Showing posts with label muslim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muslim. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Trump's Horrific Response to #LondonBridge Attack

 photo london-clipart-3.jpg

London suffered a serious terrorist attack the other day with multiple lives lost as pedestrians were rammed with vans and stabbed with knives:

















Londoners rallied and started helping each other, as they always do, as sympathy poured in from the world.

On the other hand, our erstwhile 'leader' Donald The Trump spent the next 24 hours tweeting about fear of Muslims, pushing his Muslim Ban in the United States, and criticizing the Mayor of London - also a Muslim. He seemed to have no clue that emergencies call for a calm and cool response, not fear-mongering and political shenanigans. But then again, when has Trump ever been "Presidential" in any situation?
























Jennifer Rubin writes in The Washington Post:

...The Brits fought back, launching drinking glasses and chairs at the savages who attacked them. The police acted with lightning-fast precision, killing the three assailants within eight minutes of the emergency call. And, God Bless him, a man returned to the bar where he experienced Saturday’s horror — to pay his bill and tip. Civilization is not going to be driven out of Britain by three or three hundred killers.
Meanwhile — and it pains me to write this — our president acted like a clod, a heartless and dull-witted thug in sending out a series of tweets....
. . . One is prompted to ask if he is off his rocker. But this is vintage Trump — impulsive and cruel, without an ounce of class or human decency. His behavior no longer surprises us, but it should offend and disturb us, first, that he remains the face and voice of America in the world and, second, that his fans hoot and holler, seeing this as inconsequential or acceptable conduct.

Keith Olbermann stated in his GQ "The Resistance" Video:

Let me apologize again to the world, particularly to the United Kingdom, on behalf of the United States of America. Donald Trump is not of sound mind. We are working to correct the problem as soon as possible. . . . In almost any other job in this country, assuredly in any other private sector job, no matter the financial cost, no matter the upheaval, no matter the blow-back, Donald Trump, our national embarrassment, our international disgrace, would have been fired by now.... everywhere from the Board Room at Microsoft to the deep fryer at McDonald's.







































Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Trump Keeps Attacking Gold Star Family

 photo 3398eca6-c402-40e8-999c-42045f9e7f67.jpg

Donald Trump thinks he has made more sacrifices than a Muslim soldier who gave his life for this country. And he doesn't mind attacking the man's Gold Star Family to gain support among his racist voters.

And this has been going on now for a week.



From USA Today
Khan spoke on the final night of the Democratic convention, giving a moving tribute to his son before bashing Trump.
"If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have even been in America," Khan said. "He vows to build walls and ban us from this country. Donald Trump, you're asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution?"
Khan held up a pocket Constitution and offered to lend it to Trump.
"You have have sacrificed nothing, and no one," he finished.
...In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump fought back against the idea that he hadn’t made any sacrifices.
"Who wrote that? Did Hillary's script writers write it?" Trump said. Khan declined the use of a speechwriter, according to Politico
"I think I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard,” Trump said.
Trump also went after Ghazala Khan, who stood beside her husband during his speech but did not speak. Trump implied that she may not have been allowed to speak because of her religion.
























Tonight Trump's spokeswoman went on CNN and blamed Obama for the soldier's death in 2004. The only problem is that Obama wasn't President in 2004 - he didn't get elected until 2008! Idiot!









Thursday, December 10, 2015

Trump Jumps the Shark with Facist Ideas

 photo ec3939eb-5694-4fae-b2d7-76bd09aa6d4c.png


Trump has gone full-Facist now, calling for the ban of "All Muslims" in the United States based on their religion. I. just. can't. even.


































Dan Rather: "Trump and Cruz are confusing the Bully Pulpit with the BS Pulpit"

GOP: "Doesn't know whether to howl at the moon or check their emails" - Rather
















Friday, September 18, 2015

Irving Texas Arrests Muslim Kid Too Smart for Irving Texas

 photo bomb-batman.gif

14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed has a bright future as a scientist of tomorrow. But until yesterday his high school in Irving, Texas, merely thought of him as "That Muslim Kid" or "Who?"

Now they won't ever forget his name. And they'll never live down what they did to him.



