.
Check out # 23 , then # 19 , # 16 .
Thanks, Jet Jaguar.
Posted on 09/15/2014 2:27:14 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Staff Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left captivity to be catapulted into an overgrown spotlight of controversy and reckless speculation in May of this year. What should have been a flood of relief to see the American POW return home was replaced with, oddly enough, outrage, mostly from the Right.
Angry tweets accused Obama of endangering U.S. soldiers by exchanging five prisoners from Guantanamo for Bergdahl. Twitter filled with frothing accusations against not only the President but the POW himself, as well as his family, who even received death threats. Bergdahl was a Taliban sympathizer, it was decided, and so was his family. Obama was anti-American too. Most devastating of all, Fox News declared that Bergdahl was a deserter, that his father was a Taliban sympathizer and that the family’s visiting the president was “inappropriate.”
Welcome home, Bergdahl. After enduring being a prisoner of the Taliban, forced to sit in a “metal box,” and forgetting how to speak his own language, he then came home to learn that some consider him the enemy along with his captors. After Bergdahl’s rescue his fellow platoon mates went on Fox to speak out against him. They still claim he is no hero, and are now in book and movie deals to prove it. They say Bergdahl mentioned wanting to disappear into the mountains and go to China, that he sent home some possessions (confirmed in the letter he wrote home), and he was learning the local language.
Bergdahl had gone missing in the past before returning to his unit, and a letter he wrote to his parents about the cruelty he had witnessed from his fellow soldiers against the people of the region showed he had become disillusioned, going so far as to say he was ashamed of being American. Bergdahl wrote about seeing soldiers “running their children down in the dirt streets” in armored trucks and laughing in the Afghanis’ faces.
There is also the fact that Bergdahl was a model soldier and this caused jealousy among some men in his unit. His initial good behavior contrasted with the rest of the unit to some degree. The unit “lacked discipline” and the first Sergeant was a yelling, cursing man with strange habits.
“The few good SGTs are getting out as soon as they can,” Bergdahl told his parents in his letter. One of the soldiers who served alongside Bergdahl, Josh Korder, spoke out against him. However, Korder was “other than” honorably discharged. After Bergdahl’s disappearance his platoon mates claimed they found a note that proved his desertion. No such note appeared in the classified file on Bergdahl.
Perhaps Bergdahl did desert his unit. It is not known what happened that day, as the investigation is still being conducted. An extension has been given, so the wait will be even longer. In the meantime, Bergdahl is on desk duty after extensive medical attention and debriefings.
To be fair, it is very possible that, overcome with grief or disgust, Bergdahl did leave willingly. He appears to have been without many options and felt morally opposed to his unit’s actions. But even if that turns out to be the case he has suffered extensively the past five years and his intentions thus far appear more noble than reckless or malevolent. He definitely does not fit the bill of a traitor, and the overblown controversy surrounding Bergdahl ignores the human elements to the story.
Yet from the way the commentators describe it, desertion is the worst possible thing for a soldier, and Bergdahl is a literal traitor in some eyes. The facts have escaped them, however, and their emotional response is just that. In World War II, 50,000 U.S. soldiers deserted, and in fact desertions are relatively common in wars. Rarely are American soldiers punished with the severity Bergdahl has demanded be administered to him. Some called for the death penalty, a traitor’s punishment. The last time a soldier was given the death penalty was 70 years ago, and that was mostly as an example. The last execution for desertion before that was 140 years ago. It just is not done.
90 percent of America’s deserters are not even tried. “Failure to adapt,” psychological issues, and other reasons explain why they walk off. Soldiers are held to such admirable or unrealistically high standards that when one, or as has been shown even thousands, act human with human weaknesses they become fodder for the outrage machine. Or at least this one did.
If Bergdahl is proved to be a deserter, the options are less dramatic than what the blood-thirsty crowd craves. He may simply be let go with honors, given the circumstances, or he may spend some time in prison. If he is given a dishonorable discharge, Bergdahl will lose his veteran’s benefits. Execution does not appear on the table, however, nor should it.
