5 high level Taliban commanders for 1 low level deserter?

D-Day is today. 70 years ago. It's time to end WWII.

1 Allow the families of Holocaust victims to return home to Germany and Russia and give back money and land stolen by Stalin and Hitler.

2 Pull out Holocaust victims from Israel/Palestine and give the land back to the Palestinians.

3 Remove US troops from the Middle East.

4 Ban CIA spies, operatives, and covert operations from the Middle East

5 Open businesses in the Middle East. Microsoft, Apple, Ford, GM, Wal Mart need more customers.

The dude was being raped several times a day for 5 years. So was Pearl before he was executed for spying. CIA agent Weinstein is being raped every day too. It' so paining to hear of 570 Vietnam pilots being raped and tortured by North Vietnam. Obama had to get Bergdahl out as soon as the deal looked fine. Obama figured that since the war in Afghanistan is coming to a close soon, that he may as well let Afghan POWs return home. It's not a perfect deal, sure. But the war in Afghanistan is done for.

It it was your own kid being raped by the Islamacists wouldn't you want a trade made?

Israel has traded a large number of Palestinian prisoners for the remains of one Israeli.

Do some due diligence, check your history, what we have here is not an unusual case.

All countries trade prisoners for deserters. If they just let deserters go, others would desert too.

Do any of you really think Bergdahl wanted to come back?

Bad Wigins wrote:

Do any of you really think Bergdahl wanted to come back?

Yes, I do.

Why? What kind of future has he got in the United States?

Dude is from Idaho, a land of mountains. Depending on who you believe, his original plan was either to hide in the mountains and walk to China, or to go live with the mountain-dwelling Taliban. Once the war ended, the Taliban would probably have just let him go. Now that he speaks the local language fluently he might have just blended in and stayed there.

That's a possibility no army can afford - a deserter getting away. Whether he wanted to come back or not, they couldn't leave it up to him. So they swapped for his release into their custody at the last minute.

Was going to point out how egregiously wrong Sally's post was until I saw that agip had already done my work.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Why? What kind of future has he got in the United States?

Dude is from Idaho, a land of mountains. Depending on who you believe, his original plan was either to hide in the mountains and walk to China, or to go live with the mountain-dwelling Taliban. Once the war ended, the Taliban would probably have just let him go. Now that he speaks the local language fluently he might have just blended in and stayed there.

That's a possibility no army can afford - a deserter getting away. Whether he wanted to come back or not, they couldn't leave it up to him. So they swapped for his release into their custody at the last minute.

Lots of ifs, maybes, and probablys in there. Let's just stick to the facts.

Alalalalalalalalala wrote:

Terrorists in the White House

http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Reagan_sitting_with_people_from_the_Afghanistan-Pakistan_region_in_February_1983.jpg

I was waiting for this. I'm sure you think you've nailed Obama critics with this. You only show your ignorance.

These were Mujahideen freedom fighters - not Taliban terrorists - whom Reagan rightly teamed with to resist Soviet expansion into Afghanistan during the Cold War. The CIA under Reagan funded and trained the Mujahideen, a much better option than putting American boots on the ground to fight the Soviets.

A brief history for your edification:

Following the exit of the Soviets in the late 80s, a civil war for control of Afghanistan ensued which basically pitted the Taliban against the Mujahideen and other less radical Islamic groups. In the mid 90s, the Taliban won and ruled the country in brutal totalitarian fashion with a strict interpretation of Sharia law. This is where we get the stories of women being beheaded for mixing with men, girls banned from getting an education, etc. They also welcomed a certain radical Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden, who during the late 90s used the nation as a base for developing Al Qaeda, training terrorists and for planning 9/11. In 2001 after 9/11, we went into Afghanistan to drive the Taliban out.

Now you know. Inform yourself and perhaps next time you won't make a fool of yourself in a lame attempt at 'Gotcha'.

agip wrote:Obama has presided over a time of increased prosperity, increased peace, decreased deficits (excluding year one which goes to Bush), and shrinking gov’t size around the country. There is almost no inflation, rock bottom crime rates…where exactly is the parallel?

This is wrong on almost every level that, not having read much else in the thread, I'm legitimately beginning to wonder if it is satire or not.

But the rest of your post was more reasonable so it leads me to believe it isn't satire.

Increased prosperity? Maybe for the 1% who have seen huge stock market gains. But the average income for us households has gone down a few thousand dollars since 2009.

Increased peace? ¾ of all the money spent on the Afghanistan war has been spent under Obama's watch. Plus he continued the Iraq war, and got us involved in Libya. Hardly increased peace.

Decreased deficits? Seriously? He has more than doubled the national deficit. I don't mean this as an insult..but are you even paying attention? If I just got on here and suddenly said that Bush oversaw a surplus would it make it true? Because that's what your attempting to do here.

Shrinking the size of government? Not hardly. There are many, many more regulations (the ACA is FULL of them). Whether or not you support the ACA and think it's good, or whether or not you support it's regulations, does not change the fact that. They ARE regulations which means that government is getting BIGGER.

I can't speak for the inflation and crime rate stats, although given how much the FEDs have been printing $$ to "help" the recovery, I doubt highly that there has been no inflation. That's not how inflation works. Printing more money does not make it more valuable.

1. Wages have increased about 3% annually in recent years.

2. The war in Iraq has ended, the war in Afghanistan is ending, and we did not get involved militarily in Libya (boots on the ground).