See, this smart kid made a clock and took it to school. Some hysterical and stupid teacher thought it was a BOMB. However, no bomb squad was ever called, and the school wasn't evacuated. But the principal and police still interrogated this boy without his parents beside him for two hours. Over a clock that wasn't a bomb.

By the middle of the day, the obviously frightened child in a NASA t-shirt was handcuffed, arrested, and taken to jail. For being smart. And Muslim. And unfortunately for Irving, Texas, what they did there infuriated most of the known world as the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed trended for 24 hours. Now he has been invited to the White House, NASA, MIT, Harvard, Twitter, Facebook - you name it! Ahmed's story has a totally happy ending. Irving, Texas, not so much.







From the New York Times
HOUSTON — Ahmed Mohamed’s homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb. By Wednesday, it had brought him an invitation to the White House, support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg, and a moment of head-spinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion.
. . . The thing in question was the product of Ahmed’s love of invention. He made the clock out of a metal briefcase-style box, a digital display, wires and a circuit board. It was bigger and bulkier than a typical bedside clock, with cords, screws and electrical components.

He said he took it to school on Monday to show an engineering teacher, who said it was nice but then told him he should not show the invention to other teachers. Later, Ahmed’s clock beeped during an English class, and after he revealed the device to the teacher, school officials notified the police, and Ahmed was interrogated by officers.
“She thought it was a threat to her,” Ahmed told reporters Wednesday. “So it was really sad that she took a wrong impression of it.”


















Saturday, January 24, 2015

Fox News Frenzy Over Imaginary "No-Go-Zones" in Europe

 photo french_parody_fox_news_sg_img_0.png


Previous Related Post:
Je Suis Charlie ~ Paris Attack on Charlie Hebdo

After the attacks in Paris by Islamic terrorists, Fox News in the U.S. decided to "Euro-splain" that many countries, specifically France and England, have segregated "no-go zones" for Muslims where regular people dare not go. Yes, they made that up out of thin air, and have had to retract all the outlandish statements by their pundits by apologizing on-air multiple times.



From The Nation
(Fox News Pundit Jean) Pirro was one of the apologizers, which she did almost with a smirk. She previously had “terrorism expert” Steve Emerson on her show, where he claimed that Birmingham, England, was a city-sized no-go zone and was “totally Muslim.” (In fact, the population is closer to 22 percent Muslim.) British Prime Minister David Cameron called Emerson “a complete idiot,” and Fox soon released a statement saying he was unlikely to appear on air again. (Emerson apologized, profusely, on his website.)
Maybe even more embarrassing was journalist Nolan Peterson telling Fox & Friends’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck that there are “741 no-go zones throughout France.” He said his own past trips to Paris were “pretty scary. I’ve been to Afghanistan and Iraq and Kashmir, India, and at times, it felt like that, those places in these no-go zones.”
Turns out, as Snopes found, the “no-go zones” are an international urban myth based on a bad translation for “zones urbaines sensibles” (ZUS) or “sensitive urban zones,” areas that “are not exempted from policing or French law, and are simply targeted for renewal initiatives.”





From MSNBC:
It’s not every day that a foreign leader feels the need to publicly criticize an American pundit, but under the circumstances, British Prime Minister David Cameron was on firm ground yesterday.
. . . Specifically, the British prime minister said, “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fool’s Day,” adding, “[T]his guy is clearly a complete idiot.”
In a separate interview, Gisela Stuart, who represents Birmingham in the House of Commons, added, “I checked whether this was some kind of early April Fool spoof, and then I thought he was talking about Birmingham, Alabama. But then I realized he was just utterly and completely wrong.”

From Politico
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is planning to sue Fox News for its inaccurate reports on Muslim "no go zones," she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
"When we're insulted, and when we've had an image, then I think we'll have to sue, I think we'll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed," Hidalgo told Amanpour in an interview. "The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced."
When asked to clarify which network she planned "to take to court and sue," Hidalgo replied: “Fox News, that’s the name.”




