"If the good outweighs the bad, the decision is right." - yes - we have no way of really knowing whether that's true. So it's a judgment call - not right, not wrong - just another part of that guessing game called life. Trading 1000 prisoners for 1 soldier is obviously a huge gamble and vastly unequal - i.e. almost certainly not "right" even if you're willing to live with the bad exchange just because

PS: In saying it was the right decision, I wasn't talking about outcomes, which can't be known. I mean weighing the factors and principles we DO know. Trying to gauge outcomes is only part of the exercise. The Israelis thought it was the right decision; they didn't necessarily think the swap was fair or just in that sense. They'd have preferred to get Shalit back another way, but weren't able to. I wasn't talking about the fairness or justice of the situation; I was talking about the rightness of the decision given the circumstances, etc.

So, back in the early 1990s, I had saved $50K and was thinking of buying a house with it. A friend knew someone who was founding this thing called America Online and said, "Jim Kimsey never loses money." I bought the house and doubled my money and had a nice house to live in. Had I plunked my money down on AOL's IPO and kept it through about 2000, it would've been worth about 2.5 billion. Still, buying the house was the right decision.

"If you think Gitmo should be closed, then these folks would have to have been released any way" - releasing them because we closed the facility, vs. releasing them as a negotiating PR victory for Taliban? not equal - certainly not as an exchange that could encourage more kidnappings. Will it? we don't know - I'm fine with giving the CoC the benefit of doubt, and won't be gleefully waiting for it to turn wrong to say "I told you so". But it could of course turn wrong.

PS: It's not the same as a matter of principle, but it is the same in terms of possible outcomes, which is what I thought people were afraid of and why they've questioned the decision, i.e., these guys are going to turn around and kill Americans. That could also be an outcome if we just closed the prison. They are the same in that sense.

Not sure important the PR or copycat considerations are. The Taliban kidnapped Bergdahl without knowing whether they'd be able to swap or for whom. This is the military; they have to be prepared to protect their soldiers regardless.

I must admit watching Bergdahl's face in such stress as he was released, I felt a bit emotional and was happy he was released. That still doesn't mean it's the "right" decision.

PS: It was the right decision because we don't leave our soldiers behind. That's part of the code.

For all the talk about what the Taliban thinks, I'll be more interested in what the US troops think, but probably they're getting spin from Rush - who knows.

As for the Taliban/Haqqani released: "They were the Taliban army chief of staff, a Taliban deputy minister of intelligence, a former Taliban interior minister, and two other senior Taliban figures" - doesn't seem insignificant, and it wasn't long ago that a Lockerbie terrorist was released due to "impending death" but lived 3 years more. Whether they're still useful, I don't know.

PS: What I meant was Shalit wasn't terribly important as an "asset," and neither is Bergdahl. That was the parallel I was drawing. Among the 1,000 were very important Palestinian fighters, and these Taliban are important. I was referring to the other side of the swap to show the parallel in the lengths to which we and the Israelis are willing to do to get our people back...even the "unimportant" ones.