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June 2, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:14
June 2, 2014, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Thank you so much for joining me, Buck Sexton here, filling in for Rush Limbaugh once again.
I really appreciate you giving me your time.
We have a lot to get to today, many things popping in the news, lots of headlines.
The first and foremost, of course, is the Sergeant Bo Bergdahl situation, I guess I'll call it.
Now, he is America's last known POW in Afghanistan.
He has been released into U.S. custody.
Now he was captured in Paktika Province, Afghanistan on June 30th, 2009.
He has been held in captivity for five years.
Now, of course, there are many questions that this raises, a few answers that it gives us.
We will now go through some of them together because there are elements here of policy, elements of national security from the Obama administration, and then some questions just about the case and the situation itself.
Of course, there was a lot of jubilation from the family, very understandably thrilled, overjoyed that their son was returned to them, but there are questions, of course, surrounding how he came into captivity in the first place.
And then there are broader questions that affect all of us quite directly about just what precedent this sets.
Now, the first impulse that many had when they heard about this, because that it only occurred after a swap of five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, from Gitmo.
People started asking questions like, are we negotiating with terrorists now?
Hasn't that been a U.S. policy for some time that we do not negotiate with terrorists, that we in fact refuse to sit down with those who would kill civilians who violate the laws of war, and who ultimately wish for our destruction as a society, as a civilization, that we can't really sit down and chat with them and be nice, have a little chive, have a little tea, that that won't work, and that that actually is something that will put us in greater jeopardy.
Well, it seems now the Obama administration has cast that aside.
They've decided that in this instance, in this case, it was really necessary to do this to release five for one.
Now some of you may be thinking maybe the Obama administration's not particularly good at math.
Why a five for one trade?
Well, we certainly put a higher premium on life than they do, than the Taliban does.
That's clear from our every action and from their every action.
But even still, the individuals that were released so that we could get Sergeant Bergdahl back, these weren't the this is not the B team of the Taliban.
These are not the junior varsity, the JV.
These are some scary guys.
These are some of the most dangerous detainees held at Gitmo.
Senior Taliban commanders with the blood of American soldiers and allied soldiers on their hands.
There's no doubt about that.
There's no discussion about that.
In fact, the Obama administration, the Obama administration itself, before all of this came down and happened, had said, yeah, we should probably indefinitely detain this bunch.
What?
Indefinite detention?
They must be uh quite a bunch of of vicious and and savage Taliban leaders.
And that's what we found out, of course, that they are, but now they're going into the custody of uh Qatar, or Qatar, depending on how fancy one wants to sound.
Uh but the Qatary government is in charge of them, and this has all been part of the Obama administration's ploy here.
This is the deal.
So, yes, in fact, we will negotiate with the Taliban, and that means that we will negotiate with terrorists.
We've decided the Taliban are on the terrorism list, so they're specially designated as a terrorist group for their support of Al Qaeda and other groups.
But there's a lot about this that is problematic from a much broader policy level.
For one, you probably heard the speech last week that President Obama gave, or at least maybe you heard some snippets of it.
If you missed it, you missed nothing because you already know essentially everything that was said.
I'm brilliant.
My policy's great.
Everyone else is dumb.
I know what I'm doing.
That's the summary.
That's the quick version of what was done there.
It was essentially there are extremists on both there are extremists for intervention, there are extremists for isolationism.
I'm President Obama, I go right down the middle, I know what I'm doing.
It was probably the worst speech of his entire five plus years in office.
And they've been defending it ever since.
The administration has been under assault from both sides because it was such a ridiculous speech to give at that point in time.
Year six of eight, and now you want to tell us what your foreign policy is.
You decide a foreign policy reset with two years left in office.
And it's as though we didn't have recent history under this president to figure out for ourselves what that foreign policy has actually been, what the wages of apology and appeasement on the global stage actually are.
We know these things.
We don't need to be told them by President Obama.
We don't need him to help us out to uh color in between the lines for us to help us figure out exactly what it has meant to have President Obama as commander in chief.
We know.
We know in Syria, we know in Libya, we know with Iran, we know with Ukraine.
Go around the entire world.
Find me the place where the president has had a foreign policy success.
