It all gets back to a catch-phrase of President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 campaign: "Whom do you trust?". Barack Obama's answer? Nobody who doesn't realize they're subordinate to him:
Between eighty and ninety administration staffers knew about the trade of five Taliban leaders for U.S. Army "Sergeant" Bowe Bergdahl even though Congress was kept in the dark, CNN reports, and members of both parties are unhappy about it.
During a classified briefing to the entire House of Representatives late Monday afternoon, White House officials said that up to ninety people had prior knowledge of the trade.
I hope the House's collective reaction to that revelation makes it onto YouTube. Not the whole classified briefing, but just that ten or so seconds of it.
Y'know, for a Regime that is so uber-Nixonianly paranoid about leaks, that's an awful lot of "administration staffers" to have in such a hush-hush loop. And yet not a word of this planned travesty peeped publicly until after it went down. It's almost like when The One really wants something, he and his minions have no problems at all pulling it off. Which speaks to this relentless "incompetence" meme that we on the Right keep hurling up in massive quantities, and which the White House appears to cultivate almost as much. Ask yourself this question: If this cadre was as rumbling, bumbling, and stumbling as the "Obama is in over his head" theory purports, could they have pulled off a caper like this, with so many working, and potentially leaking, parts?
Now sure, I know, leaks are typically why any White House wants to keep Congress out of the loop, especially on national security matters. But there's this little issue of it being part of the law per the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, which enumerates to Congress the power to "make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water". So yeah, they do have a right to be consulted about it.
And they're.....displeased that they weren't:
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon called that news "disturbing," partly because of the high number who knew and partly because the White House has been saying it didn't inform Congress until after the swap was made because it feared Bergdahl's life might be in danger if there had been a leak.
McKeon, a California Republican, told CNN he wants to get an exact number of those who knew and their names.
"My question to them was, if you don't know who knew, then how could you – if a leak had happened and the sergeant had been killed – how could you go back and find out who leaked?" McKeon said.
Good question, Mr. Chairman. To which the answer seems pretty obvious: All ninety of those minions were on the same ideological page with their ruler, and understood the...um....dire consequences to themselves of screwing up what was such a high priority to The One that he's had command level (colonels and generals) officers providing regular in-person status updates on "Sergeant" Bergdahl to his parents for the past four years. Which raises its own questions as to what has been so confoundedly important about this traitor beyond his being O's version of the Winter Soldier, upon further reflection. That's what I'd like to see Congress get to the bottom of.
"It strikes me as unfortunate that they could have eighty to ninety people in the administration aware of what was happening and not be able to trust a single Republican or Democrat in the House or the Senate," Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, a member of the House of Representatives Republican leadership, told reporters after leaving a briefing on the exchange.
And lest you think this disapprobation was merely partisan....:
Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, declined to offer a defense of the administration when offered the chance by CNN's Ashleigh Banfield.
"It didn't sit very well with those of us who were listening at the briefing," Schiff said of the news that so many administration staffers knew of the decision ahead of time....
Schiff echoed a growing number of Democrats unhappy with Obama. The National Journal's Ron Fournier says he has been receiving a number of emails from Democrats saying they don't like the way Obama is handling things. The controversial Bergdahl release is just the latest issue to set them off.
Which translates to, "We agree with what you did, but did you have to do it now, under five months out from a midterm election in which we're heading for an epic ass-kicking as it is, and in such a brazen, in-their-faces, double-extended-middle finger fashion?" To which my retort would be, "Feeling like a bunch of Dr. Frankensteins yet?"
You'll be heartened to learn that Republicans are attempting some proactive countermeasures:
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said in a Senate speech on Monday he would introduce a bill this week that would bar any federal funding for Guantanamo transfers for six months.
Congressional aides told Reuters that similar legislation is expected to be introduced as soon as this week in the Republican-led House, where opposition to closing the Guantanamo prison is far stronger than in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Which will die in the Senate, just like any other legislation the Democrats don't like. But then the primary purpose of it is to keep this issue at a high-rolling boil for the midterms, in order to get into the position to be able to force King Hussein to kill all the bills Democrats don't like instead of having Harry (G)Reid do it for him.
Somebody apparently didn't get that memo to one 'Pubbie:
Representative Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA48, said President Barack Obama is "not going to get away with this one," and described it as an "arrogant thumbing of his nose by the president of the United States at the Congress of the United States. ... This is going to cost American lives."
Yes, he is going to get away with it, Congressman. Because he already has.
Which is not to say that President Gutsy Call isn't feeling a "smidgen" of discomfort:
CNN also reported that the hearing disclosed something previously unknown outside the White House: that it was Hagel and not President Barack Obama who gave the final order to make the trade.
McKeon said that surprised him because when he saw the president in the Rose Garden with Bergdahl's parents on Saturday it "sounded like he was taking full credit for the operation."
McKeon speculated that blowback on the decision from both parties in Congress may have something to do with the new information that Hagel OK'd the deal.
"I don't know who's in charge or who's making the decisions," McKeon said.
Rest assured, Mr. Chairman, Barack Obama is making decisions like this. Hence his taking his Rose Garden full-credit victory lap ten days ago, and his shoving it off onto Commissar Hagel now that the luster has fallen off of it like the flesh off of Walter Donovan's face.
I seem to recall over a decade ago when the leftwing nutroots were tired of Clintonoid deception and wanted to shout their true radicalism from the rooftops, believing that pretending to be "GOP Lite" was holding them back from the power they "deserved". And for a while they were right - two crushing victories in 2006 and 2008, culminating in the ascension of their "god," whom they even managed to keep in power in 2012, by crook or by crook. And now they're unhappy because even he doesn't know when to back off.
Well, you know the old saying, my Obamunist "friends": Be careful what you wish for; you may get it.
Exit thought: Hillary Clinton's newest core argument for her 2016 presidential candidacy is....Benghazi. Ah, that renowned Clintonoid audacity. C'mon, leftwingnuts, admit it, haven't you missed that? Even a smidgen?
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