By Investor's Business Daily
National Security: Federal law prohibits any person — repeat, any person — from providing material assistance to terrorists, including human assets. But that's what the president did in releasing five Taliban commanders.
When iconic interviewer David Frost asked former President Nixon about the legality of his actions in the Watergate affair, Nixon said "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
That's an attitude seemingly shared by the current occupant of the Oval Office.
As former congressman and Afghanistan veteran Allen West points out, President Obama signed into law only months ago the National Defense Authorization Act, which makes it a crime to offer or provide any material support to terrorist groups. It makes no exception as to who and under which circumstances.
The Taliban is considered a non-state terrorist group to which Obama has returned five of the worst terrorists held at Guantanamo. They are not foot soldiers and this exchange was not at the end of a war, when prisoner swaps often happen. They are four-star general equivalents who will return to the battlefield to target and kill Americans again. If that's not material assistance, what is?
"Is there the possibility of some of them trying to return to activities that are detrimental to us? Absolutely," Obama said during a news conference in Poland.
But fear not, he said, because "we will be keeping eyes on them." Oh, good, we can always risk more American lives on top of those already lost capturing them the first time.
"This is aiding and abetting the enemy, which goes along with the collusion of this administration with Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations and supplying weapons and arms to Islamists," West wrote in the Washington Post.