Find me the place where he has shown wisdom and insight and strategy not dictated by domestic American politics and polls.
And I think I would have to call you a magician because it does not exist.
It's not there.
So the precedent that this sets now, of course, is also something we have to look at very clearly.
Because now every terrorist out there, uh, every guy who's running around with a dagger and an AK, who has the blood of Americans on his mind, knows that if we can get our hands on a U.S. soldier, if we can get our hands on a U.S. citizen, this administration is going to play ball.
And if they won't play ball, we'd have to ask the question, well, what's different now in this instance?
Why all of a sudden do they establish that there's some kind of a principle that we won't negotiate with terrorists.
You see, the president not only went forward with this negotiation, and now, as I said, put in the hands of the Qutary government, which really that place is sort of like it, it's like a venture capital firm for terrorism.
Tons of money coming out of Qatar, funding it all over the world, jihad all over the world.
It's like Disneyland for jihad.
But we're trusting them to hold them down for no, I'm not making this up.
One year.
These five Taliban detainees released from Gitmo with the blood of American soldiers on their hands, who have never renounced jihad.
In fact, they can't wait to get back in the game.
But they're going to be kept from international travel by the government of Qatar for a year.
So we've at least got that going for us, which is nice.
We've got one year here without these guys running around getting back into the fight.
Plenty of theaters of jihad, by the way, for them to operate in.
And on top of all this, you have the president deciding that he doesn't have to notify Congress.
Now, you can come down on either side of this, I suppose.
Some of you may believe that there is a war power here for the commander in chief that negates the need to notify Congress 30 days in advance, although that is the statute passed by Congress.
President Obama put a signing statement on saying, look, if I'm going to release somebody, I'm going to do it, and that's the way it's going to be.
And yet here we are with this happening.
Congress not notified about it, Congress pointing out that this establishes a dangerous precedent that no doubt will be influencing the actions of terrorists going forward.
Hostage taking, uh hostage trading is going to become a much more common thing in the future.
By the way, it is for European countries.
In fact, Al Qaeda and the Islamic Maghreb.
One of these uh Al Qaeda franchises that the president kind of forgot about when he was telling us that Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive, vote for me.
I understand national security.
They regularly kidnap Europeans and the European countries in kind of a hush-hush way, pay them off.
So that, of course, just breeds more of that same process.
But now we see That it's open season.
They can actually get their hands on some Americans, they can get their hands on whether military or civilian, and they have an expectation that's been created by the decisions of this administration that they'll have to play ball, that they'll have to negotiate.
And think about what was given up here.
Five senior Taliban officials.
I'm going to get into in just a few minutes what the Taliban thinks of this.
Also, by the way, what this negotiation, what this negotiation with the Taliban over this prisoner says about the broader context of this theater of operations, Afghanistan, the war that President Obama surged while saying we were going to draw down.
We're winning while we're leaving.
That's the Obama strategy in a nutshell.
So much more to go on here.
The call in is 800-282-2882, Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
Don't go anywhere.
Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
You can learn more about me at the Blaze.comslash Buck Sexton.
We are talking about the release back into U.S. custody or into U.S. custody of Sergeant Bo Bergdahl.
And I'm going to get into in a few minutes the circumstances of his capture in the first place.
He's believed to have been held by the Hakani Network.
People are going to refer to it as Taliban.
There are some distinctions there, but not worth going too deep into those right now, because there are some broader issues about what the entire negotiation process, what that all says right now.
As you know, there have been many rumors in the press for some time, and really confirmed now by senior administration officials, because there's plenty of those running around D.C., that there is an effort to bring the Taliban, we've been fighting since 2001, to bring them in for some kind of peace talk, some kind of peace negotiations.
Now, this is problematic for many reasons.
One, what impetus do they have for peace talks other than to fool us into making some kind of an agreement that benefits them that they will, of course, break the moment we start to pull out in uh in full or the moment that they see the opportunity, that they think the time is right.
The Taliban are not this is not a sovereign nation that we are dealing with that has the best interests of its people at heart or could be reasoned with, has reasonable leadership.
They believe in Sharia law.
They want to wage jihad at home and around the world.
So the notion that somehow we'll come to a reasonable agreement with them is just fanciful.
