Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   Bergdhal the traitor Date:   3/26/2015 12:02:34 PM

As I understand from the news reports at the time, the five were selected by the Taliban and that at least three of them are trying to get back in the fight.  According to the Pentagon dossier for the five they were all considered high risk and I find it very hard to believe the Taliban would be asking for anything other than high profile is beyond believable.  Here is a summary of three of the worst of them right from the Pentagon dossier leaked by Wikileaks:

"According to the 2008 Pentagon’s dossier on Fazl disclosed by Wikileaks, Noori also was a senior Taliban military figure and, according to his Pentagon dossier, was asked personally in 1995 by Osama bin Laden to participate in an offensive against northern alliance warlord Rashid Dostum. Wasiq, a former deputy minister of intelligence, at one point tried to cooperate with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and asked for a GPS system as well as a special radio to communicate with the U.S. military after the U.S. invasion in 2001. His dossier says that he was a crucial liaison between the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups while he was deputy intelligence minister. But the 2008 report also said he was holding out information he had on other top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders during interrogations. Khairkhwa, a former Taliban governor of Herat, was considered by the Pentagon’s 2008 dossier to be a likely heroin trafficker. That dossier also says he likely participated in meetings with Iranian officials after 9-11 to help plot attacks on U.S. forces following the invasion."

So no, they were not low profile as reported by the Washington Post and elswhere.  No one, even at time of the exhange called them anything but high level.  I'm sorry but I would have much rather have left Bergdhal where he was to suffer whatever fate he would suffer for his crimes.  We could argue all day long about whether Guantamo was a good idea but to argue that this trade was remotely a good idea stretches credibility.  It was a bad deal and disgusting.