[stratos]

Benn Benn:

Yu can get a promotion while you are a POW?

And a crap load of back pay.

[andyt]

If this guy was a pow then he should get everything coming to him that he's entitled to, and more. If he really was a deserter, of course, same deal.

[BRAH]

andyt andyt:

If this guy was a pow then he should get everything coming to him that he's entitled to, and more. If he really was a deserter, of course, same deal.

Apparently those who were in his unit had to remain silent until he was recovered which makes sense now that he's been released and being labeled a hero they're spilling the Army issued beans, this should be interesting.

[martin14]

BRAH BRAH:

andyt andyt:

If this guy was a pow then he should get everything coming to him that he's entitled to, and more. If he really was a deserter, of course, same deal.

Apparently those who were in his unit had to remain silent until he was recovered which makes sense now that he's been released and being labeled a hero they're spilling the Army issued beans, this should be interesting.

OK but what are they saying now ?

Is this a real rescued POW, or something else ?

[xerxes]

So far from what I've read, that he was lazy and a deserter.

[BRAH]

martin14 martin14:

BRAH BRAH:

andyt andyt:

If this guy was a pow then he should get everything coming to him that he's entitled to, and more. If he really was a deserter, of course, same deal.

Apparently those who were in his unit had to remain silent until he was recovered which makes sense now that he's been released and being labeled a hero they're spilling the Army issued beans, this should be interesting.

OK but what are they saying now ?

Is this a real rescued POW, or something else ?

Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-deserter-or-hero/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
___

This was a political move to start the process of closing Gitmo in time for the US mid term elections.

[N_Fiddledog]

$1:

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.”

Bob Bergdahl responded in an email: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”

One night, after finishing a guard-duty shift, Bowe Bergdahl asked his team leader whether there would be a problem if he left camp with his rifle and night-vision goggles — to which the team leader replied “yes.”

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

Then another night he actually did disappear. Nobody knows the details of how or why, but the truth of them will tell us how much sympathy he deserves.

There's loud chatter erupting from rank and file military right now though, and they've made up their minds. Bergdahl is a deserter and a traitor who got at least 6 of their comrades in arms killed.

[BRAH]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

$1:

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.”

Bob Bergdahl responded in an email: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”

One night, after finishing a guard-duty shift, Bowe Bergdahl asked his team leader whether there would be a problem if he left camp with his rifle and night-vision goggles — to which the team leader replied “yes.”

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

Then another night he actually did disappear. Nobody knows the details of how or why, but the truth of them will tell us how much sympathy he deserves.

There's loud chatter erupting from rank and file military right now though, and they've made up their minds. Bergdahl is a deserter and a traitor who got at least 6 of their comrades in arms killed.

Meh, this doesn't matter to the Left and Lame Stream Media because he's Obama's released POW and they will do everything to protect him saying he suffers from Homeland Syndrome.

[xerxes]

Are you going to have to make me drag Reagan into this?

$1:

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought President Reagan's approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that "he had the duty to bring those Americans home."
[...]

The arms-for-hostages proposal divided the administration. Longtime policy adversaries Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the deal, but Reagan, McFarlane and CIA director William Casey supported it. With the backing of the president, the plan progressed. By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called "a hostage bazaar."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-iran/

Or should I bring up Jessica Lynch? While she wasn't a deserter, her rescue was a complete pr stunt.

[BRAH]

xerxes xerxes:

Are you going to have to make me drag Reagan into this?

$1:

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought President Reagan's approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that "he had the duty to bring those Americans home."
[...]

The arms-for-hostages proposal divided the administration. Longtime policy adversaries Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the deal, but Reagan, McFarlane and CIA director William Casey supported it. With the backing of the president, the plan progressed. By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called "a hostage bazaar."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-iran/

Or should I bring up Jessica Lynch? While she wasn't a deserter, her rescue was a complete pr stunt.

Meh, when this occurred with Reagan the United States and the West was not at War with Islamic Extremists and Jessica Lynch that's apples and oranges nice try.

The timing of this exchange works for Obama politically, the VA scandal has taken a back seat and with US midterm elections around the corner it sets the ground work to close Gitmo appeasing to his base and possibly helping Democrats who are making their dissatisfaction with him well known.
CNN: Dems Privately Calling Obama ‘Detached, ‘Flat Footed,’ ‘Incompetent’
http://freebeacon.com/issues/cnn-dems-privately-calling-obama-detached-flat-footed-incompetent/

[N_Fiddledog]

xerxes xerxes:

Or should I bring up Jessica Lynch? While she wasn't a deserter, her rescue was a complete pr stunt.

The fact she wasn't a deserter is pretty important. If Bergdahl was it changes everything. He either was, or he was this dissatisfied kid who thought he'd go native, got drunk with the wrong group of natives and they spirited him off.

If he deserted though he has to answer to his fellow soldiers for the below as described by one of his fellow soldiers who was there.

$1:

His disappearance translated into daily search missions across the entire Afghanistan theater of operations, particularly ours. The combat platoons in our battalion spent the next month on daily helicopter-insertion search missions (called "air assaults”) trying to scour villages for signs of him. Each operations would send multiple platoons and every enabler available in pursuit: radio intercept teams, military working dogs, professional anthropologists used as intelligence gathering teams, Afghan sources in disguise. They would be out for at least 24 hours. I know of some who were on mission for 10 days at a stretch. In July, the temperature was well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit each day.