Hilarious Spoof of Fox's "Fear Everything" Approach
by Le Petit Journal


 photo tumblr_niah6vj9u81rusvrqo1_540.gif

 photo tumblr_niah6vj9u81rusvrqo5_540.gif

Gifs Via Blinking_Red_Light on Tumblr



Jon Stewart on the Daily Show called the retractions by Fox the "rare foxus contritus of legend" for the "Zone Rangers."

"How bad does bullshit have to smell before the odor is detected by people who live on a mountain made of that substance?"



Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took the "no-go zone" talking point and ran with it, doubling down when asked to clarify, like the dumbass that he is.

From Talking Points Memo
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Wednesday stood behind his declaration that European cities have Muslim "no-go zones" and went on to say that if the U.S. wasn't careful, it would be seeing its own "no-go zones" soon.
. . . "If people don't want to come here to integrate and assimilate, what they're really trying to do is set up their own culture, their own communities," Jindal said. "What they're really trying to do is overturn our culture. We need to recognize that threat."
"If we don't, we're gonna see a replica of what's happening in Europe in America," Jindal continued. "We're gonna see our own no-go zones if we're not serious about insisting on assimilation and integration."






Sunday, June 29, 2014

Feverish Fox Fear Porn About ISIS

 photo df5deefb-9746-4bfa-ab88-c78b81c46d2b.png

Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News went ballistic over the Middle East last week:

I've told you that you need to be afraid because they are coming for you (points at camera). The ISIS assault, the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria signals the beginning of the "Reverse Crusade." They ARE coming for us. To them, WE are the Infidels. But I for one am not willing to let one more American die or come home with fewer limbs from that part of the world. Americans have shed enough blood there.

My resolution? Air strikes. Bomb them! Bomb them! Keep Bombing them again and again, and I don't care how long it takes. Just take out ISIS. Take out their convoys. Take out those troops!

And even though our President says he "didn't know" - The TOLD us they were coming for us! The head of this band of savages, Abu al-Bagdadi, was released by the Obama Administration and started ISIS one year later in 2010.

. . . ISIS is a fanatical religious terrorist organization. And if you think they are nothing more than rag-tag rebels, you are WRONG!!! They are a sophisticated band of militants who add to their ranks by emptying out jails...

. . . Now, Mr. President, you may see yourself as a war hero. The truth? There has been a 60 percent increase in radical Islamist terrorism since you’ve been in office. And you keep letting these guys out! Like the Bergdahl trade and the five terrorists, you didn’t have the balls to try in GITMO or federal court. You were simply clueless. A paper tiger who only knows how to cut and run!




Bob Cesca on The Daily Banter described Pirro's rant quite well:
Pirro’s five-minute tirade had everything: finger-wagging, fear-mongering, misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, the phrase “cut and run” and, naturally, ball-shaming. It’s a cocktail of Obama Derangement Syndrome delivered with laser-like precision directly into the outrage cortexes of typical Fox News viewers, likely inducing octogenarian white-guy erections with tensile strengths not experienced since Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley and Hume Cronyn splashed around in that magical pool in Cocoon.

GrafZeppelin127 on Daily Kos explained it as "The Truman Show In Reverse" - referring to the Jim Carrey movie about a man whose whole life has been filmed for reality TV
What we are watching on that YouTube video embedded above, what Bob Cesca describes today on his blog, is an IMPROV ACT. It is nothing more or less than a scene in an elaborate, ongoing, endless, perpetual, well-funded, well-orchestrated, non-stop 24/7 production of improvisational theatre, in which the performers get to make up the story as they go along and perform it for the audience. The person called "Jeanine Pirro" that we see and hear on the TV screen, is an actress, a character in a play. This is not a real person saying real things. She's an actress in character doing a performance piece.
. . . The difference between "The Truman Show" as portrayed in the movie and what we see on "Fox News" every day (such as the ugly fact-challenged rant by this character named "Jeanine Pirro" in the video above) is that Truman himself is not on the show. The audience does not tune in to watch Truman and see what happens; the audience is Truman. They don't know that they're watching improv. Just as Truman can't tell the difference between actors/characters and real people, Fox's audience in large part can't tell the difference between an improv act called "News," and news.

