The five Taliban leaders released from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay over the weekend will likely return to battle and the United States will pay a price for the deal, says former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The United States negotiated with terrorists to free U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, "and I don't think they got a very good deal," Cheney said Monday on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File."
The five are supposed to remain in Qatar for at least a year and have given assurances they won't return to battle, but Cheney said odds are they will break that promise.
Thirty percent of released Guantanamo detainees are believed to have returned to the fight, and Cheney noted that the five released over the weekend are high-level al-Qaida members, making them more highly motivated to do so.
The five will go back into the field of battle, Cheney said, and "we’ll end up paying another kind of price because of the transaction that’s been negotiated here."
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Cheney also criticized President Barack Obama's overall policy in the Middle East, saying Osama bin Laden's goal in the 9/11 attacks was to get the United States out of the region, and Obama's troop pullouts in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing just that.
"We're retreating from the area," Cheney said, calling the plan "unwise policy."
The Obama administration has pulled troops out of Iraq without leaving any stay-behind forces and plans to do the same
in Afghanistan.
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