These cobbled-together units’ task was to search villages one after another. They often took rifle and mortar fire from insurgents, or perhaps just angry locals. They intermittently received resupply from soot-coated Mi-17s piloted by Russian contractors, many of whom were Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. It was hard, dirty and dangerous work. The searches enraged the local civilian population and derailed the counterinsurgency operations taking place at the time. At every juncture I remember the soldiers involved asking why we were burning so much gasoline trying to find a guy who had abandoned his unit in the first place. The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was all the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition.

On July 4, 2009, a human wave of insurgents attacked the joint U.S./Afghan outpost at Zerok. It was in east Paktika province, the domain of our sister infantry battalion (3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry). Two Americans died and many more received wounds. Hundreds of insurgents attacked and were only repelled by teams of Apache helicopters. Zerok was very close to the Pakistan border, which put it into the same category as outposts now infamous—places like COP Keating or Wanat, places where insurgents could mass on the Pakistani side and then try to overwhelm the outnumbered defenders.

One of my close friends was the company executive officer for the unit at Zerok. He is a mild-mannered and generous guy, not the kind of person prone to fits of pique or rage. But, in his opinion, the attack would not have happened had his company received its normal complement of intelligence aircraft: drones, planes, and the like. Instead, every intelligence aircraft available in theater had received new instructions: find Bergdahl. My friend blames Bergdahl for his soldiers’ deaths. I know that he is not alone, and that this was not the only instance of it. His soldiers’ names were Private First Class Aaron Fairbairn and Private First Class Justin Casillas.

Though the 2009 Afghan presidential election slowed the search for Bergdahl, it did not stop it. Our battalion suffered six fatalities in a three-week period. On August 18, an IED killed Private First Class Morris Walker and Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen during a reconnaissance mission. On August 26, while conducting a search for a Taliban shadow sub-governor supposedly affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss was shot in the face and killed. On September 4, during a patrol to a village near the area in which Bergdahl vanished, an insurgent ambush killed Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews and gravely wounded Private First Class Matthew Martinek, who died of his wounds a week later. On September 5, while conducting a foot movement toward a village also thought affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey stepped on an improvised land mine. He died the next day.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... night.html

Feel free to show us how that compares to the Jessica Lynch thing.

[xerxes]

Well you're saying this Bergdahl exchange is for pr or as a smoke screen. Same with Jessica Lynch. She was the feelgood story of the war. A good 'ol American girl serving her country who's captured by the enemy and saved in time for the evening news.

[N_Fiddledog]

$1:

The White House did not take into consideration the circumstances in which Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl wound up in Taliban captivity when negotiating his release. Even, reports that he may have deserted.

The New York Post reports that a White House official said “Frankly, we don’t give a s–t why he left,” when the subject of his possible desertion was raised. “He’s an American soldier. We want to bring him home.”

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/wh-berg ... lA.twitter

So yeah Xerxes...it's been five years. Why now?

Blogger BigFurHat puts forward this theory.



So you're saying Jessica was also a squirrel, is that it?

But Bergdahl got people killed who didn't have to be, and he creates a new climate where the US appears to be saying, "Hell yeah, we'll negotiate with terrorists. Kidnap somebody".

Even if we accept your interpretation of the Lynch story did Jessica Squirrel also do that?

Apples and oranges much?

[BRAH]

xerxes xerxes:

Well you're saying this Bergdahl exchange is for pr or as a smoke screen. Same with Jessica Lynch. She was the feelgood story of the war. A good 'ol American girl serving her country who's captured by the enemy and saved in time for the evening news.

It's not the same because Obama and the Democrats are in trouble politically as the base is not happy them and especially with him as he ran on the promise of closing Gitmo which he has yet to do. So Obama probably thought this exchange would help him with his base and Democrats well it's not turning out that way as it's actually back firing which raises the question who are his advisors?

[xerxes]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

$1:

The White House did not take into consideration the circumstances in which Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl wound up in Taliban captivity when negotiating his release. Even, reports that he may have deserted.

The New York Post reports that a White House official said “Frankly, we don’t give a s–t why he left,” when the subject of his possible desertion was raised. “He’s an American soldier. We want to bring him home.”

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/wh-berg ... lA.twitter

So yeah Xerxes...it's been five years. Why now?

Blogger BigFurHat puts forward this theory.



So you're saying Jessica was also a squirrel, is that it?

But Bergdahl got people killed who didn't have to be, and he creates a new climate where the US appears to be saying, "Hell yeah, we'll negotiate with terrorists. Kidnap somebody".

Even if we accept your interpretation of the Lynch story did Jessica Squirrel also do that?

Apples and oranges much?

Uh...I don't know how to answer that. But let's forget about Jessica Lynch then. How about Galid Shalit? Israel, the notorious terrorist appeasers, released 1027 Palestinians, a good number of which had Israeli blood on their hands, in exchange for ONE soldier.

Was that wrong?