Of course, the Obama administration in its infinite wisdom, assuming that just another speech from Obama, perhaps a handshake, a bow, a few kind words about how the Taliban is uh thinks that they're exceptional, just like everybody else thinks they're exceptional.
Maybe that would bring us to some kind of an agreement.
Of course, that's not going to happen.
But now you even have the administration after the release of Sergeant Bergdahl, you have them saying that they hope, they hope that this will lead to the Taliban talking to us on other issues.
This is, I think, out of the Washington Post, I pulled this.
This is the only issue we've discussed with the Taliban in recent months, said one senior Obama administration official involved in the Bergdahl talks.
We do hope that having succeeded in this narrow but important step, it will create the possibility of expanding the dialogue to other issues.
But we don't have any promises to that effect.
You see, the Taliban doesn't really want to talk.
They don't think that they have to talk.
If they do, it's merely a ruse.
It's a stalling tactic, or it buys them some kind of uh strategic advantage in the short term.
Because, as they've said so many times, we have all the clocks, but they have all the time.
And now they know exactly what that time frame is because President Obama almost it's just astonishing, isn't it, that he comes up with a plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan that happens to coincide perfectly with when he's going to be leaving office.
Now that must be driven by events on the ground, of course.
He's a he's a fantastic prognosticator.
He can see into the future.
He knows that things will be just fine, ready for us to pull out, then, and people would say to me, Well, should we stay forever?
Well, you certainly shouldn't stay if the only reason for staying is so you can go on the talk show circuit and make it sound like you and your allies in the Democrat status party are serious on national security issues.
It shouldn't be an exercise in preening self-gratitude and narcissism if you're gonna put U.S. troops in harm's way.
But that's exactly what has been happening for the past six years now.
The president has made every decision about this theater of war based upon what it means for him, his electoral chances, and political uh consequences here at home.
All of it, everything, from the ridiculous year-long Afghan review.
The president was receiving the PDB when he was a candidate.
He knew what the intelligence community thought.
I mean, heck, you just read a newspaper and you know that things were not going as planned there, to put it mildly.
But no, they needed a year-long review, then they surged troops while saying they were going to pull out troops.
Now we're trading one for five.
We're releasing some of the most hardened and dangerous Taliban leaders that we have ever had in custody.
Who's next, by the way?
KSM?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we're going to release him for somebody?
Who's who's high enough value on our side?
How many people would it take for them to have hostage so that we would release KSM, the architect of the 9-11 attack?
Oh, we wouldn't do that, you say.
Well, I would have thought we wouldn't have released the five from Gitmo that we just did.
So maybe someone else can see into the future better than I can, but it seems now, as I've said, the precedent has been set.
Of course, the Taliban, no surprise here, they understand information operations.
They understand the IO campaign in their own theater quite well.
And they have announced a great victory as a result of the Bergdahl transfer.
This is from the weekly standard, Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, doesn't make statements often, by the way, he's the guy, he's the guy with the patch over the eye.
Omar is so reclusive that some have even speculated that he is either dead or otherwise incapacitated in Pakistan.
But on Sunday, the Taliban released a statement attributed to Omar who declared the release of the top five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo a great victory for the Mujahideen of Afghanistan.
A great victory, they say.
Well, what did they get?
And what did we get in return?
What now happens as a result of this?
Now I've heard the criticisms of Congress, not just on the issue of the negotiating with terrorists, but also, of course, on the separation of powers.
But but first, I just want to say that while you and I can sit here, we can totally agree.
We have a complete understanding of the fact that when you negotiate with a Taliban, even if you use intermediaries, cutouts, carve outs, whatever you want to call it, when you negotiate with a Taliban, you are negotiating with terrorists.
Let's be very clear.
You're negotiating with the enemy.
Now, the administration never to it's it's amazing what they think they can get away with.
They claim they did not negotiate with terrorists.
In fact, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said on Meet the Press yesterday, quote, we didn't negotiate with terrorists.
And then Susan Rice, who is on, yes, Susan Rice of Benghazi Talking Points fame, she was on CNN yesterday and she said that uh Defense Department officials consulted with the uh Department of Justice officials prior to the transfers.
