BERGDAHL the real story

[Steve James]

I think it'd be interesting to know whether Congress would have agreed to this exchange/release at all. I mean, I wonder whether it would be possible for them to agree on anything at all. However, if the WH had notified them 30 days earlier --though I don't think that exchanges were the purpose of the law-- would Congress have agreed or would it have simply resulted in no exchange at all. "If" and I have to say that because I don't know, the negotiations had been going on for years and this opportunity suddenly came up, I think if I were in the same position I would have done the same thing. Yeah, it'd be illegal. Otoh, if I were in the military, I'd want my CO to make that call.

It reminded me of a case where a surgeon needed to perform an emergency transplant or the child would die. The problem was that the parents were out of the country or unavailable. So, the choice was to break the law or do the surgery. Of course, he couldn't know the kid's character. But, like I said, if it were me, I'd know what I ought to do.

Hey, Roosevelt sold weapons to the UK because it was the right thing to do.

[allen2saint]

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) doesn’t think that an apology from the White House goes far enough to assuage congressional concern about President Obama’s decision to ignore Congress in a deal with the Taliban to secure the release of Sgt. Bergdahl.

“I don’t know that an apology is enough for breaking the law,” Paul said. “I’m not sure I’m willing to accept an apology on that.”.

Or, translated:

"I am the same guy who only a few years ago said laws against racial discrimination should be abolished so business owners could be free to deny service to whomever they want. But now, I'm going to try to run for president, so I'm going to disingenuously grandstand and stir up as much suspicion against this president as I possibly can. "

[grzegorz]

The fact that there was a lie that 6 soldiers died because of the POW says it all.

It's nothing more than anti-Obama propaganda.

Reagan gave missiles to the "enemy." How come the right wasn't whining about that?

[Franklin]

was there a law that was broken...
to me that seems like it should be the only issue in the matter


all the rest is just debate about morality- was it right, was it wrong..

the debate about morality can be the basis for creating future laws..
so that the future should hopefully be a better place... etc

the debate that other people have broken the law or done bad things also seems to me to have very little relevance...


in a society hat is governed by law the issue should be if a law was broken or if not.....

arguing that other people have broken the law..
or that the law is studid...
well that doesn't really matter... if a law was broken
if a law was broken then what happened was illegal...


now I don't know much of the story..
just some headlines that i have read on the internet...
was there law that was broken in this deal?

[grzegorz]

Gitmo itself violates all laws but no one on the right says anything about that because that was Bush-Cheney.

[gzregorz]

Bowe Bergdahl's father receives death threats: police chief

(Reuters) - The father of Bowe Bergdahl, the Idaho soldier released from captivity in a controversial prisoner swap with the Taliban, has received emailed death threats that authorities are investigating, an Idaho police chief said on Saturday.

The first of the death threats sent to Bob Bergdahl at his home near Hailey, Idaho, was received on Wednesday, the same day the city canceled a planned rally celebrating the release of his son, Hailey Police Chief Jeff Gunter said.

"There were four specific emails with death threats given to the FBI and they are looking into it,” Gunter told Reuters in an interview.

Authorities are providing security to Bob Bergdahl and his wife, Jani, but Gunter declined to elaborate on those measures.

Bergdahl's release after being held for nearly five years in Afghanistan provoked an angry backlash in Congress among lawmakers over the Obama administration's failure to notify them in advance. Some of Bergdahl's former comrades have charged that he was captured in 2009 after deserting his post.

U.S. military leaders have said the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture are unclear, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel urging critics to wait for all the facts to be known before rushing to judgment on Bergdahl.

The threats came as Hailey, a tourist community of some 8,000 people in the mountains of central Idaho, was buffeted by hundreds of vitriolic phone calls and emails.

The celebratory spirit that infused Hailey a week ago with news of Bergdahl’s release turned to apprehension as an onslaught of angry messages were directed at city officials, businesses and friends of the Bergdahls over a hometown rally to mark his freedom planned for June 28.

As many as 15,000 supporters and protesters were expected to descend on Hailey for an event that would have overwhelmed the resources and infrastructure of the remote mountain town and potentially risked public safety and property, city officials have said.

Residents of the close-knit community have been surprised and dismayed by an angry backlash that seemed to fault them for seeking to aid the Bergdahls in a time of need, Gunter said.

“We’ve always come together in tragedy or crisis, whether it be fire or one of our own being a prisoner of war. Whatever the problem is, the community will be there to help the people experiencing it,” he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/ ... 2720140608

[allen2saint]

So, bullying from the Right Wingers is like this when there's a Democrat in the White House. Imagine what it would be like if Rand Paul or someone like him became president?

The man was held for 5 years and his whole town is terrorized because they want to celebrate? OK, so maybe he cracked and did something wrong? Who f'ing cares. He served under extreme conditions, was captured and we got him back. These people will stop at nothing to politicize an event and try to smear the prez for their own ends.

[Steve James]

IInm, the law is that Congress must be informed 30 days before anyone is released from Gitmo. That regulation was not followed.

