Chris Matthews is his usual confrontational, slobbering, spluttering self. It escapes me why he has guests. He generally answers his own questions.
Moe Davis has the patience of Job. He didn’t get up, punch Matthews in the face, tell him he was a rude dumb-ass, and walked off the set.
I can’t even watch Matthews. He makes me sick.
Mathews is a legend in his own mind.
Like Bill O’Reilly – for the life of me I can’t figure out why either one of them bothers asking anyone a question.
I can’t figure it out either, Lyssa. It all goes back to bad manners.
Moe has an interesting take on a very confusing issue. These five Taliban guys were never prosecuted by the US during their twelve long years in Gitmo. Moreover, there is a lot of talk about the UN having designated a couple of them as gross violators of human rights in Afghanistan. We prosecute terrorists. Violators of human rights can be sent to The Hague for trial by the World Court. Neither happened to any of the five. So, were they terrorists/human rights violators subject to trial or some sort of POWs? If they aren’t prosecuted as terrorists or human rights violators, how could we have held them beyond the end of our participation in combat in Afghanistan? It sounds to me like one result of the 9/11 attack was to sort of turn international law on its head with no conclusive answers.
I think Gitmo in itself, the entire concept was created because we didn’t really know what these guys were. Do we know more now? Probably not. Its a whole new world out there.
We never had enough evidence to charge the five. So we held them as??????
Wolve is right. Very confusing. Look folks, if Wolve and I end up on the same sheet of music, you know it is bizarre world out there. I expect he is scratching his head as much as I am.
However, the fact remains that Chris Matthews behaved poorly as usual. I will have to say that he is just as big of an A-hole as Hannity and O’Reilly. Just bad bad manners.
I left out Joe Scarborough. He is getting ruder and ruder. He interrupts Mika every time she opens her mouth. He pontificates. He interrupts other guests. He dresses like a slob on set always.
The more money he makes the more obnoxious he becomes.
Morning Joe, the show, does have a good mix of guests and ideas. Part of the strength of the show rests on the fact that Joe is out a whole lot.
Wolve’s points (amplifying Col. Davis’s comments on Matthews’ show) are well taken and well stated. We created a limbo status for a lot of these captured fighters that makes it very difficult to analyze what’s going on in the Bergdahl context. We could have done better.
Agree that Scarborough has become so bumptious that it detracts from the good qualities of that show. They do an excellent job of getting a range of guests who talk well with each other. He, however, to often charges in like a bull in a china shop and upsets the balance – a balance that is hard to find on cable news these days. He completely O’Reilly’d Paul Krugman a few months ago in ways that had very little to do with the substance of what Krugman was trying to say. I think I could happily accept Morning Joe without Joe.
@Scout, I would welcome Morning Joe sans Joe myself. He does charge in, gets on his soap box, and really upsets what is one of the few adult discussion shows on cable TV. I particularly like the balance on that show and the give, take and exchange of ideas. That balance is disturbed when he acts like a rude jackass, which is more and more frequently. Scout, I like that you have turned “O’Reilly’d” into a verb meaning boisterous rudeness and interruption.
It seems to me that a lot of issues are being jumbled together.
1) The issue that Moe wants to focus on is what to do with prisoners after the end of combat operations. If the Gitmo detainees could not be tried, then presumably they have to be released. But the lack of a trial does not necessarily imply a lack of evidence. In some cases, despite lots of evidence, no trial was held because the trial discovery process would have revealed sources and methods. In any case, there was no reason to release the detainees immediately since combat operations are not yet over and trials for crimes against humanity may be possible.
2. Why was the price for Bergdahl’s exchange so high? This was Chris Matthews’ point that Moe ignored. Why not a one-for-one trade for prisoners of equal rank/importance? Given that these Taliban prisoners are strategically important as organizers/planners, why did the U.S. agree to such a bad deal?
3). No one in this discussion mentioned that Obama defied Congress. The Congress actually agreed to give Obama the power to swap prisoners, but only if they were notified 30 days in advance. Why did Obama thumb his nose at Congress? Was it because he knew they would disapprove of this particular trade and he wanted to do it anyway?
Obviously a delay wouldn’t have worked.
I am not sure we can equate rank between us and the Taliban.