Oh, okay, I feel so much better.
So that means that Hegel called Holder, and they're like, You good with this?
They're like, Yeah, I'm good with this.
Is Obama good with this?
Yeah, he's good.
All right, let's do it.
I wouldn't exactly call that an internal review that is ironclad, that now all of a sudden takes away any concerns of the American people.
But there's another question, one that perhaps is a little uh oh little precarious to raise at this point.
There are several precarious questions, actually.
We're gonna get to one in a second, which is the circumstances of Sergeant Bergdahl's capture and what that means.
But first, I would ask you why now.
We know that on Friday, two major resignations from the administration, one under pressure, the other people say was just timed long in advance.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is out, more importantly, or at least for the political cycle, uh more importantly, General Shinseki is out as head of the VA.
The timing of this does seem sort of interesting.
He's been held in captivity.
Bergdahl's been in captivity for five years, ongoing negotiations.
And now all of a sudden you get this release.
At a moment when the administration seems desperate.
Look at that speech last week, that ridiculous speech at West Point.
That bombastic, worthless terraid in front of our cadets, the future leadership of our army, anything to change the subject from the VA, it would seem then.
Now Bergdahl is released.
You think that this wasn't timed at all?
Well, I can tell you in a second that they recognize that there was some urgency here.
Do we buy it?
And talk about that in just a minute.
You can follow me on Twitter at Buck Sexton on Facebook, V Buckston, because somebody else is apparently a Buck Sexton.
Uh so check those out a way that we can keep the conversation going during uh during the rest of the day, during breaks, everything else.
I told you that the administration recognized that there was an urgency to this, it seemed, as they say, the Bergdahl release, there it had to happen now.
It had to happen now.
Couldn't tell Congress about it.
Now, there is a constitutional issue here about whether war powers are above, and there was a signing statement above this uh statute that says Congress should give should get a 30 day notification.
But again, Susan Rice, national security advisor, because you know, you get promoted up when you run a smoke screen on the Benghazi aftermath for President Obama, you you get promoted for that, right?
What people say, well, why did Susan Rice get set put out there?
Why the UN ambassador?
Why would that person get put out to talk about Benghazi?
Oh, that's right, because she's very loyal to the administration and she knows she'll be taken care of once they run out the clock and Obama wins.
Okay.
So now that she's national security advisor, Susan Rice is up there and she's on CNN, and she says about the supposed urgency of the Bergdahl release that quote, given the acute urgency of the health condition of Sergeant Bergdahl,
and given the president's constitutional responsibilities, it was determined that it was necessary and appropriate not to adhere to the 30-day notification requirements, because it would have potentially meant that the opportunity to get Sergeant Bergdahl would have been lost.
You know as well as I do that this administration is a huge fan of the false urgency of now.
Whether it's climate change, health care, the war on women, any of the fabricated concepts that they trot out for either political gain or to balkanize to separate out the American people from each other.
Whatever it is, there's always we have to talk about this now.
And they're because of their allies in the MSM, because they're mainstream media allies, always march to the beat of their drum, they have this ability to change the subject.
Now, you think that the president announcing, oh, a change to his Syria policy, which by the way is essentially a refutation of his previous Syria policy.
He goes, Oh, okay, well, now we're gonna do something for the anti-Assad and anti-Al Qaeda resistance in Syria.
He's a couple of years too late on that one.
But he says that at the West Point speech last week.
He also says that we're going to give five billion dollars for counterterrorism operations around the world.
Whoop dee, the State Department spends that on the couch cushions for the yachts that they hang out in.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
But why put policy into a speech that's meant for cadets?
Oh, that's right, to change the narrative.
To seize control of the news cycle at a point when they were getting hammered on the VA.
Absolutely hammered.
And that, unlike some of the other scandals, they couldn't claim that veterans dying waiting for care was a vast right wing conspiracy.
Oh, it's just the mean Republicans are saying stuff because they don't like Obama.
Maybe it's because they're racist.
Well, I don't think the VA scandal has anything to do with being racist, so I think that one was sticking.
So they tried to change the subject.
Otherwise, why give such a horrific speech?
Now I'm bringing all this up because we see the Bergdahl release comes after those resignations on Friday.
