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fluffy
Trad climber
Colorado
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Time to INVADE mexico once and for all.
Get help Angry Ron
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crankster
Trad climber
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Looks like Tahmooressi stopped up at Ron's gun 'n ammo depot on the way to Mexico. Dudes been there like, what, 2 months?
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fluffy
Trad climber
Colorado
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How old are you again?
Why the obsession with gay sex?
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crankster
Trad climber
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I think I'm going to have a conversation with a tin can instead of trying to debate Rifleman Ron, Militia Member, tonight. Better conversation.
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fluffy
Trad climber
Colorado
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Yeah an angry immature America-hating mental patient who takes the short bus to work at the gun store is not worthy of your time. Mine either lol
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crankster
Trad climber
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I stand corrected. There is a voice of reason on Fox occasionally.
Many Fox News hosts and pundits rushed to brand recently released Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl as a deserter and a traitor, but Shepard Smith took a different line by saying he was "disgusted" by the rush to judgment, cautioning that Bergdahl is innocent until proven guilty.
On May 31, the White House announced it had secured the release of Bergdahl from the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Right-wing critics of President Obama began reporting as fact that Bergdahl had been a deserter and collaborated with the enemy, despite the fact that an investigation into the matter has not yet taken place.
On the June 3 edition of Shepard Smith Reporting, host Smith took umbrage at the reporting, saying, "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."
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Watch the video of the sh#t-bag's release very carefully.
He was weeping at losing his buddies. Watch him wipe away tears, and watch his mouth as he weeps.
THEN! One of the dudes, his "captors", comes over and pats him on the chest to comfort him.
Impeach Obama. He violated Federal Law that HE SIGNED.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Impeach Obama. He violated Federal Law that HE SIGNED.
I hope they try.. It's fun watching the repugs shoot themselves in the foot.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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David Brooks, successor to William F. Buckley:
PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS RIGHT
Americans don’t have a common ancestry. Therefore, we have to work hard to build national solidarity. We go in for more overt displays of patriotism than in most other countries: politicians wearing flag lapel pins, everybody singing the national anthem before games, saying the Pledge of Allegiance at big meetings, revering sacred creedal statements, like the Gettysburg Address.
We need to do this because national solidarity is essential to the health of the country. This feeling of solidarity means that we do pull together and not apart in times of crisis, like after the attacks on 9/11. Despite all our polarization, we do accept the election results, even when the other party wins. People in New York do uncomplainingly send tax dollars to help people in New Mexico. We are able to assimilate waves of immigration.
National solidarity is especially important for the national defense. Men and women serve in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the awareness that it is an extraordinary privilege to be an American, that it is a debt that needs to be repaid with service.
Soldiers in combat not only protect their buddies, they show amazing devotion to anyone in the uniform, without asking about state or ethnicity. This is the cohesion that makes armies effective.
These commitments, so crucial, are based on deep fraternal sentiments that have to be nurtured with action. They are based on the notion that we are members of one national community. **We will not abandon each other; we will protect one another; heroic measures will be taken to leave no one behind. Even if it is just a lifeless body that we are retrieving, it is important to repatriate all Americans.
**
The president and vice president, the only government officials elected directly by the entire nation, have a special responsibility to nurture this national solidarity. So, of course, President Obama had to take all measures necessary to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Of course, he had to do all he could do to not forsake an American citizen.
It doesn’t matter if Bergdahl had deserted his post or not. It doesn’t matter if he is a confused young man who said insulting and shameful things about his country and his Army. The debt we owe to fellow Americans is not based on individual merit. It is based on citizenship, and loyalty to the national community we all share.
Soldiers don’t risk their lives only for those Americans who deserve it; they do it for the nation as a whole.
It is not dispositive either that the deal to release Bergdahl may put others at risk. The five prisoners released from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a swap for Bergdahl seem like terrible men who could do harm. But their release may have been imminent anyway. And the loss of national fraternity that would result if we start abandoning Americans in the field would be a greater and more long lasting harm.
Israel once traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get back one of their own. Another time they traded 1,150 prisoners to get back three of their own. They did it because of a deep awareness that national cohesion is essential to national survival. They did it because Israeli parents share a common emotional bond; the imprisonment of one of their children touches them all. In polarized countries, especially, you have to take care of your own. If you don’t, the corrosive effects will be cumulative.
It doesn’t matter either that the United States government ended up dealing with terrorists. In the first place, the Taliban is not a terrorist organization the way Al Qaeda is. America has always tried to reach a negotiated arrangement with the Taliban, and this agreement may be a piece of that. In the second place, this is the dirty world we live in. Sometimes national leaders are called upon to take the sins of the situation upon themselves for the good of the country, to deal with the hateful and compromise with the loathsome. That’s their form of sacrifice and service.
