election is basically just the choice of the lesser of two Evils. We've basically come full circle and have become exactly what our Founding Fathers fought against in the first place.
    Bingo!


    Double Bingo.
  • Bob LukenBob Luken Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,664
    webmost:
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    The rest is sadly true. Nothing to vote for but mud slinging and broken promises. Meanwhile, the real work gets done by lobbyists buying graft hungry congressmen. Government is a scheme by which the rich and powerful enhance their pilth and power.

    Those well intentioned statists here who always favor more and more and more government spending and regulation and high sounding programs take note: What you create is not hope and change, but more of the same.

    Bingo this. The electoral college keeps democracy from stomping on liberty. Same reason the senate is set up as it is to balance against the congress. Don't trash (fundamentally transform?) the greatest system on the planet just because some things aren't going like you want.
  • EulogyEulogy Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 1,295
    Bob Luken:
    webmost:
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    The rest is sadly true. Nothing to vote for but mud slinging and broken promises. Meanwhile, the real work gets done by lobbyists buying graft hungry congressmen. Government is a scheme by which the rich and powerful enhance their pilth and power.

    Those well intentioned statists here who always favor more and more and more government spending and regulation and high sounding programs take note: What you create is not hope and change, but more of the same.

    Bingo this. The electoral college keeps democracy from stomping on liberty. Same reason the senate is set up as it is to balance against the congress. Don't trash (fundamentally transform?) the greatest system on the planet just because some things aren't going like you want.
    So you're arguing against having one vote count as one vote. There's large portions of voters in non-swing states that don't vote because they know their vote won't influence the election; are they not also disenfranchise?
  • raisindotraisindot Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 936
    webmost:
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    I don't quite understand this argument. How would eliminating the Electoral College and allowing presidential elections to be decided by whoever got the most total votes give those in less populated areas less of a vote?

    I would argue the opposite. Let's say that in the 10 most populous states the Democratic presidential candidate won each state by a margin of only a thousand or so votes, while in the 40 other states the Republican presidential campaign won by over a hundred thousand votes in each state. Because the electoral college is state-winner take all, the Democrat would probably win the election by capturing enough electoral votes in the "big states" (even with smaller margins of victory), even though the Republican candidate probably won more of the total votes. This has essentially been the Democratic strategy since the Nixon era.

    Changing from an electoral college to a national popular vote system (for presidential campaigns only) would force presidential candidates to broaden their platforms to try to win votes from a broader spectrum of voters, both urban and rural. The way it is now, both Republican and Democratic candidates barely spend any time at all campaigning in the states with smallest number of electoral votes. All their energy is focused on the states with the most electoral votes.

    In the current environment, a popular vote system would definitely favor the Republican candidate, since it would give Republican voters in Democratic states far greater potential for having their votes influence the final result.
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Eulogy:
    Bob Luken:
    webmost:
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    The rest is sadly true. Nothing to vote for but mud slinging and broken promises. Meanwhile, the real work gets done by lobbyists buying graft hungry congressmen. Government is a scheme by which the rich and powerful enhance their pilth and power.

    Those well intentioned statists here who always favor more and more and more government spending and regulation and high sounding programs take note: What you create is not hope and change, but more of the same.

    Bingo this. The electoral college keeps democracy from stomping on liberty. Same reason the senate is set up as it is to balance against the congress. Don't trash (fundamentally transform?) the greatest system on the planet just because some things aren't going like you want.
    So you're arguing against having one vote count as one vote. There's large portions of voters in non-swing states that don't vote because they know their vote won't influence the election; are they not also disenfranchise?


    No one wants a voter ID law and that just floors me.

    But, obozo suggests a mandatory voting law.

    Wouldn't the same arguments that democrats and liberals use against a voter ID law, apply, even more so, ito a mandatory voting law?

    If any one thinks for a second that this is an altruistic idea that is to, in any way shape or form, benefit the lawful and legal and tax paying citizens of this country, or in fact, this country, is a complete idiot.

