Bergdahl_Bowe5
taliban5

Well, the last 48 hours or so have been busy, and exposed us to another bizarre choice by Barack Obama: without notifying congress he released 5 of the most dangerous Taliban we had captured; beasts considered so dangerous they were to never be released. Yet, on Saturday morning they were flown out of Gitmo and into Qatar, as one of the pre-conditions for the Taliban terrorists to release Bowe Bergdahl, a troop captured in Afghanistan in 2009.

We all wanted Bergdahl released, but the details of the method concerns everyone. Here’s what we know so far, and it gets stranger and stranger as each hour goes by.

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s recovery after five years in captivity has rekindled anger among some of his military peers over how he came to fall into enemy hands and the price the United States has paid to get him back.

Bergdahl, 28, is believed to have slipped away from his platoon’s small outpost in Af­ghanistan’s Paktika province on June 30, 2009, after growing disillusioned with the U.S. military’s war effort. He was captured shortly afterward by enemy ­forces and held captive in Pakistan by insurgents affiliated with the Taliban. At the time, an entire U.S. military division and thousands of Afghan soldiers and police officers devoted weeks to searching for him, and some soldiers resented risking their lives for someone they considered a deserter.

Bergdahl was recovered Saturday by a U.S. Special Operations team in Afghanistan after weeks of intense negotiations in which U.S. officials, working through the government of Qatar, negotiated a prisoner swap with the Taliban. In exchange for his release, the United States agreed to free five Taliban commanders from the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Here’s Catherine Herridge on the Taliban 5:

From Long war Journal: Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl exchanged for top 5 Taliban commanders at Gitmo

Ambassador John Bolton’s response:

Negative reaction to the method was virtually immediate, but then more troubling details began to emerge about Bowe Bergdahl and his father, who has a Twitter account. The father’s account is littered with sympathetic tweets for the Taliban and he retweets Taliban messages. Very strange. @RedSteeze at Twitter was the first to notice this tweet which was very quickly deleted once it began moving around Twitter:

And then there is this big scoop from James Rosen at Fox today about the concern in the intelligence community that Bergdahl wasn’t just a deserter, but collaborated with the enemy while “captured.”

A senior official confirms to Fox News that the conduct of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — both in his final stretch of active duty in Afghanistan and then, too, during his time when he lived among the Taliban — has been thoroughly investigated by the U.S. intelligence community and is the subject of “a major classified file.”

In conveying as much, the Defense Department source confirmed to Fox News that many within the intelligence community harbor serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy.

FYI: 6 of our troops died trying to find Bergdahl when he first went missing.

Accounts by Bergdahl’s squad members indicate he was deserting when captured.

The sense of pride expressed by officials of the Obama administration at the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is not shared by many of those who served with him, veterans and soldiers who call him a deserter whose “selfish act” ended up costing the lives of better men.

“I was pissed off then, and I am even more so now with everything going on,” said former Sgt. Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl’s platoon when he went missing on June 30, 2009. “Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war, and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him.”

Vierkant said Bergdahl needs to not only acknowledge his actions publicly but face a military trial for desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Take a look at this CBS report in 2012 on emails revealing Bergdahl’s attitude toward the US and the military:

Emails an American soldier reportedly sent to his parents before he was captured by the Taliban three
years ago suggest he was disillusioned and considering deserting.

Bowe Bergdahl told his parents he was “ashamed to even be American” and was disgusted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and with the Army, according to emails quoted in Rolling Stone magazine…

The Rolling Stone article, to be published Friday, also quotes other soldiers and associates of Bergdahl’s as saying that he had talked about walking to Pakistan if his deployment was “lame” and that shortly before his disappearance he had asked whether he should take his weapon if he left the base. Friends and other soldiers describe a survivalist mentality, and Bergdahl’s father, Bob, told the magazine that his son was “living in a novel.”

“The future is too good to waste on lies,” one email reads. “And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong.”

The emails were provided to the magazine by Bergdahl’s family in Idaho, which has gone public with its own discontent with U.S. efforts to free their son. There is no way to authenticate the emails.

Some of Bergdahl’s reported words read like a suicide note.

“I am sorry for everything,” he wrote. “The horror that is America is disgusting.”

He mailed home boxes containing his uniform and books.

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22 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Dave says:

    I had a comment but my head exploded. This, has to be ENOUGH.
    Or, I’m in an alternate universe.

  2. rosebud2186 says:

    As a Blue Star mother I cannot find the words, nor should I. God help us.

  3. paul14 says:

    As Congress does………….nothing!

