Posted on 06/07/2014 7:32:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The platoon was, an American military official would assert years later, “raggedy.”
On their tiny, remote base, in a restive sector of eastern Afghanistan at an increasingly violent time of the war, they were known to wear bandannas and cutoff T-shirts. Their crude observation post was inadequately secured, a military review later found. Their first platoon leader, and then their first platoon sergeant, were replaced relatively early in the deployment because of problems.
But the unit — Second Platoon, Blackfoot Company in the First Battalion, 501st Regiment — might well have remained indistinguishable from scores of other Army platoons in Afghanistan had it not been for one salient fact: This was the team from which Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl disappeared on June 30, 2009.
In the years since Sergeant Bergdahl’s capture by the Taliban, and even more since his release last week in a contentious prisoner exchange for five Taliban fighters, much has been written suggesting that he was a misfit soldier in something of a misfit platoon that stumbled through its first months in Afghanistan and might have made it too easy for him to walk away, as his fellow soldiers say he did.
Indeed, an internal Army investigation into the episode concluded that the platoon suffered from lapses in discipline and security in the period before Sergeant Bergdahl — a private first class at the time who was promoted while in captivity — disappeared into Paktika Province, two officials briefed on the report said.
But their problems in many ways reflected those of the Pentagon’s strategy writ large across Afghanistan at that moment of the war. The platoon was sent to a remote location with too few troops to seriously confront an increasingly aggressive insurgency, which controlled many villages in the region....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well, no wonder he went AWOL!
This is a very clear shot across the bow to anyone from the unit who speaks out. We’re going to look at everything you did and didn’t do, and we have no problem with making sh*t up.
Mary Mapes and Dan Rather, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Well, where are the OTHER deserters from that unit?
(crickets)
Shut up, NYTs.
The spin machine’s working overtime this weekend.
There’s an old military axiom that says inspection ready units aren’t fit for combat, and combat ready units aren’t fit for inspection...
Agreed. I doubt that there are more than 5% of troops in the field who shine their shoes, have white sidewalls, use brasso on their beltbuckles and so forth. But are they effective at their job? That’s the question and that’s typically what they are rated on.
And so it should be.
Spot on. If you’re in a combat cycle you’d never pass inspection. Inspections are for REMFs and generals that lead from the safety of the deep rear. Nobody ever won a war sitting on their ditty box.
Obama admin will keep throwing things until they stick or a new scandal POPS UP
So why doesn’t the media call THIS swiftboating of those who served with Bergdahl?
It meets Chris Matthews (erroneous) definition of swiftboating (which actually means to tell the truth about those you served with).
What is with the Mr. this and Mr. that???
You are exactly right
And most of those are guys trying to get out of guard duty, want to be “soldier of the quarter” or bucking for promotion. I was a notoriously disheveled soldier yet some how made E-6 in less than four years.
Ditto
Seems like the perfect reason to desert your unit and give aid and comfort to the enemy...
“Vicious truthing” is my terminology.
I know I’m a broken record but it’s in no way about Bergdahl.
Obama’s reasons or excuses for what he did are irrelevant. Had it been a decorated soldier it would still have been treason. Sicking five dangerous thugs on our soldiers, on America is treason.
I’ll say what the politically neutered bunch in D.C. won’t say, Bergdahl wasn’t worth it. No one would have been worth it, the price was too high. If Obama really could not have struck a better deal than this, he should have left him. I hate to see how many are going to pay for this but the cost will be prohibitive.
Where?
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