That said, it comes down to a "Merchant of Venice" type situation where the whole point is getting the pound of flesh because it's the "law." I know that other issues are secondary, but imo justice always comes first. I'd say the injustice and unfairness is evident in the fact that, although no one knows what really happened but Bergdahl, so many people are ready to condemn him. Supposedly, everyone's innocent until proven guilty, but that's just US bs. Correct me, but, were the 5 guys released actually convicted in a court of a crime? Were they being held legally? Or, were laws made up to make it legal to hold people indefinitely without trial? If Obama said that in 30 days he'd release all the Gitmo prisoners, would that be cool? And ok, the law was broken, what should a fair punishment?

Anyway, it's true that morality has little to do with American laws. The stuff happening with the town is sickening, but just good old American mob mentality enabled by the internet and ideology. It's true that if Reagan had brought him home, the reaction would have been different. Not that it would have been right, either. If there's a trial, we should at least wait to hear what the guy on trial has to say. He wasn't a defector, and from what I hear, it's f-in hard to desert in Afghanistan, especially given that everyone there is a volunteer. Bergdahl did break the rules by going off base without permission. Maybe he had a girl or maybe he wanted to watch sunrises or sunsets. He deserves and will face a military court for that, and for getting guys killed looking for him. He isn't an automatic hero by any stretch. But, I wasn't there.

[grzegorz]

I hear he became upset about what the Americans were doing in Afghanistan when he heard fellow soldiers bragging about running over children. I've heard these stories from Iraqi vets too, they were given orders to never stop due to the threat of ambush therefore running people over became acceptable to high command.

Reminds me of when the pro NFL football player started complaining and got shot by his own.

[Steve James]

Ah well, O'Reilly and company had some interesting things to say about Bergdahl's dad (especially the beard).
http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/06/0 ... ely/199608

[grzegorz]

13 Things You Need to Know About Bowe Bergdahl

The late Michael Hastings wrote the definitive magazine profile of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for Rolling Stone in June 2012. Now that America's Last Prisoner of War has been released, in a prisoner exchange for five high-ranking Taliban officials, Hastings' piece continues to offer crucial context – about why Bergdahl volunteered for service in the first place, about how this intense, moral young man became so horrified by America's "good war" that he walked away from his unit's remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009, and about the abortive negotiations that could have secured Bergdahls release years ago.

Here 13 things you need to know about the American POW who is coming finally home, in the words of Hastings' 2012 feature.

Read Hastings' full feature on Bowe Bergdahl, "America's Last Prisoner of War"

1) Bowe grew up near Hailey, Idaho, the son of California expats and ski bums Jani and Bob Bergdahl, who lived "nearly off the grid" on 40 acres, home-schooling Bowe and his sister Sky in a demanding curriculum:

Devout Calvinists, they taught the children for six hours a day, instructing them in religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. "Ethics and morality would be constant verbiage in our conversations," his father recalls. "Bowe was definitely instilled with truth. He was very philosophical about perceiving ethics."

2) Obsessed with Bear Grylls and Man vs. Wild, Bowe sought at age 20 to join the French Foreign Legion.

He traveled to Paris and started to learn French, but his application was rejected. "He was absolutely devastated when the French Foreign Legion didn't take him," Bob says.

3) Seeking adventure, instead, in American uniform, Bergdahl enlisted in the Army in 2008. His intensity alienated fellow soldiers. A friend from his unit, Jason Fry, recalled Bowe's fierce independence and his prophetic warning:

"He wanted to be a mercenary, wanted to be a free gun," says Fry. "He had a notion he was a survivalist, claimed he knew how to survive with nothing because he grew up in Idaho…. Before we deployed… him and I were talking about what it would be like," Fry recalls. Bowe looked at his friend and made no bones about his plans. "If this deployment is lame," Bowe said, "I'm just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan."

4) Bergdahl's unit in Afghanistan — part of the Obama surge — was beset by deficits of leadership, "a collapse in unit morale and an almost complete breakdown of authority."

The unruly situation was captured by … a British documentary filmmaker [whose] footage shows a bunch of soldiers who no longer give a shit: breaking even the most basic rules of combat, like wearing baseball caps on patrol instead of helmets.

5) As his tour dragged on, the hellish reality of war — including seeing an Afghan child run over by an American truck — weighed on Bergdahl, who came to see America's presence in Afghan as "disgusting."

"I am sorry for everything here," Bowe told his parents. "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…

"We don't even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks."

6) After receiving an email from his father exhorting him to "OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE," Bowe slipped out of his unit's barracks on June 30th, 2009. One man versus the wilds of Afghanistan, Bergdahl was equipped with just a knife, water, a digital camera and his diary. Barely 24 hours later, he'd be taken prisoner. Bergdahl's capture is recorded in radio intercepts later released by WikiLeaks:

"WHAT HAPPENED. IS THAT TRUE THAT THEY CAPTURED AN AMERICAN GUY?"

