Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) on Thursday criticized President Obama over the controversial prisoner exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, calling it “heartbreaking.”
“My first reaction is to the people that lost their lives trying to get him back, and their families that didn’t get the same attention from this administration and from this president,” Bush said in a Thursday interview on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends.”
“It’s hard to think about the blood and treasure of our country being lost in any circumstance but to try to bring back someone back who turns out to be a deserter is just heartbreaking,” he added.
{mosads}Bergdahl had gone missing from his base in Afghanistan in 2009. His critics claim he walked off the base and that fellow troops lost their lives looking for him.
The Obama administration freed five Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay in exchange for Bergdahl, who was held prisoner in Afghanistan, without notifying Congress.
The controversy over the exchange was renewed on Wednesday, after the Army charged Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior.
Republicans have seized on the controversy noting that one of the released Taliban might have tried to return to the fight and saying that Obama paid too high a price for Bergdahl’s release.
Bush on Thursday hammered the president’s handling of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying it should remain open until there is a “compelling alternative.”
He accused Obama of playing politics with the detention facility.
“The president is totally focused on closing Guantánamo as an organizing principle, and it’s all based on politics,” Bush said. “It’s not based on keeping us safe, which should be his first obligation.
“We shouldn’t be closing down Guantánamo. We shouldn’t be releasing Taliban that are openly organizing once again to attack us. This is just not the right policy,” he added.
Earlier this month, President Obama said he wished he had kept his 2008 campaign promise and closed the military prison on his first day in office. Obama has said he didn’t move forward initially, because there wasn’t enough bipartisan support to dismantle Gitmo in a “deliberate fashion.”
Obama and Democrats argue that terror groups use the base to spread anti-U.S. propaganda. Activists say Gitmo is rife with human rights violations and that many of the detainees languish for years without a trial.
Bush on Thursday acknowledged that “there’s no easy answer” for the sticky politics of Gitmo but said the best solution is to “stay the course,” at least until some alternative arrangement can be reached.
“We have a real challenge, that bringing people back inside of our criminal courts is not going to be appropriate for every one of these folks,” Bush said. “But they themselves are threats to our country, so I’m not sure that there’s an easy answer to this.
“But closing it down for political purposes is not the right thing to do,” he continued. “Unless there’s some compelling alternative, I do believe we ought to stay the course.”
Bush did not say what that alternative might be.