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Asked whether the Taliban would be inspired by the exchange to kidnap others, a commander laughed. “Definitely." In the days and hours leading up to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl last week, his Taliban captors in Pakistan prepared for a big sendoff. Those selected to physically hand Bergdahl over to U.S. officials at a pre-arranged location on the other side of the border in Afghanistan rehearsed the messages they wanted to convey to the American people. A videographer was assigned to cover the event, for propaganda purposes. And those closest to Bergdahl commissioned a local tailor to make him...

The announcement that the U.S. government had secured the release of missing U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and that it was freeing five senior Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay has been portrayed first and foremost as a prisoner exchange. But the four-year history of secret dialogue that led to Saturday's release suggests that the main goal of each side may have been far more sweeping. It was about setting the stage for larger discussions on a future peaceful Afghanistan. As The Associated Press first reported in 2011, talks about releasing the five senior Taliban reach back to at least late 2010,...

The State Department’s attempt to shut up the soldiers who served with Bowe Bergdahl at the time of his capture may end up backfiring on the White House, which has apparently decided to attack their integrity rather than explain their own spin on the issue. One soldier appeared on Fox and Friends this morning who took part in the post-desertion search for Bergdahl and said that the military instructed them to lie about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance (via Noah Rothman at Mediaite): “The sentiment that everybody knew was that he walked off the base in the middle of the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Among the most tantalizing mysteries surrounding Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s departure from his U.S. military base in 2009 is this: Was he trying to find the Taliban? Or did he simply wander away and get captured? Politicians and members of the military have criticized the Obama administration’s decision to swap five jailed Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, saying the soldier may have deserted. Until now, few details have emerged about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance from his base. But The Washington Post has reached Afghan villagers who spotted Bergdahl shortly after he slipped away from his base. To them, it’s clear something...

Five years ago, I publicly raised questions about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion from Blackfoot Company, 1-501 Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division. A few weeks after his so-called “capture” in late June 2009, three conflicting accounts surfaced: U.S. officials told the Associated Press Bergdahl had “walked off” the base with three Afghans; the Taliban claimed on its website that “a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison” and into their arms; and Bergdahl claimed in his Taliban “hostage video” that he had “lagged behind a patrol” before being captured. I asked on my blog: Were...

The Battle of Kamdesh, one of the most deadly military engagements during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, turned especially bloody – leaving eight Americans dead and 22 wounded – because troops and aircraft normally tasked to support U.S. fighting men and woman were diverted to search for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The Oct. 3, 2009 battle at Combat Outpost Keating, near the town of Kamdesh in Nuristan province, lasted more than 12 hours and earned two Army staff sergeants the Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery the Pentagon can bestow on a warrior. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2647711/Revealed-Hunt-Bowe-Bergdahl-left-troops-unprotected-bloody-battle-left-EIGHT-U-S-soldiers-dead-22-wounded-produced-two-Medal-Honor-recipients.html#ixzz33dBfsoz2 Follow us: @MailOnline...

In his five years of captivity, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was never listed by the Pentagon as a prisoner of war. Nor has the U.S. applied that term to any of its Taliban prisoners — including the five senior Taliban figures who were released last weekend from detention at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom. A look at how that process works:

(CNN) - Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow was the team leader with Bowe Bergdahl the night Bergdahl disappeared. "Bergdahl is a deserter, and he's not a hero," says Buetow. "He needs to answer for what he did." Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He's looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban. "I heard it straight from the interpreter's lips as he heard it over the radio," said Buetow. "There's a...

As one of the characters in “Anchorman” observed of its bloody brawl between news teams: Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. Two days after President Obama broke the law to arrange an insanely reckless swap of five incredibly dangerous Taliban terrorists for captive American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, virtually every aspect of the deal has blown up in Obama’s face, and the whole thing has soured into another five-star scandal for an Administration riddled with them. Maybe it’s the accumulated weight of Obama fatigue, or the sheer stupidity and arrogance the President displayed in...