    You give me voter ID and I will give you mandatory voting.

    You have all kinds of aruments that will be made for or against both "laws". They are spurious and a waste of time, smoke screens to hide the fact that if a mandatory voting law ever got off the ground (I don't think it will) all those arguments will serve as smoke screens for no other reason then to keep little minds busy, and ignorant of the reasons behind it. It would be a pure and simple ploy to swell the democratic/liberal base. And who would police it? Hell, we can't even get a grip on SS, Welfare and tax fraud.
  • EulogyEulogy Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 1,295
    jd50ae:
    Eulogy:
    Bob Luken:
    webmost:
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    The rest is sadly true. Nothing to vote for but mud slinging and broken promises. Meanwhile, the real work gets done by lobbyists buying graft hungry congressmen. Government is a scheme by which the rich and powerful enhance their pilth and power.

    Those well intentioned statists here who always favor more and more and more government spending and regulation and high sounding programs take note: What you create is not hope and change, but more of the same.

    Bingo this. The electoral college keeps democracy from stomping on liberty. Same reason the senate is set up as it is to balance against the congress. Don't trash (fundamentally transform?) the greatest system on the planet just because some things aren't going like you want.
    So you're arguing against having one vote count as one vote. There's large portions of voters in non-swing states that don't vote because they know their vote won't influence the election; are they not also disenfranchise?


    No one wants a voter ID law and that just floors me.

    But, obozo suggests a mandatory voting law.

    Wouldn't the same arguments that democrats and liberals use against a voter ID law, apply, even more so, ito a mandatory voting law?

    If any one thinks for a second that this is an altruistic idea that is to, in any way shape or form, benefit the lawful and legal and tax paying citizens of this country, or in fact, this country, is a complete idiot.

    You give me voter ID and I will give you mandatory voting.

    You have all kinds of aruments that will be made for or against both "laws". They are spurious and a waste of time, smoke screens to hide the fact that if a mandatory voting law ever got off the ground (I don't think it will) all those arguments will serve as smoke screens for no other reason then to keep little minds busy, and ignorant of the reasons behind it. It would be a pure and simple ploy to swell the democratic/liberal base. And who would police it? Hell, we can't even get a grip on SS, Welfare and tax fraud.
    So having less people participate in elections benefits your political agenda? I don't know if I support mandatory voting, but I know I disagree with the electoral college.
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Eulogy:
    jd50ae:
    Eulogy:
    Bob Luken:
    webmost:
    Everything right on except the beef about the electoral college. Without that, any special concerns of sparsely populated places det overwhelmed by overpopulated places. In effect, farmers and ranchers would be even more disenfranchised. Eliminating the EC is arranging deck chairs on Titanic.

    The rest is sadly true. Nothing to vote for but mud slinging and broken promises. Meanwhile, the real work gets done by lobbyists buying graft hungry congressmen. Government is a scheme by which the rich and powerful enhance their pilth and power.

    Those well intentioned statists here who always favor more and more and more government spending and regulation and high sounding programs take note: What you create is not hope and change, but more of the same.

    Bingo this. The electoral college keeps democracy from stomping on liberty. Same reason the senate is set up as it is to balance against the congress. Don't trash (fundamentally transform?) the greatest system on the planet just because some things aren't going like you want.
    So you're arguing against having one vote count as one vote. There's large portions of voters in non-swing states that don't vote because they know their vote won't influence the election; are they not also disenfranchise?


    No one wants a voter ID law and that just floors me.

    But, obozo suggests a mandatory voting law.

    Wouldn't the same arguments that democrats and liberals use against a voter ID law, apply, even more so, ito a mandatory voting law?

    If any one thinks for a second that this is an altruistic idea that is to, in any way shape or form, benefit the lawful and legal and tax paying citizens of this country, or in fact, this country, is a complete idiot.

