Moving DKos post. Bergdahl witnessed killing of child in 2009. It was covered up.
Bowe Bergdahl: "We Don't Even Care... About Running Their Children Down in the Dirt Streets"Bowe Bergdahl witnessed a careless manslaughter in 2009. The killing of a child.
And then that killing was covered up by the officers in his Army unit: no report to Army Inspector General, no unit prosecution, no detention or reduction in pay grade, no punishment whatsoever for the MRAP driver who crushed the child.
..Bowe Bergdahl was raised as a devout Christian, a Calvinist, a follower of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary, Lord of Lords, Messiah, Wonderful. As a Christian he refused to accept hateful delusions.
His last email to his parents made clear that his U.S. Army unit suffered a failure of leadership. This failure extended to support for an aggressive hatred of the local Afghan people.
It might as well have been Water Street in Manhattan in January, 2008. That's where a Wall Street CEO ran down Florence Cioffi, an office worker trying to hail a cab. He was recorded on video going 60 m.p.h. on that city street and kept going and was DUI and suffered not a whole lot more punishment than a strong talking-to. Nothing unusual.
The poster also links to a Rollings Stone article from 2011.
The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians
Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji.
Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging "savages" and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger.
Bravo Company had been stationed in the area since summer, struggling, with little success, to root out the Taliban and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. On the morning of January 15th, the company's 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields.
Not an easy article to read..
The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution.
I am glad to see President Obama defending his decision on Bergdahl.
= new reply since forum marked as read
My Dad was Navy (well, so was Mom - Navy Nurse)! 
It started so suddenly. It's planned and organized. It's shame. 
I HOPE HE GET'S TO TELL HIS STORY 
however this is nothing new war brings out the worst in people, Vietnam is a prime example only takes a little bit of digging to find out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
My brother in law saw the very same thing happen in southern Iraq. His convoy was heading up the highway when a young girl ran out into the road and stopped. The gunner on their lead vehicle fired a number of shots over her head to get her out of the way, but she just stood there. The truck hit her, and every truck in the convoy ran her over. It gave him nightmares for years.
He explained why they do that. In the early part of the Iraq war, the insurgents figured out that the American troops would stop for a child in the road. Taking advantage of this, they kidnapped a couple of local kids and sent them out into the roadway (along with a threat along the lines of "run away and we'll shoot you/your parents/your sibling, or whatever" . When the Americans stopped for the child, the Iraqi's launched an ambush.
After that the directive went out stating that convoys were no longer allowed to stop for children in roadways. Problem was, the Iraqi's noticed that the American's were still reluctant to run over the children's bodies and would swerve around them. So the Iraqi's started burying IED's along the road shoulders, and would send the children out to stand in the middle of the road or in the lane on the opposite side than the IED. That way, the American vehicles would swerve around the childs body, and CLOSER to the IED. After that, they were instructed to assume that any kid in their path was part of a plan to steer them into a bomb or ambush, and to avoid swerving.
When that was implemented, the Iraqi's stopped using children that way because the tactic no longer offered any strategic advantage.
it doesn't?
Or something.
<--- in case it's needed 
As a pacifist I sympathize with Bergdahl. I don't know if he "walked away" as claimed, but if we're offering up witnessing an atrocity as a justification, and war is more or less a continuous atrocity (IMO), does that mean the rules for desertion should be changed for all soldiers?
Walking was a pattern with him.
I'm flashing back on an episode of M*A*S*H where Pierce witnesses a baby being strangled on a bus because his cries might have attracted the enemy. He ended up breaking down in front of the shrink guy.
Heading there now.
My brother was in the army back in Desert Storm days. He told me many of the guys he served with were little better than criminals. He also witnessed the death of far too many civilians (it was the bodies of women and children that hit him hardest). He came back from that war more depressed and disillusioned than I've ever seen him, before or since. My mother told me later that he was near suicidal. I was living in another state at the time so I didn't see him when he first got back.
He has recovered in the years since but some of the stories he told me were just sickening. Absolutely beyond belief that we could consider ourselves the good guys while allowing our military to get away with unspeakable crimes.
Every time I hear about Bergdahl, I think of my brother. I suspect they have a lot in common. 