One strong response to this fire-breathing fear-mongering came from Russell Brand, a British comedian who took Pirro and Fox News to the woodshed over this tirade with a video entitled "Is Fox News More Dangerous Than Isis?". Towards the end, as he watches Pirro heap abuse on President Obama, even referring to his "b*alls," Brand says she reminds him of a dominatrix yelling at a masochist victim in a porn movie. Gives new meaning to the phrase "fear porn" to describe the nonsense Fox spews into the atmosphere day after day just to frighten their paranoid conspiracy-crazed viewers.

 photo RussellBrand.png

She called them "Infidels"...Don't try to counter religious extremism with religious extremism!
. . . Imagine living with this woman. 'Get in there and cook my dinner! Cook it and cook it again! I don't care how long it takes!' . . . 'I will punch you and punch you again!'
. . . And don't call your fellow human beings savages.... Give aid for the refugees in the region. Try and help them and stabilize their region, and try to build infrastructure. Not the bombing, bombing, bombing system. 
~ Russell Brand

From Huffington Post
Brand fired back. "(Fox News is) ... a fanatical terrorist propagandist organization. This isn't reasonable, is it? Like the way she's talking? 'Bomb them! Bomb them!' She's worse ... She's the savage, she's totally espousing savage values."
"It's invective, just incendiary language, just volatile combative, angry language. That - I'm not being sensational - that is more dangerous than ISIS," he added. "That's attitude. That's far-reaching. That's affecting millions and millions of people."



Pundits at Fox pushed back and took Pirro's side:

From Washington Post
This is how Eric Bolling, co-host of the marvelous roundtable program “The Five,” played Brand’s rant: “First up, actor, musician and political provocateur Russell Brand has issues with Fox News and our own Judge Jeanine Pirro. Brand goes bananas in a ten-minute rambling and at times incoherent rant, comparing Fox News to the radical terror group ISIS.”
. . . During the discussion on “Hannity,” for example, Fox News’s own Geraldo Rivera said this: “But furthermore, where are the beheaded bodies here at Fox News? That kind of hyperbole only undermines any argument he has.”
When you’re disavowing studio decapitations, you’ve lost the PR war.




Friday, June 6, 2014

#Berghazi - Flip-Flopping Wingnuts Continue to Trash Bergdahl

 photo Corbis-42-15472022.jpg

The Bowe Bergdahl story is fast become the new #Benghazi - call it #Berghazi if you will - another case of too much angry hooplah and not enough facts. As the wingnuts cry for firing squads and impeachments, they are also ironically scrubbing their social media to erase the fact that just a while back they were praying to Jesus and beseeching Obama for his release. This is another case in which Obama can't win - if he had left the guy to rot with the Taliban, the GOP would be screaming about "weak, do-nothing, anti-military, heartless Obama." Since he got Bergdahl released, he is "making deals with terrorists" and "saving a traitor."

But the bottom line is that our Armed Forces don't leave anyone behind. That is not going to change. President Obama said he isn't going to apologize to the critics, and he shouldn't. And why would the GOP or anyone else want a military that didn't rescue their own soldiers? Who would volunteer for such an army?

Previous Related Posts:
Bergdahl Swap Causes GOP Brain Meltdown

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Liberal radio host/producer Matt Binder of Majority Report went on a mission last week to dig up as much Right Wing hypocrisy and flip-flopping as he could find. And boy howdy, he hit the jackpot! He re-tweeted some of the schizo timelines, which read like verbal whiplash. I love the first example from Charlie Daniels!














Next: Let's take a short break from the crazy stuff and move to someone trying to be the voice of reason on Fox News. Thank you, Sheppard Smith! And why are you still wasting your life on Fox?

If you desert or commit treason, you have to be proved to have done so. We can't just decide because some people come on television and yakety yak, and we've got a report of this and a report of that and that's what happened. As the Army said, as the Pentagon said, you bring them home. You bring them home first, and then you investigate.
~ Sheppard Smith, Fox News



Now, back to the crazy: Fox's Geraldo Rivera agrees with Shep Smith, but their colleague Kimberly Guilfoyle had a better idea - Bergdahl should have been shot by the men who were looking for him. No muss, no fuss. I thought she was a lawyer? What about Due Process?