The case is not easy to discern, but the controversy, overblown and over-simplified, has robbed Bergdahl of his name and casts judgment before the facts. Real life in not like G.I. Joe, where the good guys and the bad guys are easily discernible and sorted out for the sake of convenience. Sometimes soldiers lose heart. Sometimes they see terrible things. Sometimes people with good intentions do desperate things. Should Bergdahl be found a deserter, Americans need to keep a calm head and whatever happens, let the man move on with his life.
Ohhhh, America look at the pretty shiny things.
Medal of Honor Press Conference: Army Command Sgt. Maj. Bennie G. Adkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4NHeJTaJOo&index=2&list=PLitjSv4Sbrky0sK2t-AEVvxemFh9BS1Sx
THREE OF FIVE DETAINEES SWAPPED ARE NOW ISIS LEADERS
Posted by Staff on September 15, 2014
Remember when Obama committed treason by bypassing Congress and swapping five high-value detainees for one American traitor?
Remember the speech Obama gave last week telling Americans that we must take on ISIS?
Put together the two and you have a case for charges of treason against Barack Hussein Obama.
It is being reported that at least 3 of the 5 detainees involved in the swap have joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq as commanders and are using that rank to usher in an “Islamic Caliphate” (a Sunni Islamic Theocracy - contrary to Obama’s claims that ISIS is not Islamic).
The “Taliban 5” who were transferred from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to custody in Doha, Qatar, are Mohammad Fazl, Khairullah Khairkhwa, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Norullah Noori, and Mohammad Nabi Omari. They have largely disappeared from view since they were dropped off in Doha, but eyewitnesses place Fazi, Wasiq, and Noori in Iraq and Syria fighting with ISIS.
This confirms our worst fears when the swap took place.
One Constitutional expert believes that this is a clear and historical example of presidential treason.
That's enough!
Jillian Moyet, eh? More disgusting by the word.
Let him die, is my guess.
Ping to 23. Politicalears.com is blocked from FR.
Interesting claim.
Bergdahl is worth five subhuman, jihadi cockroaches. What is Marine Sgt. Tahmooressi worth?
This poses a problem for the Obola administration. In two years a republican could be in the White Hut which will result in a fresh look at this Bergdahl mess...Look for Bergdahl to either;
1. Be granted early retirement and then allowed to leave the states for a legal jurisdiction beyond the control of the US...
2. Be killed in an, ‘Army’, accident.
Obama can never allow the truth of this prisoner swap to see the light of day...
If true, this would be a major story. But it’s not.
President Barack Obama took significant heat at the time for releasing the five detainees, with some critics also taking issue with the ex-detainees’ new terms of custody — being transferred to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar with restrictions on their political behavior but relative freedom of movement within the country.
We didn’t find any news reports about what the ex-detainees have been up to recently, but we quickly noticed a couple of red flags that made us suspicious of the email’s claims. For starters, the claim in politicalears.com is entirely unsourced.
In addition, we’d run into politicalears.com before and found the site less than credible. Earlier this month, we looked at its claim that “over 73 percent of all donations raised” from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge “are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations.” We gave it a Pants on Fire.
Experts who study the region told us the claim was wrong. The ex-detainees “are all in Qatar. This is nonsense,” said Barnett R. Rubin, director and senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that while he doesn’t doubt that the ex-detainees are dangerous to United States interests, “there is literally zero evidence” that the detainees have been spotted on the battlefield with ISIS.
Gartenstein-Ross added that the claim doesn’t even make much logical sense and betrays the author’s weak grasp on the region’s nuances.
“The ex-detainees “were in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “Based on these guys’ social networks and who their points of contact were, it’s pretty unlikely they’d be able to quickly find a way to the battlefield and have a command” in the Iraq-Syria border region.
“They are not native Arabic speakers, and it would be unfamiliar terrain culturally. They would face a lot of obstacles,” he said.
When we asked the White House if there was any evidence that one or more detainees has joined ISIS, spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said, “There is no truth to these reports.”
Our ruling
Bloggers said that “three of five detainees swapped (for Bowe Bergdahl) are now ISIS leaders.” The claim has nonexistent sourcing, has been published by sites with questionable track records for accuracy, and has been knocked down by independent experts. We rate it Pants on Fire.
.
Check out # 23 , then # 19 , # 16 .
Thanks, Jet Jaguar.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.