PANETTA SLAMS SWAP – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  Former Secretary of Defense and CIA director Leon Panetta – who also served as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff – gives poor reviews to the swap of five Taliban commanders for one American with a dubious history.  From triblive.com: 

A former top adviser to President Obama on Wednesday questioned the release of dangerous terrorists in exchange for an imprisoned American soldier as anger spread among lawmakers in Washington over the secret deal to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

“I don't fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don't go back into battle,” former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a gas industry gathering in Pittsburgh.

Panetta, who was in the Cabinet for four of the five years Bergdahl spent in Taliban custody, said he opposed a swap for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he was Defense secretary.

“I said, ‘Wait, I have an obligation under the law,'” Panetta said during a lunchtime address at the Hart Energy Developing Unconventionals DUG East conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. “If I send prisoners from Guantanamo, they have to guarantee they don't go back to the battlefield. I had serious concerns.”

He said talks fell apart because the Taliban “asked for five top guys.” He did not say when during his 2011-13 tenure in the Pentagon that discussions took place.

COMMENT:  Obama's support on this seems limited, as usual, to the left wing of the Democratic Party.  But the deed is done, and the five senior Taliban commanders released from Gitmo are reported to be running quite freely in Qatar.  I'd imagine that, as time goes on, the intelligence community will discover that they're back plotting the murder of Americans.  Obama will blame Bush.

June 5,  2014