We're supposed to forget about all that, just let it all go.
Let the Carney resignation, fine, who cares?
The Shinseki resignation does have some political meaning.
Now, of course, the debate will be how do we fix the VA?
Do we fix the VA?
Oh, let's throw more money at it and put more bureaucrats in it, because that's just like magnifique.
It's gonna make it all better.
Perfection.
It's not gonna work.
But so the Bergdahl release comes today.
They're telling us it's so urgent that his health was deteriorating so rapidly.
Well, after five years, this would seem to be interesting timing.
Also their ability to know just what health condition the sergeant was in.
Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn't.
And also this question about constitutional responsibilities.
Hmm.
Always be wary of a commander in chief who claims that his war powers can always supersede whatever Congress passes, whatever powers Congress has, when we are in what everyone agrees is an endless war.
Don't you see?
President Obama, whether it's on national security or any other issue, believes that he has some sort of moral imperative to run roughshod over both Congress and the Constitution.
Nothing can stop him.
Nothing can slow him down.
They won't act.
I'll do it on my own.
You get it, you've heard it a million times.
Essentially always the same speech, just change out what his best friend's teleprompter right and teleprompter left have on them in terms of content, but it's essentially the same speech.
So there was this urgency.
They couldn't tell Congress.
There couldn't be a public debate about this.
They had to keep it quiet.
Why'd they have to keep it quiet?
Oh, they say because we can't trust the Afghan government to keep it quiet.
Okay, well, what does that say about the future of things on the ground in Afghanistan?
Karzai, by the way, when Obama was on Memorial Day, you know, that same day when they leaked the name of the senior CIA official, because why not?
Karzai also refused to meet with President Obama, didn't have time to meet with the leader of the country that's responsible for preventing the Taliban from raising the black flag of jihad over the palace in Kabul, essentially, over the presidential palace.
And without America there, trust me, you would the all of these senior Afghan officials would be picking out haciendas or mansions in the south of France, and they'd be out.
The smart ones would be out, those who could get away with it.
Karzai didn't have time to meet with our commander in chief.
No, no, no, no time.
Sorry, too busy.
So that's that gives you a sense of the relationship there.
But okay, so President Obama's got this.
Now, do you think they needed a national security win, quote unquote right now?
I think the answer is clearly yes.
The foreign policy reset of last week was atrocious.
And everyone kind of said, You've you've got to be kidding me.
This can't be serious, this can't be real.
The president is going to tell us how great his foreign policy has been.
We've seen it.
We know it's ridiculous.
And by the way, I disagree with those who say it's a fun talking point, it's clever, it's cute, people like it.
I probably have even said it myself just because you know, it's always fun to criticize the Obama administration.
But it's not that he has no policy.
It's not that he has no foreign policy.
It's not that he has no national security policy.
It's that he can't talk about the one that he has.
That's where the dissonance comes in.
That's why it's sort of confused.
No one really knows.
It's because he is at his core, an internationalist, a UN abiding multilateral institutionalist, a guy who believes that if we just get all the nations of the world talking, we can solve all the nations of the world's problems.
That's the root falsehood from which all this other stuff stems.
That is the beginning of the misunderstanding of the US's role in the world, and the reason why we have so many of these burgeoning problems.
Things getting worse all the time.
President Obama has a policy, he just can't tell people what it is because it sounds wimpy.
And the Democrats know that you sound wimpy, people don't trust you, so they gotta at least pretend like they're serious on this stuff.
But then there's another thing.
Something else we have to discuss.
The circumstances of Sergeant Bo Bergdahl's capture.
This is from CNN.
Fellow soldiers call Bo Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero.
He just give you a little bit of this piece, a little bit of this for background.
The sense of pride expressed by officials of the Obama administration at the release of Army Sergeant Bo Bergdahl.
Is not shared by many of those who served with him.
Veterans and soldiers who call him a deserter whose selfish act ended up costing the lives of better men.
Bergdahl's former squad leader Greg Leatherman said, I'm pleased to see him return safely.
From experience, I hope that he receives adequate reintegration counseling.
I believe that an investigation should take place as soon as health care professionals deem him fit to endure one.
An investigation.
They want him to be investigated.