Geraldo: . . . One of the things (the soldiers) take great security in is a absolute maxim that if anything happens to them, they’re going to be brought home, that we will not leave them behind. I don’t care who Bergdahl is, we don’t leave him behind. If you violate or waver from that hard principal, then the military forces will be stripped of what is absolutely the thing that makes them most secure. They know their colleagues won't leve them behind.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: Yeah, but it seems to me he’s pretty lucky that he was brought home the way he was. Because if those special forces had found him and encountered him — and they were looking for him — he would have come home either in a body bag or come home and gone straight to jail. But now what we see is his family at the White House, he's being celebrated as a hero, we have Susan Rice saying he served with honor and distinction. They have to walk that back because obviously, Geraldo, the evidence is quite alarming and striking to the contrary.

Geraldo: I don't care! I don't care! Makes no difference to me.



~~~~~~~

Morning Joe Scarborough went on a tirade against Bowe Bergdahl's father that even shocked the right-leaning Chuck Todd. And crazy Joe is in epic form, touting himself as the perfect father. Wanna bet?

Scarborough: I keep holding up this image where Barack Obama has his arm around a man who is reaching out to pro-Taliban forces, talking about killing Americans.

Todd: Joe, Joe, don’t criticize the parents. Don’t criticize the parents in here, that are missing a child? Their son is missing for five years. You know what? It is not logical. You cannot handle it. You put yourself in his shoes –”

Scarborough: I have a 26-year-old son, and if my son is out on the wire and he is out there with fellow troops and he is writes me up and says he hates America and he’s thinking about deserting and he’s thinking about leaving his post, I can tell you as a father of that 26-year-old or 23-year-old son, I’d say, ‘Joey, you stay the hell right there,’ I would call his commander, I would say ‘Get my son. He is not well. Get him to a military base in Germany.’ I would not say ‘Follow your conscience, son.’ I would not reach out to the voice of jihad.

Todd: I’m not backseat driving how someone parents.

Scarborough: That is not backseat driving. I am a father. Any good father would not tell their son to follow their conscience and leave men and women on the line.

Todd: So he’s a bad father?

Scarborough: Yes!Yes, he is! Oh my god, Chuck.

















~~~~~~~

Lindsey Graham wants to IMPEACH!!!! Because Obama is Black, or Something.