    You give me voter ID and I will give you mandatory voting.

    You have all kinds of aruments that will be made for or against both "laws". They are spurious and a waste of time, smoke screens to hide the fact that if a mandatory voting law ever got off the ground (I don't think it will) all those arguments will serve as smoke screens for no other reason then to keep little minds busy, and ignorant of the reasons behind it. It would be a pure and simple ploy to swell the democratic/liberal base. And who would police it? Hell, we can't even get a grip on SS, Welfare and tax fraud.
    So having less people participate in elections benefits your political agenda? I don't know if I support mandatory voting, but I know I disagree with the electoral college.


    POLITICAL AGENDA......????? What agenda....?????? I have neither the money or the power of position to have a POLITICAL AGENDA. MY posts deal with deceit, corruption, lies and theft. You seem to not care about the crock we are being fed or the billions that is being stolen. Judas Priest, I wish I was rich and powerful and in a position of power to do something about the human flotsam that are making decisions that affect us all.
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    FBI figures tweaked to show phony increase in mass shootings, report says
    Perry Chiaramonte


    By Perry Chiaramonte Published March 25, 2015 FoxNews.com

    Dec. 14, 2012: In this file photo provided by the Newtown Bee, a police officer leads two women and a child from Sandy Hook Elementary School. (AP/Newtown Bee)

    Crime stats published by the FBI and relied upon by the media distort the gun violence and leave the public with the impression "mass shooting" incidents are a much bigger threat than they really are, according to a criminologist and Second Amendment scholar.

    The bureau's annual reports tabulating and classifying a wide range of crime throughout the nation have been historically free of politics, but John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said the latest statistics contain numbers that are misleading at best and deliberately fudged at worst. Lott believes the numbers may have been presented to overstate for political purposes the true risk of being a victim of random gun crimes.

    "The FBI put out a clearly incorrect set of numbers on public shootings shortly before the November election last year,” said Lott, a frequent opinion writer for FoxNews.com and author of "More Guns, Less Crime." “I have been reading FBI reports for 30 years and I have never seen anything like this.It is one thing for the Bureau of Justice Statistics or the National Institute of Justice to put out politically biased studies, but there has always been a Chinese wall separating the FBI raw data collection from political pressures.”
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Cornell Dean Says ISIS Welcome on Campus in Undercover O'Keefe Project Veritas Video

    By Carl Campanile, New York Post

    This guy is either the dumbest Ivy League bigwig ever or politically correct to a fault — for welcoming offers to bring ISIS and Hamas to Cornell University.

    A video sting operation shows Cornell’s assistant dean for students, Joseph Scaffido, agreeing to everything suggested by an undercover muckraker posing as a Moroccan student. Scaffido casually endorses inviting an ISIS “freedom fighter’’ to conduct a “training camp” for students at the upstate Ithaca campus — bizarrely likening the activity to a sports camp. Is it OK to bring a humanitarian pro-“Islamic State Iraq and Syria” group on campus, the undercover for conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas asks.

    Sure, Scaffido says in the recorded March 16 meeting.

    Scaffido doesn’t even blink an eye when the undercover asks about providing material support for terrorists — “care packages, whether it be food, water, electronics.”
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Yes, Those Are Kids Climbing on a Vietnam Memorial

    FOX NEWS INSIDER - The Vietnam Women's Memorial, dedicated to the women of the U.S. who served in the Vietnam War, is one of many sites on the National Mall that honors those who have sacrificed for our country.

    Matthew Munson was visiting the powerful memorial when he saw parents encourage their young children to climb on the monument for a photo op.
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    ....whod a thunk.

    The End of the White House's Bowe Bergdahl Myth: Everything They Told You Was Wrong (Read Lie)

    His release was supposed to be the political masterstroke (obozo ?) in the last days of the war. But the war is still going, and Bergdahl is going to court.