Not exactly a ticker tape parade.
Those who know him who were there who were actually fighting, manning their post, they feel very differently about this, it would seem, than the senior administration officials who do want to throw some kind of a victory parade.
Have been.
That's what we've seen.
A lot of congratulatory remarks, trotting out the family, trying to squeeze as much political juice from this as the Obama regime possibly can.
Oh, I know, it's so dark and gross and cynical, but it's true.
Very cynical.
But as is all of their craven political calculations.
This is just another one.
If this weren't, it would be a total aberration.
It would be the the freak incident here, where finally they decided that they were just going to do what was right as commander in chief, what was right for the American people, without trying to make this about how great President Obama is.
I'm glad he's learned from his Navy SEAL Osama bin Laden situation when they took out bin Laden and he goes out there, you know, I do great things.
I ordered this, I called for it.
I said, let's have a search.
Let's uh let's go get him.
And I'm the commander in chief.
And we all had to say, wait a second.
I'm pretty sure you didn't repel down with your M4 and your EOTEC and your your full battle rattle on and take out bin Laden yourself.
I'm pretty sure you sent some SEALs to do that.
Maybe a little more gratitude for them could be in order.
But on the Bergdahl capture, as the president's out there talking about how this is a moment of jubilation for the whole country, we also know that at least six soldiers were killed in the searches for Sergeant Bergdahl.
And many soldiers, again, this is on CNN right now, many soldiers in his platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the U.S. in Paktica province in the days and weeks following the disappearance.
Then there's also this question about the patriotism of this individual if he did walk off post.
Look, this is when you start to say things like alleged, uh unverified.
You want to be very clear.
You don't want to unfairly impugn, particularly someone who wore the uniform.
You don't want to un impugn the reputation, but you also have to deal with the facts.
Six soldiers killed searching for Bergdahl.
We were told by many who were there that he wandered off base, that he perhaps deserted.
And then there are these alleged emails saying things like the few the saying things like bro, this is Bergdahl writing to his parents, allegedly unverified at this point, but some major outlets have put this out there, including Rolling Stone.
That the few well, I don't know if they're a major outlet, but you know, they've got at least four or five thousand readers, I think.
The future is too good to waste on lies, Bo wrote to his parents, and life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong.
I have seen their ideas, and I'm ashamed to even be American.
The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in, it is all revolting.
Bergdahl wrote, I am sorry for everything.
The horror that is America is disgusting.
If Bergdahl wrote this stuff, we need to know that.
If Bergdahl wandered off base, if he abandoned his post, we need to know that too.
And then UCMJ comes into effect, and then the military, his brothers and sisters in uniform, they're gonna have to make some decisions here.
Not me, but they will have to make some decisions about just what that means.
What kind of discharge, what kind of disciplinary action?
That has to be looked at.
I'm going to take some calls.
800-282-2882.
Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
The Buck will be right back.
Don't go anywhere.
Buck Sexton back in for Rush Limbaugh.
We're taking some calls.
800-282-2882 want to hear from you about this Bergdahl uh terrorism exchange, terrorist exchange.
Five for one.
That's what the Obama administration negotiated here.
Let's take Jordan from San Antonio, Texas.
Jordan, Sir Rush Limbaugh show, you're speaking to Buck Sexton.
Thank you for your time.
Nah, thank you for taking the call, sir.
Now I see here you were in Helmont, you were in Helmond and you're a Marine.
You have some thoughts on this.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I was with uh 2nd Battalion, Third Marines um back in 2009.
We were uh appointed Afghanistan during that time.
And I mean, I vaguely remember uh the time frame that this took place.
Um but I was uh stationed in the combat outpost uh with just my platoon out there.
And uh one morning our lieutenant, you know, called everybody around, uh, just you know, give us a little brief and uh brought this guy's picture out and told us, hey, you know, this army dog walked off base in the middle of the night, he was on post, walked off post, and you know, everybody needs to be on the lookout for this guy coming down from higher.
So, you know, any time any patrols go out, if you get the chance to ask any questions or be on the lookout of any suspicious activity regarding this individual, you know, pass that back to the chain of command.
