On Sunday’s “State of the Union” on CNN, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) explained to moderator Candy Crowley why the Obama administration’s deal to secure American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl’s release for five Guantanamo detainees was a bad deal and broke law.
According to Rogers, this sends the wrong message to terrorists around the world.
“[W]e have other means to use, and remember, they came to Congress about a year ago and we’re thinking about doing these negotiations. And by the way, they didn’t get a very warm reception from either party in the national security committees. They said this is fraught with trouble. So this all of a sudden comes a year later. They didn’t notify Congress. I think they violated the law in two different places here. Why is because this is a — this is morphing into different places. So, an al Qaeda affiliate in now Africa looks a lot and functions a lot like the al Qaeda affiliates operating out of the tribal areas in Pakistan. If you negotiate here, you’ve sent a message to every al Qaeda group in the world that says, and by the way some holding U.S. hostages today, that there is some value now in that hostage in a way they didn’t have before. That is dangerous. And so, our argument is, listen, we don’t fight this like we would fight a nation-state war. You can’t, and you shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists.”
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