3. The number of government employees has decreased significantly in recent years.

4. Inflation has been negligible in recent years.

2A. The deficit has certainly decreased. Perhaps you were thinking of the debt?

Geez, anapaix, you were 0 for 5. Not good.

Average income for a family of four has fallen from about 54,900$/yr to about 50,600$/yr according to

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/09/02/obamas-accelerating-downward-spiral-for-america/

You will attack the source because you don't agree, but it doesn't make it not true. You will probably then say that you have a different definition of "wages" and it isn't "household income for a family of 4." Whatever. The bottom line is that middle class families most certainly NOT experiencing the great new found prosperity as the original post by agip claimed. That is a flat out lie.

The number of government employees is not a good measure of the government getting smaller. In fact, without a source from you I am highly inclined to believe that the number of government employees has not decreased.The size of the government has most definitely grown and there have been many new regulations, even outside of the ACA (soda bans, for example). To say that the size and influence of the government is getting smaller in this country is a flat out lie. Additionally. The original post to which I responded claimed that Obama was "shrinking government size in states throughout the country," which doesn't even make sense. The only thing he even has direct influence over is the size of the federal government, not the size of any city, state, or local governments.

Inflation has been steady over the last few years, but inflation at all isn't a good thing by the way. In fact it makes things even worse for those people mentioned above whose wages have decreased....it means their real wage and purchasing power has gone down even more than they thought.

As for the wars...Obama has spent more on the wars to date than bush did in his time. Make of that what you will. He's also killed many innocent people with drones. True justice will be brought to him and George bush only when they are put side by side in prison for war crimes. Hopefully Guantanamo.

And I stand corrected on the deficit--I was thinking of the debt.

Ok so I was 4/5.

well others have corrected you mostly, but I'll chime in.

1) increased prosperity: well, hard to measure prosperitity and it is never equally distributed, but its broadest definition is household net worth. and it has never been higher than now.

"The Federal Reserve reported today the net worth of American households – the difference between the value of total household assets and total household liabilities – rose to a new all-time record high of $80.66 trillion in Q4 last year (see chart above). Here are some additional details and highlights of today’s report:"

you can fairly say that most of that went to rich people - but as a whole, the country has never been richer. Certainly it is far richer than when Obama took office in an epochal financial crisis.

2)Peace - as others have pointed out, two wars are ending an no new ones have taken their place.

3) decreased deficits: absolutely. You have to define your terms, but deficits have been shrinking. as a percent of gdp they are quite low. It always depends if you count 2009, which was budget written under bush but executed under obama. that was a huge deficit.

"Now the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget is out with the final budget results. Surprise! The deficit fell quite a bit in 2013. The federal government took in $680 billion less revenue than it spent, or about 4.1 percent of gross domestic product. In 2012, those numbers were $1.087 trillion and 6.8 percent of GDP. That means the deficit fell a whopping 37 percent in one year."

4) shrinking the size of government: a common tea party misconception. Even rand paul doesn't understand this: ne of the least appreciated but easily-confirmed facts about the current state of the American economy is that the number of Americans employed by the government has gone down under President Obama. But apparently this is news to one the Republican Party’s most prominent tea party conservatives. During a roundtable discussion on ABC this morning over the size and adequacy of the 2009 stimulus, a flabbergasted Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) asked economist Paul Krugman if he was actually arguing that government employment had gone down under Obama:

PAUL: The thing I don’t understand is that you’re arguing that the government sector is struggling. Are you arguing that there are fewer government employees under Obama than there were under Bush?

KRUGMAN: Of course. That’s a fact. That’s a tremendous fact.

PAUL: No, the size of growth of government is enormous under President Obama.

KRUGMAN: If government employment had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Bush, we’d have a million and a half more people employed right now — directly.

The catch is that much of the de-employment has been at the state and local level. Fed employment is about the same. But certainly not growing.

5) the aca - well yes, that is a new law.

6) inflation is around 1-2% - much lower than normal.

those income numbers you cite are tricky - they usually don't include things like foodstamps and other programs that increase income for poor and lower middle class.

you have to be very careful using them.

here's a good honest account of the obama years -

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/01/obamas-numbers-january-2014-update/

including:

Wages remain stagnant, barely keeping up with inflation. Average weekly earnings of workers on payrolls, measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, have edged up a scant 0.3 percent between Obama’s first month in office and November 2013, the most recent on record. And there’s no clear upward trend. We reported a 0.1 percent increase in the real earnings figure in our July update six months ago, but that had evaporated by the time of our October update three months later, when the figure was exactly zero.

but that doesn't include transfers, I suspect. which increase income substantially for some.

and another point on income - this is not a obama/demo/repub caused problem. This is a consequence of globalism. A guy with low skills is competing against 3 billion more people than he used to. That's not going away - it will be here for a long time.

So blaming obama for wage stagnation among low skilled people...it's like blaming the UK olympic commitee for east african domination. Hey, the English used to win the 1500! Just turn a few dials and there will be new coes, ovetts and crams? no - the world has turned and isn't going back.

we can make changes, but low skilled people will never have it as well as they had it in the 1945-1980 period.

Good Wigins wrote:

Lots of ifs, maybes, and probablys in there. Let's just stick to the facts.

The main point being that armies bring back deserters, by force if necessary, to discourage desertion. Are you saying that's not a fact?