Not Everyone's Hero: Soldiers Question Bowe Bergdahl's Bravery

[bsteadman]

Not Everyone's Hero: Soldiers Question Bowe Bergdahl's Bravery

NBC New
Alexander Smith
6/2/2014

Excerpt:

The release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from captivity in Afghanistan has reignited questions from some about the circumstances of the soldier's disappearance five years ago.

Bergdahl was the only American soldier being held in the country until he was exchanged in a swap deal on Saturday for five high-ranking Taliban figures from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

His freedom was celebrated by his family and the Obama administration. But others — including some members of his own platoon — have reiterated their long-held concerns over the events surrounding his June 2009 disappearance.

The 28-year-old sergeant vanished from a military base in Eastern Afghanistan with little more than a compass and a bottle of water. Considerable resources were diverted to try to find the missing man, and several of his fellow soldiers were killed trying to find him.

"I was pissed off then and I am even more so now with everything going on," former Sgt. Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl's platoon when he went missing, told CNN. "Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him."
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View the complete article, including photo and video, at:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bow...ravery-n120051

[bsteadman]

The bizarre tale of America’s last known POW

The New York Post
Michael Gartland
5/31/2014

Excerpt:

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last known American POW, was freed after five years in captivity — an ordeal that began and ended in Afghanistan under a shroud of mystery.

The Taliban turned over Bergdahl Saturday morning to US special forces in exchange for five notorious Islamic militants who had been held at Guantanamo Bay and will be sent to Qatar, where they will stay for a year under the terms of the trade.

At least one of the prisoners, ranking Taliban leader Khairullah Khairkhwa, had direct ties to Osama bin Laden.

Bergdahl was picked up by helicopter in western Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border.

After climbing aboard, the 28-year-old Idahoan, trying to communicate with his rescuers over the roar of the rotors, scrawled “SF?” on a paper plate — asking his rescuers whether they were special forces.

“Yes,” one of the men shouted. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

The Army infantryman — himself nicknamed “SF” by his comrades for his gung-ho interest in special-forces tactics — began to weep.

Bergdahl’s parents, who had lobbied continuously for his *release, had not seen him by Saturday night, but intimated that he faces an arduous recovery from his ordeal.

Bergdahl is speaking in what appears to be Pashto, said his dad, Bob Bergdahl. It was not clear whether his son can still even speak English, Bob said.

When the father spoke to his son — for the first time in five worried years — it was to say both in Pashto and English, “I am your father, Bowe.”

“We will continue to stay strong for Bowe while he recovers,” said his mom, Jani.

The search for Bergdahl began soon after he went missing on June 30, 2009, in the same rugged wilds of southeastern Afghanistan where NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman was killed.

Bergdahl’s mysterious disappearance from the small military outpost there and the subsequent revelation that he was in enemy hands prompted questions that still linger.

Soon after the capture, Taliban commander Mulvi Sangeen claimed a drunken Bergdahl was snatched while he stumbled to his car in the Yousaf Khel district of Paktika.

The US military called that a lie, and in one of the videos taken during his captivity, Bergdahl himself said he was captured while lagging behind a patrol.

But in the weeks before his capture, Bergdahl had made murky statements that suggested he was gravitating away from the soldiers in his unit and toward *desertion, a member of his platoon told Rolling Stone.

“He spent more time with the Afghans than he did with his platoon,” former Spc. Jason Fry told the magazine in 2012.

As a teen, the home-schooled son of Calvinists took up ballet — recruited to be a “lifter” by “a beautiful local girl,” Rolling Stone reported, “the guy who holds the girl aloft in a ballet sequence.” The strategy worked: Bergdahl — who also began dabbling in Budd*hism and tarot card reading — soon moved in with the woman.

Even as a teen, he could fire a .22-caliber rifle with precision.

At age 20, he traveled to Paris and started learning French in hopes of joining the French Foreign Legion.

His application was rejected, and he was devastated, the magazine reported.

Bergdahl would drift for years, working mainly at a coffee shop near home. He briefly considered moving to Uganda to help villagers being terrorized by militias before deciding on a different *adventure.

“I’m thinking of joining the Army,” he told his folks after *already having signed up.

Bergdahl’s dream was to help Afghan villagers rebuild their lives and learn to defend themselves, his dad told the magazine.