    By Nancy A. Youssef, The Daily Beast

    In the space of nine months, he went from being heralded at the White House to facing prison for life.

    On Wednesday, the U.S. military charged Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the former Taliban captive who was freed in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees, with desertion and misbehaving before the enemy.

    His capture, release and now charge became a parable of how narratives about the war in Afghanistan did not pan out. The soldier whose service Susan Rice, U.S. national security advisor, once characterized as “honorable” and whose release came at the price for five prisoners could now himself end up in an American himself prison for life. The prison exchange that some political operatives thought would be heralded was instead widely condemned. And the war that was supposed to be ending with no solider left behind has now been extended for five months.

    Bergdahl’s case will now go before an Article 32 hearing, the equivalent of a grand jury in civilian court, to determine how the case should proceed. While many soldiers in the U.S. military’s history have served long sentences for such crimes, many are highly dubious he will serve a life sentence. There is a sense that there is no interest in handing out a long sentence to a soldier who may not have past muster had the nation not been so desperate for troops when he joined in 2007—the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    That said, there are many in the military who remain tremendously angry at Bergdahl. They believe he was a deserter and that the five-year search for him endangered other troops.

    Army Col. Daniel King announced at a nationally televised press conference out of Fort Bragg, N.C. that Bergdahl was charged with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy—“endangering the safety of a command, unit, or place.” The former carries a maximum five year penalty, the reduction of rank down to private, the forfeiture of all military compensation, and a dishonorable discharge. The latter could result in the same punishment—plus a life in prison sentence.

    Bergdahl, who turns 29 years-old Saturday, disappeared June 2009 from Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan while serving as a private from the 25th Infantry Division. The U.S. military devoted an enormous amount of resources in the search for him, particularly after videos appeared showing in in custody. In addition, his family and their hometown of Hailey, Idaho fought to keep attention on Bergdahl’s case. In May 2014, Bergdahl was released in exchange for five Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay who were subsequently transferred to Qatari custody for a year.

    President Obama made the announcement of Bergdahl’s release in a Rose Garden ceremony flanked by Bergdahl’s parents, even as the circumstances of his disappearance were shrouded in uncertainty and charges that he abandoned his post and troops. Politically, the administration celebrated negotiating his release after years of failed bids by both the current and former administration, at least one attempted escape by Bergdahl and countless patrols searching for him. Photos released by the White House showed the president walking arm-in-arm with Bergdahl’s parents. Many called the timing key as many hoped the U.S. was winding down its war in Afghanistan.

    But the political benefits and the timing of the war both proved incorrect. The president faced immediate backlash for heralding a soldier suspected of abandoning his post. That was only further fueled when, in a June 2014 interview with CNN, Rice said Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.”

    Rice’s comments could work in Bergdahl’s favor, should the convening authority looking at his case recommend a court martial, military officials conceded. It could counter the suggestion that he “is guilty of cowardly conduct,” a clause in the misbehavior before the enemy charge.
  • jlmartajlmarta Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,440
    Guilty as charged!! Guilty as hell..... ??
  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    Well, the good thing is, we got rid of ten captive terrorists at Gitmo ... five to persuade Al Q to talk, and five more to swap for him.

    Yeah, like that'll never come back to haunt us.

  • jlmartajlmarta Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,440
    Maybe those ten should have had those copper implants installed. You know the ones? They allow the recipient to talk directly and immediately to allah when installed in the center of their forehead. Hardly any pain or bleeding due to the installation. They won't corrode and they come in sizes from .223 to 50 cal. Very effective, too...... ??
  • jd50aejd50ae Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 4,109
    Died looking for the deserter.

    Staff Sergeant Clayton Brown
    Private First Class Morris Walker
    Staff Sergeant Kut Curtiss
    2nd Lieutenant Darryn Andrews
    Staff Sergeant Michael Murphy

    Seriously wounded

    Private 1st class Matthew Martinet

    image
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