Are we turning people into currency when we do hostage/prisoner exchanges?

I'm afraid so. This is a bad policy and it puts a target on all Americans anywhere we go in the world.

The major problem is we negotiate from a position of weakness as the ratios are terrible on the actual transaction.

I think the Sailors caught in Iran is more like the old cold war spy exchanges than Iran grabbing hostages for exchange. Like when Pres Eisenhower traded to get Gary Powers back after the Soviets shot down his U2. As much as we hate to accept it, our sailors were in the wrong. Armed military forces from an advesarial country with a history of interfering in their internal affairs and that has openly supported regime change show up in their territorial waters. Can you blame them for being suspicious of the "misnavigated" excuse from the most technologically sophisticated N avy on earth? So an opportunity presented itself and they took advantage of it.

Even as Trump says, politics is about making deals. I really doubt that the Iranians set out to capture Americans to get those prisoners back. I doubt they care that much about any of their citizens. But since we served up the sailors on a silver platter, they took advantage of it.

But in the broader sense, the fact is that it's a rough neighborhood, and you have to make hard decisions. Even Netanyahu, as tough a negotiator as he claims to be, has traded hundreds of Palestinians for one Israeli soldier. In war and politics there are exceptions to every rule. Hell, they remember Reagan selling them over 1000 tow missiles for help with other hostages. So it's nothing new, and nothing tied to any supposed weakness on president Obama's part.