“The whole ‘COIN’ thing,” Bob explained, referring to America’s strategy of counter-insurgency. “We were given a fictitious picture, an artificially created picture of what we were doing in *Afghanistan,” the dad said.

Bowe Bergdahl would detail his disillusionment with the Afghanistan campaign in an email to his parents three days before he went missing.

“I am sorry for everything here,” he wrote. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.”

Bergdahl also complained about fellow soldiers. The battalion commander was a “conceited old fool,” he said, and the only “decent” sergeants, planning to leave the platoon “as soon as they can,” told the privates — Bergdahl then among them — “to do the same.”

“I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools,” he concluded. “I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”
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View the complete article, including photos, at:

http://nypost.com/2014/05/31/the-biz...ast-known-pow/

[bsteadman]

Top Intel GOP: 6 Months Ago, Obama Admin Promised No Taliban Release Without Coming to Congress

PJ Media
Bridget Johnson
6/1/2014

Excerpt:

The senior Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said today that the Obama administration specifically told him the Taliban commanders released from Guantanamo wouldn’t be be used in a prisoner swap without consulting Congress.

Afghanistan’s Tolo News described the deep roots of the commanders exchanged: Mullah Khairullah Khair Khawah, who served as minister of interior and governor of Herat under the Taliban government; Mullah Fazel Mazloom, the Taliban Army chief of staff; Mawlawi Abdul Haq Waseeq, the deputy head of intelligence under the Taliban; Mawlawi Noorullah Noori, former governor of Balkh and later Kandahar army chief for the Taliban; and Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Omeri, a senior Taliban leader in southern Afghanistan.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) stressed that the U.S. “has a long-standing policy of not negotiating with terrorists,” adding he’s “deeply troubled the Obama administration not only broke this policy, but also did so without the notification or consent of Congress, as required by law.”

“Six months ago, I was assured by the administration they would not consider the release of these senior Taliban leaders without consulting Congress. Today, they violated that commitment,” Chambliss said. “The security assurances the United States has been given regarding these terrorists is feeble at best, and I fear it is only a matter of time before they resume their terrorist activities.”

“These men are not soldiers; they are dangerous terrorists and President Obama should be treating them as such.”
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View the complete article at:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/06/01...g-to-congress/

[bsteadman]

Obama fans quaking over his 'Willie Horton' moment

Fear GOP will 'ride' POW swap through 2016 election

WND
Aaron Klein
6/2/2014

Excerpt:

Liberal columnist Michael Tomasky is concerned “the right” will try to turn President Obama’s exchange of five senior Gitmo detainees for a U.S. soldier into “a Willie Horton moment,” warning Republicans will “ride” the issue to January 2017.

Tomasky was a member of the controversial JournoList, a list-serve of progressive activists and reporters who discussed minimizing negative publicity surrounding Obama and attacking political opponents, including Sarah Palin.

“Buckle up,” Tomasky writes in a Daily Beast column Monday. “The right is going to try to turn the Taliban prisoner swap for ‘deserter’ Bowe Bergdahl into a Willie Horton moment for the president – and they’ll ride it to January 2017.”

Horton was serving a life sentence without parole for murder when he was let out on a weekend furlough program supported by Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Horton did not return from his reprieve and committed assault, armed robbery and rape. While Dukakis did not start the furlough program, Horton’s crimes became a major issue in the 1988 presidential campaign, beginning with ads in the Democratic Party primary by opponent Al Gore. In the general election, an independent political action committee not affiliated with Republican nominee George H.W. Bush featured Horton in a TV ad that labeled Dukakis soft on crime.

Tomasky’s piece is titled “Bowe Bergdahl Is the Right’s New Benghazi.”

“Looking forward, and looking more broadly at this situation,” he writes, ‘all the ingredients are here for a classic GOP Obama-conspiracy-mongering soap opera that can be dragged out until January 2017.”

Tomasky says Bergdahl “wasn’t any Republican’s idea of a patriot.” He points to a 2012 Rolling Stone article by late journalist Michael Hastings that exposed Bergdahl’s attitude against the Afghanistan war, writing in an email to his parents: “I am sorry for everything. … The horror that is America is disgusting.”
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View the complete article at:

http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/left-fear...willie-horton/