Senators emerged from a classified, closed-door briefing on the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Tuesday seemingly less convinced than ever about the wisdom of swapping five high-level Taliban prisoners for the Army soldier after he spent years in captivity.
At the session, senior Defense Department and military officials briefed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, again presenting a united front in their support of the prisoner exchange, said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee’s chairman.
But they appeared to make little headway in defusing the festering political controversy that has again pitted the administration against Republicans — and some Democrats — who question President Obama’s judgment on national security.
Eternal hack Carl Levin defended Team Lightbringer but there wasn’t unanimous support from the other Democrats on the committee.
But even some fellow Democrats would not join in the defense.
“Was it a good deal or a bad deal?” said Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia. “In my mind it’s still a bad deal. I still can’t explain it back home to my fellow West Virginians why these five who they’ve tried repeatedly to get some exchange for over the last 10 years, why these five all of the sudden all were released.”
It’s gotten so bad for the administration that the lefty blogs have stopped calling the outrage over the swap “political” and “partisan” this week.
There has been a lot of speculation about what the president has to do to make this go away. My money is on a brand new scandal to deflect from this scandal, which came about to deflect from the last scandal.
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