The Pentagon on several occasions had ground-level intelligence on where ArmySgt. Bowe Bergdahl was being held captive at various times — down to how many gunmen were guarding him — but special operations commanders repeatedly shelved rescue missions because they didn’t want to risk casualties for a man they believed to be a “deserter,” sources familiar with the mission plans said. Commanders on the ground debated whether to pull the trigger on a rescue several times in recent years, according to one of the sources, a former high-level intelligence official in Afghanistan, who said the conclusion each time was that...

For all the yellow ribbons strewn across his hometown in Idaho and the gratitude expressed by his parents in an emotional visit to the White House on Saturday, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will receive a hero’s welcome when he returns to the United States after nearly five years in Taliban captivity. From military forums across the country, a groundswell of anger is rising over the Obama administration’s silence on perhaps the most controversial question surrounding the deal that freed Bergdahl in exchange for five senior Taliban members: Was he a deserter? So far, the U.S....

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a "mujahid," or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News. The reports indicate that Bergdahl's relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, "he became much more of an accepted fellow" than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry...

Reid calls it 'a big deal over nothing'. The Democratic Party seems to have a go-to line to reflect apathy for controversial issues plaguing the Obama administration. Asked about why he seemed to be the only one notified about the deal to retrieve Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl before it was made, Harry Reid bristled at the question. “I’m not sure I’m the only one,” he said. “A big deal over nothing. Is it Friday or is it Saturday? What difference does it make? What difference does it make?” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton infamously snapped, “What difference at this point...

The Taliban found Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl walking alone, acting abnormally and cursing his countrymen before they captured him in Afghanistan in 2009, two men who were Taliban commanders at the time told NBC News on Thursday. They said that Afghan locals first informed fighters about the soldier, and then the fighters rushed to capture him. “Our people at the time couldn’t understand his language, but it was after he was shifted to a safe location, he said he wasn’t happy with his countrymen, but he didn’t intend to convert to Islam or join mujahideen (holy warriors),” one of the commanders...

Sgt. Bowe Robert Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban in 2009 in Afghanistan. Four months ago, his family in Idaho received a letter from their son through the Red Cross. He was still alive. But sadly it looks like Barack Obama is going to leave US POW Sgt. Bowe Robert Bergdahl behind. Obama will leave Bergdahl to rot in Afghanistan after US forces bail out next year.

SMILED as soon as he heard the most famous war cry of Islam, “bismillah al-rahman al-rahim,” Arabic for “in the name of Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.” Watch Obama smile as soon as Bergdahl gives the most famous Muslim expression, the “Bismillah” or the “Basmallah”: ... The “basmallah” is the Islamic expression for victory and only indicates that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s father is a Muslim. Think that the man is acting as “Muslim” for a stealth operation to rescue his son who is already in good hands in Germany? And what is with the long beard and trimmed...

Moves to free detainees from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay are gathering pace as the administration works to close the notorious jail, a top US official said Thursday.

President Barack Obama swore as far back as 2008 he’d close the U.S.-run prison for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay. Five and a half years later, he finally took a real risk to get that process moving. The president defied Congress over the weekend, ignoring a 30-day notice rule required by law to greenlight the transfer to Qatar of five alleged members of the Taliban held at Guantánamo in exchange for the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan. It’s Obama’s most assertive move to shrink Guantánamo’s population since U.S. embassy bombings suspect Ahmed Ghailani was flown from the...

ARLINGTON, Va. – As controversy grows over the release of five hardened Taliban detainees in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the Obama administration is considering springing yet another prisoner from Guantanamo Bay.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says Obama may be impeached if the Obama administration “flows prisoners out of Gitmo.” So what happens when Obama flows them straight into Graham’s own state, like the brig at Joint Base Charleston? What will Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) do when Gitmo detainees show up at the brig at Camp Pendleton? President Obama defended the release of five top Taliban terrorists by saying that’s what happens when “wars end.” Never before have we had a president so detached from the realities of the world as we do now, at this moment. The war in Afghanistan is...