In the effort to mitigate the damage of the disastrous Taliban swap, as we reported earlier, Hillary said the five released Taliban weren’t a threat to the United States.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Clinton writes in her book, the U.S. was involved in negotiations with the Taliban while she was Secretary of State, and even then, getting Bowe Bergdahl back was part of the equation. I think an awful lot of people think that we’re less safe today than we were a week ago because these five guys are out.

HILLARY CLINTON: These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.

Well, then why do you suppose the DoD classed these terrorists as “high risk” to the interests of the United States, Hillary? Perhaps you forgot that one of them was a right arm to Osama Bin Laden and provided intelligence to al-Qaeda before 9/11?

Or haven’t you even read any of the latest news, since that seems to be how members of the Obama regime who should know better claim to be informed? Obviously you knew they were dangerous or you wouldn’t have said in your book that you opposed the switch without more safeguards back when you were in the administration.

Hillary actually has the temerity to say, “It’s up to those two countries[Afghanistan and Pakistan] to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them.” Hillary, the Afghan people, particularly the thousands of Shiia killed in genocidal war crimes by a couple of these characters, they know what these guys are. They are terrified and confused by your regime has done.

President Obama has a new set of critics of his decision to release five suspected terrorists from Guantanamo Bay detention center for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl — individuals from a population of 300,000 Afghans who literally ran for their lives from Mohammed Fazl in 1999.

Local residents are “responding with fear and dismay to the U.S. release of the notorious commander,” who perpetrated a “scorched earth offensive” to obtain control, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Shopkeeper Masjidi Fatehzada told the Journal there “was not a single undamaged house or garden,” after Fazi was done with the Shomali villages. “My entire shop was burned to the ground. There was nothing left.”

Khwaja Mohammad told the Journal that Fazl’s henchmen jailed his son for nearly three years, plucking him off the street after he “was on his way from the bazaar to buy oil and flour.”

A third man, Dil Agha, said that he escaped Fazl’s wrath by fleeing to the Panjshir Valley when the Taliban came to power.

“When I came back from Panjshir, this whole place was completely destroyed,” he said, the Journal reported. “There wasn’t a single building standing.”

The former Guantanamo Bay detainee’s release has been hailed by the Taliban as a major achievement, with its minister of foreign affairs, Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, saying: “In terms of military significance, Fazl was the most important,” the Journal reported.

Even the UN has declared two of them wanted “war criminals”, yet there is a report that part of the deal guarantees that we, the U.S. will protect them from arrest for a year from any other country. I wish media would actually follow up and ask, what else is in the deal?

Hillary’s final comment almost takes my breath away, and in it you can hear echoes of that irritated response to the Congress on Benghazi, ending in “What difference at this point does it make?”

She says, “We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.”

But that’s exactly the problem. You don’t rescue everybody. You left four men to die in Benghazi, without adequate protection and then upon the attack, you didn’t send help. Then you left the scene open to be trampled and did nothing whatever to catch the killers. You personally lied in the face of their family members, as well as the nation, and blamed in on a video. You sent out Susan Rice to further perpetrate this fiction.

We could also speak of the Marine held in Mexico, Andrew Tahmoressi, there seems to be little, if no effort to try to “get him home”.

This week was a reminder to me of the reason the public has had trouble with Hillary in the past. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, she was always the one seeming to step in it, either with healthcare or some comment indicating her tin ear on the public conscience. Democrats who declare her the putative nominee forget this tendency.

One of the things that made Ronald Reagan such a great communicator was his intrinsic belief in what he was saying. It always shone through. Hillary’s problem, as Charles Krauthammer so aptly states it, is her inherent insincerity. If you are always trying to craft what you say, you will ultimately be tripped up as you cannot keep up with what you said before.

This week we have seen that weakness in spades, from “dead broke” to “not a threat”, and her inability to even seem clear as to where she stands on this issue of the swap.

“We try to rescue everybody”. But Hillary, you seem unable to rescue yourself from a continual prism of lies.