  4. deaves1 says:

    The president not only does not have a clue when it comes to the safety of our men and women serving in harms way, he does not care. He is intent on doing things his way regardless of the price our heros pay. Congress meanwhile sits idly by sucking their thumbs spouting allot of tough words, backed by no action. Obama will continue to do as he pleases because nobody takes him to task for it.

  5. Shifra says:

    Channeling The Jerk, I will say this: I don’t know all the facts. But Obama acted stupidly.

  6. Rob_W says:

    Obama needed an excuse to release those GITMO detainees. He found it with Bergdahl.

  7. Teri says:

    Still too many unknown facts about this. Who knows what was discussed between the Taliban and this deserter. Was he trained and given a mission ? Looking past the insanity of the fact that this deal actually took place, I smell a rat’s nest.

  8. mdannyg says:

    Another thing (which I heard Savage mention today) is that the Rolling Stone article was written by Michael Hastings. Remember his rather suspicious death?

  9. Alain41 says:

    Given recent events, I have now come around to Tammy’s view that it was Obama who wanted the Victory Mosque at Ground Zero.

    • sandyl says:

      Alain, yes, I have always thought that, and also have believed for a long time that the Mosque deal had something to do with the 9-11 site flyover right after DB became President. That flyover was much more than what was explained.

      I had the same suspicions after Obama’s surprise visit to Afghanistan, I knew something bad was afoot. Then came the outing of CIA agent, the Karzai snub, and now the release of FIVE of Taliban’s worst terrorists for a deserter.

      You should also believe Tammy when she talks about Benghazi being a “kidnapping” of Amb. Stevens. Today on Rush, the substitute host asked if it had been a higher ranking American, would Obama have released KSM? I yelled at the radio, “yes….the higher ranking American was to have been Amb. Stevens.” Obama already hates us, and because he couldn’t release KSM, and the VA scandal was exposed, he hates us even more. Tammy is also right about the fact that the more we turn against him, the more he will do to us. We are seeing this play out now.

      What really is absolutely amazing to me is how clear it is that we have an enemy in the Oval office, yet we still have so many who are bewildered by Obama’s actions. Most often it is the easiest answer in front of our faces that is the real answer. If it walks, talks, acts like a duck…..

  10. strider says:

    Congress has to get out in front of the executive branch and not just react after the fact. Enough is known, the jury is in on the harm inflicted by the murky continuous stepping over the line. Just dry up the money to every government entity that is party to what seems like a conspiracy against the US.

  11. Maynard says:

    If the War Powers Act doesn’t apply to him, this law doesn’t either.

  12. ancientwrrior says:

    What a bunch of evil looking creeps, they all should have been sent to their Allah. We should stop taking prisoners in war, no quarter played on the battlefield as was done at the Alamo by Gen. Santayana. If they want to meet their Allah, I say we help them on their way. A dead Ter. is one that will not come back to fight and kill again.

  13. Dave says:

    REX over LEX.

  14. KCBob4Tam says:

    I don’t see why Qatar can’t be trusted to watch over these freaks and make sure they don’t travel. After all, they are the people that reportedly used millions in bribes to get the World Cup. I’m sure we can trust them with this.

  15. Alain41 says:

    Another ‘benefit’ of Obama arguing that it was a prisoner swap and not a hostage negotiation is that when asked if you can negotiate with terrorists why not negotiate with Republicans, admin. can say it wasn’t a negotiation.

  16. strider says:

    Degrades national security again. Lie fest from the WH wearing thin.

  17. Alain41 says:

    And now Richard Grenell is attacked for ‘conducting a dog and pony show’ of men who soldiered with Bergdahl stating comments critical of him. Don’t attack the soldiers who served or the essence of their comments, attack the media relations person who set up the interviews. Great, liberals. Not. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27688219

  18. Maynard says:

    One more comment. As Tammy has noted, the failure to notify Congress is a minor point, and the law requiring him to do so may well be unconstitutional. However, Obama’s secret maneuver is another blatant contradiction of his pledge to be the “most transparent administration ever” and to carry out functions in broad daylight. Obviously there are actions that must be handled with urgency or in private, but this is not one of them. The decision to act in stealth was purely to evade political fallout. Once again, Obama proves himself to be the opposite of what he ran as. If his supporters had any intellectual integrity, they would be deeply troubled.

  19. Dave says:

    Don’t Worrrrrrry…… The DB said… if they make trouble , we’ll just catch them again.

    No problem.

    Why didn’t I think of that?

  20. Alain41 says:

    And here’s a view from Afghanistan on the exchange. “Why is the US releasing the enemies of peace, the enemies of Afghanistan?”
    http://www.straitstimes.com/news/asia/more-asia-stories/story/afghan-massacre-village-fumes-over-us-taleban-prisoner-swap-201406

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