I’ve seen a lot of Right Wing talking heads blather on about the Brittany Griner Viktor Bout prisoner swap.
They are critical of Biden for not bringing back “United States Marine Paul Whelan.”
Let’s talk about Whelan.
He was a Marine and did serve in Iraq.
While he was there he embezzled over $10,000 from the government and created a fake officer’s account to create dummy positive performance reviews for himself.
He was court martial, found guilty, and was given a bad conduct discharge.
He was torn hired as a Security Manager for an international company.
Why?
What sort of company hires a guy that was given a bad conduct discharge for grand larceny?
Walmart wouldn’t hire that guy to check receipts at the door.
My educated guess is that he was hired to do corporate espionage.
Let it put it to you like this. If this was a movie and you saw this guy get hired, you’d think the business is corrupt as fuck and this guy was hired to do skeezy shit.
I don’t know if he was engaged in actual espionage, but this guy was a piece of shit.
If you want to argue that Biden is obligated to do his best for an American citizen in prison abroad, that’s fair.
But it’s in the best interests of the Right not to try and elevate this guy from what he is into some sort of hero.
There are post going around facebook to free this guy because “he is a US Marine “… nice to know the full story. Prob the entire marine corps want to kick his ass..
My objection to the trade is independent of Whelan. It’s that we put forth the effort for someone who was, as far as I know, guilty of violating another country’s laws; it was not a “bullshit” law, but rather one with counterparts in US law; she violated those laws on her own recognizance, and not (for instance) at the behest of a US agency in support of her own country; and finally, Griner declared that she hated the US, as I recall.
.
I have no real objection to making some effort to get her out; but not at this price.
So, Russia gets someone they deem a national hero, i.e., a Real Russian, and the USA gets an Obama child and leaves behind a marine Obama would be proud of, i.e., another Obama child. If Whelan was black, it would have tipped the victim-scales, perhaps enough to fight for someone who attempted to stick it to a branch of the armed services for his own personal gain. I see Obama’s signature all over this fiasco.
After I posted I saw this news story on this issue – Putin wants more exchanges because there are other “Things” he wants. — https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11521301/Putin-says-OPEN-prisoner-swaps-U-S.html
and there was this article reporting that Russia mocks the USA WOKE exchange: https://freebeacon.com/national-security/very-amused-russian-state-media-mock-bidens-woke-diplomacy/