And I mean, that's just letting you know that this shock wave doesn't only affect, you know, his guys on his base, you know, having to go out and look for this guy, but now it puts a blindfold on our main mission while we're out there, you know.
Hey, you know, take the time out of what we're here to do.
Uh, you know, keep an eye out for this guy because you know, some dummy wants to walk off base in the middle of the night and now he's being, you know, credited as a hero.
Right now, he now let's just be clear.
What you're saying, Jordan, is that he not only takes away from his well, well, you know, his platoon or his company's operations, he also takes away from your operations.
You can't focus on your objectives and puts more of your guys where you are at risk.
You're you don't you never knew Bergdahl personally, Sergeant Bergdahl.
But this has ripple effects across uh across the theater, at least to uh, you know, I would assume within any sort of distance where he could be assumed to possibly be in captivity.
And that that really uh affects operations in a broad way, and and it also can cost lives.
Yeah, and I mean we we didn't need any more casualties while we were out there looking for somebody like that anyway.
So I I mean it was just real frustrating when I heard it come up, because right when I heard it on the news, I I mean it triggered in my head.
I said, Oh my god, I remember the exact day this happened when when we got our brief about this guy and what did you hear Jordan believes that Jordan, I just want to what did you hear uh in when you were in theater, you're in Helmont.
What did you hear about uh the circumstances of it?
I mean you said he walked off.
So was he was it known and was was he a deserter?
Is that what the universal opinion was?
Yeah, they said yeah, they said it was passed down, you know, coming from higher, saying that this guy walked off in the middle of the night, you know, abandoned his post.
I I mean, uh right away, right away.
I mean, that that that just triggered anger in everybody out there.
I mean, I I I couldn't I mean this guy obviously knew what he was doing.
You're not walking off in the middle of the night out in Afghanistan, uh I mean, surrounded by multiple villages where any anybody out there could be either civilian, Taliban, Mujahidin, whatever you want to call them.
Uh, you don't know who the actual enemy is while you're out there.
You're not gonna walk into some random village as a white guy out there, even if you are, you know, as they are.
Jordan, help me out here.
Uh, you know, I spent some time in Afghanistan myself, and and I'm pretty sure in the area where Bergdahl is operating, there's not a there's not a 24-hour safe way.
I mean, there's nothing there for him to go to.
Why is he wandering off base?
Well, exactly.
I mean, what's he gonna do?
Go, you know, find some land, build a mud hut and start throwing poppy out there.
I uh you're gonna raise a family.
I don't know what you know, this guy's intentions were obvious.
He didn't want to be there.
Who knows what he was doing when he was walking off base if he was gonna go to a village and try and seek help from one of the elders there.
I mean, the uh doesn't even have a translator, you know, with him a terp.
I I mean the whole situation, you know, was red flags, uh, I mean, all over it saying this guy walked off base, obviously with the intent of, you know, deserting his post.
I mean, and uh to me, I'd I'd say throw the book at him.
I was gonna ask you this right right before we go to break, I want to ask you this.
What what do you think should happen?
If it is verified that he went AWOL, that he deserted, what should happen now?
I throw the book at him, and everybody needs to stop putting their hands together and calling this guy a hero.
They need to get his family off the news and stop putting him out there too, because I I mean everybody's you know applauding this guy coming home.
They I it's just disgusting.
Because you look at POWs from previous wars, actually captive, shot down in enemy territory, and this guy's being considered a POW, that that he is not a POW.
I'll tell you that right now.
He is not a prisoner of war because that is somebody who against their own will is captured.
This guy went out.
I mean, as we were told, with the intent, here Jordan Jordan, let me let me hold you through.
Let me hold you through.
We gotta take a quick break here.
We'll bring you back on the other side.
Don't go anywhere.
Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
A couple of very quick uh notes here.
One is that you can always catch up with Rush on Rush Limbaugh.com.
While you're there, be sure to join Rush 24-7.
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You can also follow me on Twitter at Buck Sexton, Facebook, Facebook.com slash the Buck Sexton.
We can keep talking there.
Next hour we're gonna finish off this Bergdahl prisoner swap situation.
A little more from a Marine who served in Helmund.
More of your calls.
We're gonna take those.
Then the EPA regulations that will destroy the coal industry.
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