So President Obama made the right call. If he is to be faulted, it would be first for turning the release into an Oprah-esque photo-op, a political stunt filled with inaccurate rhetoric and unworthy grandstanding. It would next be for his administration’s astonishing tone-deafness about how this swap would be received.
Most of all, the Obama administration can be faulted for not at least trying to use the language of communal solidarity to explain this decision. Apparently, we have become such a hyperindividualized culture that it is impossible to even develop an extended argument on how individual cases fit into the larger fabric of the common good.
Still, the president’s instincts were right. His sense of responsibility for a fellow countryman was correct. It’s not about one person; it’s about the principle of all-for-one-and-one-for-all, which is the basis of citizenship.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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We the people have an option and its called IMPEACHMENT .
Inconvenient fact: We the People do not have the option of Impeachment.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Meanwhile throngs enter from the other side of the fence daily to do the jobs that our own citizens deem too hard or menial to bother with, for low pay, contributing millions to the Social Security system with no hope of ever collecting. An insignificant few end up on welfare - healthcare - and even free college. Time to reinstate our guest worker program with Mexico once and for all
Fixed it for you.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Ricky penned: "I'm still not convinced the bluering character isn't a brilliant, ongoing satire."
That's hilarious Ricky! I think back to all jeff Battens extensive trolls and recall how worked up he'd get folks. Nice post of Brooks article Ken M. At the end of the day, we still have to figure out how to end this bullsh#t, and anyone interested, especially Ron A, Bluering, Chief and you dudes all pissed at the current President: you folks should pick up a copy of the book "Ghost Wars" which details our lavish and expensive funding of the Taliban via the Pakis. Thats right, we sent billions of dollars to the wrong folks, and kept doing it long after we learned that Masoud was the guy we should have been funding. Right when we figured it out the Taliban blew him up. You'll be pissed at a President, but not this one.
Seriously, rather than whining about one man, PFC Bergbyebye, read this work, and consider the waste and mistakes on a huge scale.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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This book won the Pulitzer Prize and should be mandatory reading for any citizen, but especially those posting opinions on this thread. "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001"
Great read,check it out. Click on "used" and you can get it for .01/cent plus $3.99 shipping. Sure, the Bergdahl trade was stupid, and bad. But very minor, like a pimple on your ass that soon goes away. If nothing else, reading this book will make you reconsider whom you should be directing your anger too. Hint, it's not Obama.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1402235535&sr=8-8&keywords=Ghost+warriors
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Why did fox news travel all the way to Mexico to find and unjustly imprisoned American?
We have thousands of em right here.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Course Honnold does the nose in about the time many people take for a couple pitches... come to think of it he did it in two pitches.
oops wrong thread..
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crankster
Trad climber
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"Ghosts Wars" is a good read, couch, agree.
The Bergdahl story is the legacy of failed Republican policies, the main reason to ignore the screeching from the right. Their boy, Bush, started wars with no clear direction, a poor understanding of the enemy and no strategy to win them.
Ironically, the chicken hawks still cry for military action at every chance. One more reason to defeat them. They are ruining the country.
Indeed, an internal Army investigation into the episode concluded that the platoon suffered from lapses in discipline and security in the period before Sergeant Bergdahl — a private first class at the time who was promoted while in captivity — disappeared into Paktika Province, two officials briefed on the report said.
But their problems in many ways reflected those of the Pentagon’s strategy writ large across Afghanistan at that moment of the war. The platoon was sent to a remote location with too few troops to seriously confront an increasingly aggressive insurgency, which controlled many villages in the region. The riverbeds they used as roads were often mined with improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s; simply getting supplies or traveling back to their home operating base could be a nerve-racking ordeal.
American combat fatalities in Afghanistan in 2009, the year the Second Platoon arrived, would double from the year before. By year’s end, President Obama would tear up the military strategy that had spread American troops thin across the rugged country and order a major surge of troops.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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I can understand it taking a week or two to get the policy and coverage.. but beyond that I'd be all over their asses until they got it resolved.
I hate insurance companies but I do know how to deal with them.
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crankster
Trad climber
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I could go on but im talking to the deaf.
Rifleman Ron, I could tune into any wingnut website or talk yakker and get these tired, wacko stories 24/7. It's the mantra of the far-right. Please don't go on. We are not deaf. We are just smarter than you.
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crankster
Trad climber
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Can't improve on your analysis, dr.
Note than when asked who their presidential candidate should be they go silent.
Hillary v Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, can't wait.
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crankster
Trad climber
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RR, start another thread on the gunrunner. He is not a POW. Mexico is our friend. He broke the law. Don't try for another wingnut false equivalency.
He'll be home by the time Hillary is sworn in. Relax.
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