From the Washington Examiner
I don't mind opening a new jail up – I just don't want to empty this one,” he told the Washington Examiner on his way to a closed-door administration briefing on the Bergdahl matter. “It seems to me that they don't have a desire to continue to hold these guys under the law of war. I'm all for moving the jail to another location as long as you don't let everybody go."
. . . "It's going to be impossible for them to flow prisoners out of Gitmo now without a huge backlash," he said. "There will be people on our side calling for his impeachment if he did that."
Graham didn't use the word impeachment during his brief interview with the Washington Examiner. Instead he seemed content to throw up road blocks to any new detainee transfers and wait out the Obama presidency.
“You can keep clamping down restrictions and wait until he leaves,” Graham said when asked what he could do to stop the president from releasing more prisoners.











~~~~~~~

Soldier Elliot Ackerman explains why there is so much anti-Bergdahl sentiment from other soldiers: He was a "Jonah" - a bad-luck charm, and a scapegoat for every death. In other words, the soldiers projected all their frustration about the war onto him. The "idol of discontent."

Elliot Ackerman via New Republic, writing about his own experience in Afghanistan
At night my colleagues and I would climb on our bunkered roof, a tumbler of scotch or a cigar in hand, and watch the drone strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in South Waziristan. During those days, Bergdahl’s case loomed ever-present. The irony that an iconic figure in a war that had largely been deserted by the American people was probably a deserter himself was never lost on us. It seemed just our luck.

Among sailors, a crew member who brings bad luck is known as a Jonah. It’s a long-held superstition, deriving from the Book of Jonah. Then the sailors said to each other, ‘Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.’ They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. And like the hapless crew that sailed Jonah to Tarshish, we found ourselves in a storm fighting in Afghanistan. With Bergdahl’s disappearance always in the background, imaginations ran wild. Why did the Taliban in Paktika execute attacks with such unusual precision and lethality? Some hypothesized that Bergdahl had informed them of our tactics. Why did Afghan civilians refuse civil aid that they so obviously needed? Others believed rumors that Bergdahl had participated in a propaganda campaign against us. None of this could be substantiated, but over there Bergdahl became the idol of discontent for so many. He was the Jonah.

Other soldiers have not been as circumspect or self-aware:

Former Army Sgt. Josh Korder to CNN's Jake Tapper
He is at best a deserter, and at worst a traitor. Any of us would have died for him while he was with us, and then for him to just leave us like that, it was a very big betrayal.
. . . As soon as he is able and as soon as he is fit, I do believe that he needs to be questioned, and basically tried if necessary.
. . . I don't think that I could have continued to go on without being able to share with you and ... the people the true things that happened in this situation. Because if you guys aren't made aware of it, it will just go on, and he'll be a hero, and nobody will be able to know the truth.

The only problem is, there are questions about Korder's own service. Is he a reliable source, or just an attention-seeker with a chip on his shoulder?

Josh Korder, a former Army sergeant from Minnesota who served with Bowe Bergdahl, signed a non-disclosure agreement, and admits he may be in violation of that by speaking out. He also left the service with an “other than honorable” discharge.
~ Via Freakout Nation

What does "Less Than Honorable" mean?

From About.com
Examples of factors that may be considered include the use of force or violence to produce serious bodily injury or death, abuse of a special position of trust, disregard by a superior of customary superior-subordinate relationships, acts or omissions that endanger the security of the United States or the health and welfare of other members of the Military Services, and deliberate acts or omissions that seriously endanger the health and safety of other persons.
. . . (1) Desertion; (2) escape prior to trial by general court-martial; (3) conscientious objector who refuses to perform military duties, wear the uniform, or comply with lawful orders of competent military authorities; (4) willful or persistent misconduct; (5) offense(s) involving moral turpitude; (6) mutiny or spying; or (7) homosexual acts involving aggravating circumstances.

And it turns out, he is less than honorable in civilian life too, since he has started the "Josh Korder Fund" to raise money to pay his back child-support. Wow - Is anyone surprised?






Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Bergdahl Swap Causes GOP Brain Meltdown - Updated with More Hate

head explode photo:  imagesqtbnANd9GcSvhCkal5JFEwmNQLTUW.jpg

Because the GOP hates the President so much, they will seize on anything to try and sully his actions, even if they once agreed with him. And right now their heads are exploding because soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban for five years, was traded for some Gitmo prisoners. Even though the deal was in the works for years and many Senators, such as John McCain, knew about it, they are now expressing outrage that Obama dared to do something as Commander in Chief during time of war. How dare he? Uppity! No President has EVER done that before! Except George Washington. And Nixon. And Reagan. Oops . . .

And to make things worse, soldiers who served with Bergdahl have come out accusing him of cowardice and desertion, as if that changes the fact that he was held as a prisoner of war until his health began to fail. The soldiers in his unit, who obviously did not like him anyway, are saying they resent that lives were lost while searching for him in the desert, and accused him of doing horrible things such as sympathizing with the plight of the Afghanis. Not very patriotic since if they had been captured first Bergdahl would have had to risk his life searching for them, since that's what soldiers do. But all of that has fed into the GOP frenzy to slam the prisoner swap as "President Trades Terrorists for a Deserter."

