Pathological liars. We’ve all met them. The kind where you ask them what they had for breakfast and they’ll tell you bacon and eggs when you were there when they ate that bowl of Cheerios. The type of guy who lies for no reason other than to stay in practice. Now we have one in the White House. And yesterday he was in full roar:

But this basic principle that we don’t leave anybody behind and this basic recognition that often means prisoner exchanges with enemies is not unique to my administration. It dates back to the beginning of our republic, and with respect to how we announced it, I think it was important for people to understand that this is not some abstraction. This is not a political football. You have a couple of parents whose kid volunteered to fight in a distant land who they hadn’t seen in five years and weren’t sure whether they’d ever see again.

Other than the obscenity of a man who was introduced into politics by a brace of convicted domestic terrorists spouting words he seems to have learned while watching Blackhawk Down and rooting for the Mohamed Farrah Aidid clansmen –“we don’t leave anybody behind” — the statement isn’t even vaguely true.

In trading five senior Taliban field leaders for a US deserter, Barack Obama passed on an opportunity to retrieve four other Taliban captives, three of whom are American citizens. Indeed, the Pentagon was pressing the administration to include the other hostages –American contractor Warren Weinstein, Canadian hippie Joshua Boyle and his American wife, Caitlin Coleman and their infant child, also an American citizen – in the prisoner swap:

 The deal to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban detainees held by the U.S. military nixed a broader effort by the Department of Defense to include other U.S. citizens held by the Taliban and its allies, a top congressional aide said Thursday.

The Department of Defense had a “broader goal” of including Caitlan Coleman of York , Pa., her baby who was born in captivity and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, in a deal to free Bergdahl, said Joe Kasper, chief of staff to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

Among Americans held captive is Warren Weinstein, a contractor from Rockville, Md., who was abducted in 2011 in Pakistan and is detained by al-Qaeda militants aligned with the Taliban.

“The DoD was looking at this in the whole scope of things, to deal with these people as well,” Kasper told USA TODAY in an interview. “Instead of five for one, why not five for five?”

Barack Obama did not give a rat’s patootie about Bowe Bergdahl. He used Bergdahl to free five men he has been clamoring to release for over two years and to try to reap a political windfall from the release. If Obama had really cared about “leave no one behind” he would have driven a harder bargain and brought three other Americans home with the feckless Bergdahl.