Kerry Indicates Drone Targeting of Freed Taliban Soldiers

Responding to questions and criticisms surrounding the recent prisoner exchange of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban soldiers, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday tried to quell concerns about those fighters “returning to the battlefield” by boasting of his government’s ability to target and kill individuals overseas.

Though few in the U.S. have voiced concern that Bowe Bergdahl—still in Germany receiving treatment after five years of captivity—will ever rejoin the battlefields in Afghanistan or Pakistan, the U.S. mainstream and rightwing media have been frantic about the possibility that the freed Guantanamo prisoners will pick up arms in the future.

Kerry described some of the hand wringing over the deal as “a lot of baloney” and made a not so-veiled threat about how the U.S. would respond in the future if it decided to target the men just recently released.

“I am not telling you they don’t have the ability to go back and get involved [in the fight],” Kerry told CNN. “But they also have an ability to get killed doing that. I don’t think anybody should doubt the capacity of the United States of America to protect Americans.”

Asked if that meant killing the men, Kerry replied: “The president has always said he will do whatever is necessary in order to protect the United States of America … so these guys pick a fight with us in the future, now, or at any time, at enormous risk. We have proven what we are capable of doing with the core al-Qaida in west Pakistan, Afghanistan.”

Though he did not specifically mention drones, the area mentioned along the Pakistan border has been the scene of hundreds of U.S. drone strikes over the course of the war.