Allen West: Bowe Bergdahl Taliban Trade Was Meant To Get The VA Scandal Off The Front Page

Allen West claims the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders was an attempt to take the Veterans Affairs hospital scandal out of the news headlines.

The VA stands accused of cooking the books in the form of secret waiting lists for military vets requesting doctor’s appointments and other treatments. Allegedly, 40 vets died while waiting for care at the Phoenix VA facility. The scandal involves facilities all across the country; Phoenix apparently is not an isolated situation. VA officials allegedly and systemically understated the actual healthcare waiting time to the detriment of wounded or sick warriors, in part so executives could qualify for government performance bonuses.

As The Inquisitr has also reported, West — an outspoken former Florida Congressman and retired military colonel who served in the Iraq war — has argued that President Obama should be impeached in part for failing to obtain the approval of Congress when he agreed to the Bergdahl swap. The National Defense Authorization Act requires the president to give Congress 30-days notice for any transfer of detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison.

As a presidental candiate, Obama promised to close Gitmo, but has been unable to do so in part because of congressional opposition, including from his fellow Democrats.

US Sen. Lindsey Graham has also floated the “I word” about any further unilateral Gitmo prisoner releases. Graham may be merely saber-rattling, however, because he is trying to avoid a runoff after Tuesday’s multi-candidate GOP primary in South Carolina. Six candidates are running against Graham, who needs at least 51 percent of the vote on June 10 to avoid a runoff with a second-place finisher around which the Tea Party will likely coalesce.

During a radio interview this week, Col. West suggested that given the Bergdahl release hoopla together with the televised White House event with Bergdahl’s parents, President Obama was trying to garner some good publicity to offset the VA scandal and thereby change the subject.

“Because the whole thing coming out Saturday, the Rose Garden event, and having the parents there, this was a… ‘I’m gonna look real good, everybody is gonna forget about the VA, then I’m gonna head off to Europe’ and that’s gonna be the end of it. Well, this thing has backfired in an immense proportion even worse than the VA scandal… because of the long-term strategic ramifications of giving back five of most serious enemy detainees to the Taliban…”

In a CNN interview, Navy SEAL and Lone Survivor author Marcus Luttrell suggested that the Rose Garden ceremony should have also included the parents of those US soldiers killed in action looking for Bowe Bergdahl.

In the same radio discussion, West also further expounded on what he considers grounds for an Obama impeachment:

“… The Constitution talks about high crimes and misdemeanors and you also have the charge of aiding and abetting the enemy… this is just a continuation of some things that we see, supplying weapons and support to Islamist forces in Libya and potentially also to Syria, also collusion with the Muslim Brotherhood … but in this case, what we have to understand is that the president of the United States of American unilaterally decided that he would return to our enemy, the Taliban, their senior leadership…”

Do you agree or disagree with Allen West (and other Obama foes who have offered up a similar theory) that the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange was an attempt to change the subject away from the burgeoning VA scandal?

[Image credit: Gage Skidmore]