"YES THEY DID. HE IS ALIVE."

7) Bergdahl could have been freed in a prisoner exchange almost immediately, but the American officer in charge did not pull the trigger on a prisoner swap:

Tribal elders from the nearby village...had been asked by the Taliban to arrange a trade with U.S. forces. The insurgents wanted 15 of their jailed fighters released, along with an unidentified sum of money, in exchange for Bowe. The officer hedged, unwilling or unable to make such a bargain, and no deal was struck.

8) There was an official cover-up — one that included White House pressure on the New York Times and AP to keep Bergdahl's name out of the papers.

[T]he Pentagon also scrambled to shut down any public discussion of Bowe. Members of Bowe's brigade were required to sign nondisclosure agreements [forbidding] them to discuss any "personnel recovery" efforts – an obvious reference to Bowe…. As Bowe's sister, Sky, wrote in a private e-mail: "I am afraid our government here in D.C. would like nothing better but to sweep PFC Bergdahl under the rug and wash their hands of him."

9) At one point during his captivity, Bergdahl escaped:

For his part, Bowe does not appear to be a willing hostage. [In] August or September [of 2011], he reportedly managed to escape. When he was recaptured, he put up such a struggle that it took five militants to overpower him. "He fought like a boxer," [said] a Taliban fighter who had seen Bowe.

10) Negotiations to bring Bergdahl home have been in the works for years — with Obama originally imagining the prisoner swap as an election-year overture toward a durable peace with the Taliban.

President Obama [has] announced that the United States will now pursue "a negotiated peace" with the Taliban. That peace is likely to include a prisoner swap – or a "confidence-building measure," as U.S. officials working on the negotiations call it – that could finally end the longest war in America's history. Bowe is the one prisoner the Taliban have to trade. "It could be a huge win if Obama could bring him home," says a senior administration official familiar with the negotiations. "Especially in an election year, if it's handled properly."

11) But the swap didn't have the backing of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, who weren't ready to negotiate an end to the war, preferring the bloody path of counterinsurgency operations.

...Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are very wary about making a swap for Bowe. "Panetta and Hillary don't give a shit about getting him home," says one senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations. "They want to be able to say they COINed their way out of Afghanistan, or whatever, so it doesn't look like they are cutting and running."

12) The negotiations were also impeded by Senator John McCain, who was typically level-headed in this exchange with future Secretary of State John Kerry.

McCain, who endured almost six years of captivity as a prisoner of war, threw a fit at the prospect of releasing five Taliban detainees.

"They're the five biggest murderers in world history!" McCain fumed.

Kerry, who supported the transfer, thought that was going a bit far. "John," he said, "the five biggest murderers in the world?"

McCain was furious at the rebuke. "They killed Americans!" he responded. "I suppose Senator Kerry is OK with that?"

13) The bureaucratic clusterfuck in Washington had even led Bergdahl's heartbroken father to seek his own negotiations with Bowe's captors — explaining Bob Bergdahl's beard and controversial command of conversational Arabic and Pashto.

Bob has considered going over to Pakistan – he's grown a bushy beard, and he has sent his own YouTube video, directed at the Taliban, asking for his son's release. "I'll talk to them," he says. "I'll bring him home myself."

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[yeniseri]

McCain, who endured almost six years of captivity as a prisoner of war, threw a fit at the prospect of releasing five Taliban detainees.
"They're the five biggest murderers in world history!" McCain fumed.
Kerry, who supported the transfer, thought that was going a bit far. "John," he said, "the five biggest murderers in the world?"
McCain was furious at the rebuke. "They killed Americans!" he responded. "I suppose Senator Kerry is OK with that?"

I am shocked that McCain responded as he did but his politicial affiliation is key. He once stated that this was a good idea until he evolved politically, as of 3 weeks ago
The fellows released are not the biggest murderers in world history! Perhaps hyperbole or 'false flag' disinformation but it has been proven that those released by previous occupants of WH, all tended to go back to the battlefield so no secret here. I have seen recent stories where death threats were sent to Bergdahl's father and that is the most despicable thing for any American who claims he is for freedom. damn bastards! I will reiterate that when fascism come to US America, it will be OK according to the US Constitution, carried by the flag and a cross! Paraphrased, of course.

[Peacedog]

Two of the five men released were the primary organizers behind the Hazara genocide in Afghanistan that killed an estimated 800,000 people under Taliban rule.

The bottom line is that the US government released five men that will in all likelihood killed thousands, if not more people, when they return to Afghanistan in exchange for a delusional asshole that very unwisely deserted his post and spent the next five years getting ass-raped in various Taliban camps.

The reality is that these five pieces of crap should have simply been executed and done with.

[grzegorz]

Really? So guilty until proven innocent? Is that the American way?

According to this only one was a possible war criminal.

http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanista ... story.html

[Kevin_Wallbridge]

the Hazara genocide in Afghanistan that killed an estimated 800,000 people

I don't really want to get into this argument, but isn't that number high by a couple of decimal points?