It has everything to do with Peace talks Luther.....all due to the Taliban refusing to speak to us or our people. BO wants assurances after we leave. For the 9800 that he will leave behind to conduct Ops to go after AQ and to help train Afghans.
U.S. seeks prisoner swap with Taliban to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.....
In an effort to free American captive Bowe Bergdahl before the bulk of U.S. forces leave Afghanistan this year,
the Obama administration has decided to try to resume talks with the Taliban and sweeten an offer to trade Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the Army sergeant, current and former officials said.
To refresh the American offer, which has been on the table for more than two years, senior officials from the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies decided within the past month to allow the simultaneous release of all five men.
Taliban representatives had objected to the previous plan to release the prisoners by ones or twos as a test of Taliban and Qatari intermediaries’ ability to make sure the men did not return to militancy.
Two people familiar with the decision stressed that it was the Taliban that broke off negotiations nearly two years ago and that the U.S. door to talks has been open since. The renewed offer has not been formally made, and no State Department or other officials have immediate plans to travel to Doha, Qatar, where any contact facilitated by the Qatari government would take place.
The mid-January decision by officials at the level of deputy secretary would confine any new talks to the prisoner issue.
Negotiations would not attempt wider engagement with the Taliban on a host of issues related to the future of Afghanistan. U.S. officials had once hoped to use the prisoner exchange as a means to build confidence for those larger discussions, which would also have involved the Afghan government. Now, the United States is primarily focused on getting Bergdahl home.
Bergdahl, an Army infantryman assigned to a unit from Alaska, was taken captive after walking off his base in the eastern province of Paktika, a decision that confounded his comrades and commanders in Afghanistan. The U.S. military launched a massive manhunt, fearing it would be nearly impossible to find him if his captors smuggled him into Pakistan.
The Taliban soon took credit for capturing him and offered to release him in exchange for $1 million and 21 Afghan prisoners.
The Taliban broke off talks before they ever really began in 2012, and an effort to resurrect negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government last year ended in an embarrassing shambles. A political office promised to the Taliban was readied in Doha but closed two days after it opened in June amid a row over the raising of a flag the Taliban used when it ruled Afghanistan prior to the 2001 U.S. invasion.
Taliban representatives remain in Doha, and the office is a de facto political headquarters.....snip~
U.S. seeks prisoner swap with Taliban to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl - The Washington Post
Feb 17, 2014
<<<<< !
http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls...lebrated-xmas-played-badminton-captors-3.html