The GOP have even attacked Bowe Bergdahl's father for having a beard and saying "Allah" in front of the President. And Obama smiled at him, therefore MUSLIN!!! Beards and the entire Muslim religion are somehow anti-American now, except for Duck Dynasty, of course, who are true Patriots for hating The Gay. How about some respect for the family of a young man who served his country but may have been conflicted by war, like thousands of other young soldiers throughout history?

The whole mess is about Obama Derangement Syndrome and Self-Righteous Vigilante Justice. For the past few days the GOP has been going around like General Patton when he slapped a man for having post-traumatic stress disorder, and for which he was demoted during WWII. What he did to that poor man wasn't right, and Americans instinctively know this, unless you have the instincts of the GOP, which aren't very sharp. Therefore, Twitter is awash with calls for firing squads and executions from the same people who were whining about cow-abuse at Bundy Ranch a few weeks ago. It's astonishing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BBC: Video of Bergdahl Release:



This is what happens at the end of wars. Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity. We don’t condition that.
~ President Obama speaking in Warsaw on the prisoner trade and release of Bowe Bergdahl, via Time

Our first priority is assuring his well-being and his health and getting him reunited with his family. Other circumstances that may develop and questions, those will be dealt with later.
~ Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel





"We really don't know why he left the base and under what circumstances," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Monday. Details of that will come out, he said, adding that the Army has never classified Bergdahl as a deserter and has scheduled the soldier for a promotion next month. But the details around a soldier being taken captive "don't matter," he said, when it comes to the military's response.
~ CNN

He walked off. He left his guard post. Nobody knows if he defected or he's a traitor or he was kidnapped. What I do know is, he was there to protect us, and instead he decided to defer from America and go and do his own thing. I don't know why he decided to do that, but we spent so much of our resources, and some of those resources were soldiers' lives.
~ Former Pfc. Jose Baggett, 27, a member of Bergdahl's company

It’s true that Bergdahl was never officially categorized as a “prisoner of war,” since the Pentagon apparently stopped using that designation years ago. But he was defined as “missing/captured,” which is essentially the same thing. And while the Taliban fighters who were released were likewise not formally designated prisoners of war, either, because of the odd, formally undeclared status of the war with Afghanistan, that’s what they were.
. . . It’s shocking to see conservatives argue that the Taliban should have the final word on an American soldier’s fate, even if he’s accused of desertion.
~ Joan Walsh on Salon

We Lost Soldiers in the Hunt for Bergdahl, a Guy Who Walked Off in the Dead of Night
For the veterans of the units that lost these men, Bergdahl’s capture and the subsequent hunt for him will forever tie to their memories, and to a time in their lives that will define them as people. He has finally returned. Those men will never have the opportunity.
~ Soldier Nathan Bradley Bethea on Daily Beast

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bergdahl Responsible for How Many Deaths?
Is This Turning Into "Berghdazi"?














~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let's Attack Bergdahl's Family

















~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The GOP Deranged Clown Circus

How many soldiers lost their lives to capture those five Taliban terrorists that we just released? Ambassador [Susan] Rice basically said to you, yes, U.S. policy has changed. Now we make deals with terrorists. And the question going forward is, have we just put a price on other U.S. soldiers? What does this tell terrorists, that if you capture a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists we’ve gone after?
~ Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas

I don’t think he [Obama] should have made that deal. He may well pay a price.
. . . I know everyone’s happy to see him back and all that. The fact is, Susan Rice said on TV yesterday he was taken on the battlefield and that he served the United States with honor and distinction. There’s a lot of reporting that he wasn’t taken in battle, he seems to have deserted or at least gone AWOL, he may have cooperated with the enemy after they captured him, soldiers died trying to find him.
~ Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard on Morning Joe, via Politico














~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Grand Hypocrites of All Time

No, Mr. President, a soldier expressing horrid anti-American beliefs – even boldly putting them in writing and unabashedly firing off his messages while in uniform, just three days before he left his unit on foot – is not "honorable service." Unless that is your standard.
. . . You blew it again, Barack Obama, by negotiating away any leverage against the bad guys as these bad guys – Osama Bin Laden's partners in evil crime – joyfully celebrate their "win" in the deal you sealed.
~ Sarah Palin, ex-politician, on Facebook







I am eager to learn what precise steps are being taken to ensure that these vicious and violent Taliban extremists never return to the fight against the United States and our partners or engage in any activities that can threaten the prospects for peace and security in Afghanistan.
~ Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, who is also an Ex-Prisoner-of-War exchanged in a deal under President Nixon










I strongly believe that we should have been consulted, that the law should have been followed. And I very much regret that that was not the case.
~ Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California