I think what you are saying is that the evidence being used in some of the trials was obtained under torture. That was Moe’s issue when he was the chief prosecutor and why he resigned his commission. Is information obtained from torture really evidence? Most people will say anything to make the torture stop.
The Daily Beast:
I believe we can agree that the 5:1 exchange ratio was too high but as to Bergdahl’s status–that islet to be determined. If he did, in fact, desert, the he should be dealt with harshly despite his attempts to escape. What about the Taliban prisoners? What were they? Prisoners of War as we have decided Bergdahl was or were the “Enemy Combatant” as first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have seen fit to classify them. And what is all this about the PRESIDENT having to notify Congress 30 days in advance of any transfers. Well as best as I can tell from Sub-Section 1035 (d) of the National Defense AuthorizationAct for Fiscal Year 2014,
“(d) NOTIFICATION.—The Secretary of Defense shall notify the
appropriate committees of Congress of a determination of the Secretary
under subsection (a) or (b) not later than 30 days before
the transfer or release of the individual under such subsection.”
Maybe there is another section that places this responsibility directly on the President but I’ll let someone else determine that. This is good enough for me plus Moe’s point that those released didn’t really have any real status other than the trumped up, “Enemy Combatant” status with no defined charges against them.
George, if it were your kid or my kid, I expect we probably wouldn’t be counting enemy combatants being released. I don’t think any of them had charges against them.
They needed to be reclassified as POWs. Enemy combatants? Isnt that a POW?
We can’t hold people forever without formally charging them. I am glad they are gone. What a black eye on this country–holding people for a decade without formally charging them?
Is it just me or does that offend everyone’s sensibilities.
We are far better off just calling them POWs.
When 9/11 happened, the Taliban was the existing government of Afghanistan. They gave al-Qaeda refuge to prepare and launch their dirty deeds. As I recall, we went after the al-Qaeda concentrations with heavy weaponry and then allied with the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban groups to eventually overthrow the Taliban regime and end the al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. But it seems to me that the Taliban WAS the Afghan government at that time.
Of the five released Taliban:
Mohammad Fazl was the Taliban deputy chief of defense and Taliban army chief.
Mullah Norullah Noori was a senior army commander and the Taliban governor of Balkh and Laghman provinces.
Mohammed Nobi, associated with the Haqqani, was Taliban chief of security in Qalat.
Khairullah Khairkhwa was the Taliban governor of Herat Province and a military commander.
Abdul Haq Wasiq was the Taliban’s deputy intelligence chief.
Fancy titles. But all part of the Taliban governance of the country at the time when the Taliban was removed from power by the US and our NATO and local allies. The five were captured on the battlefield or surrendered to our forces.
You might call these guys “terrorists” because of the military tactics they used; but the fact remains that they were, at the time of capture or surrender, functionaries and military personnel of a ruling government. Ergo, were they not technically prisoners of war?
Most off them are very nasty people. Several were said to have been responsible for huge massacres of Shiite Afghans and others not in the Taliban circle. They subjected the country to their strict version of Sharia law without mercy. Were they technically “terrorists” as we have defined groups like al-Qaeda or were they tyrannical state sponsors of terrorism like contemporary Iran and like Libya for many years. ?
If we could not put them on trial for specific terrorist acts, why were they not tried as war criminals as some of the Japanese and Nazi leaders were after WW II? Perhaps not by us in another Nuremberg Tribunal but before the international court in The Hague, where Serbian leaders and military men have been tried over crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, as have several former leaders in African nations? Commentators now refer to these five guys as terrible and killers and terrorists. Well, why wasn’t the evidence of such used to try them for war crimes or crimes against humanity? Did our failure to move toward tribunals for such crimes not play a role, perhaps, in changing their status by forfeit to POW’s held by us and eligible for release anyway when our combat role in Afghanistan comes to an end? Maybe the stupid here was us. The crimes against humanity go unpunished.
Maybe the evidence wasn’t there.
So much of all of this is uncharted territory. The rules as we know them…not so much.
What sort of mystifies me is the claim that the UN had designated a couple of these guys as perpetrators of crimes aganst humanity. If the claim is true, one has to wonder what the UN was using as evidence to warrant such serious accusations. And why the UN did not proceed further with those cases.
That might remain a mystery. It does seem odd, or does it?