But the america hating terrorist garbage at fox and the teaparty will tear him apart, his family isnt safe but then neither am I or you

This poor guy is being savaged over what I had always heard was a soldier's right...to complain. My generation's war was Viet Nam. I saw too many of my friends come back changed. You can't "unsee" things, just like Bowe couldn't unsee that child run down. The RW noise machine has done some pretty hateful, deranged shit in the past. This might just top them all.

as a traitor then and swiftboated 40 years later because he told about the crud that went on.

Bergdahl would definitely have been better off if he had asked for help, to be relieved, or whatever. Then again, he didn't get much when he plainly told his superior he was thinking about leaving.

Are tickets to the military equivalent of shunning. Every dog tag in the unit is going to stop listening to you and to actively make your life hell.

Supervisors (COs) can generally be shits but even if they aren't they have a very limited range of options unless they want to get there own asses in a sling up the line. So you have a whiny post-teen who doesn't want to do latrine/murder duty? You shunt them off to the side.

I hope every news commentator that opens his(/her) mouth has spent an equivalent amount of time in similar duty before pontificating (how's the pope get into this word?) about this situation. We all know that John McShame's naval career including his time spent in the HH was not as (un)glamorous as he'd like to have it portrayed - about on the same keel as W/Previcarator-In-Chief.

but to put up with it, or walk off. His buddies didn't like him, his superior offered him nothing when he asked about leaving sensitive equipment. I think he was so despondent that he decided getting killed by Taliban was no worse than putting up with killing Afghans and staying among the gung-ho "dog-tags."

Heck, they never should have taken him in Army after he was discharged from Coast Guard.

He wasn't right for the coast guard so he joined the Army? I don't get that at all.

And to get enough "breathing" soldiers to fight Bush's war, they put the Group W bench in the cleaning closet and took all sorts of guys, like gangbangers, into the Army who wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the service right up until Dubya started two quagmires.

You know that hard-ass new uniform regulation that just came out? Probably ninety percent of it was motivated by the need to get rid of as many shitbirds as possible as quickly as possible because the fuckers are reenlisting.

His transformation from "Songbird," as his fellow prisoners of war tagged him, to national hero is a sham.

After admiring that straight-shooting/gruff McCain (reminded me of my father), I slowly figured out that little was as he related or his media machine projected. Being a WASP/ex-military does NOT make you honest or someone we can admire.

Thank you, Mr. McCain, for showing your true colors. May you grow old(er) and die realizing that you actually ended up making this country and this world a much worse place.

And I think most folks here do, too. Our bitch with Faux Noise is that they convicted him of treason and think we should have left him there. If he's truly guilty of treason, which I doubt, then he should be put before a court of law (military tribunal?), and the facts will fall as they may.

From what I understand (and I can't vouch for the veracity of the claim), Bowe had wandered off a couple of times before, but had obviously returned. Maybe needed to "clear" his head? Or possibly his way of dealing with the stress of that horrible situation.

This has been a "hidden" war. During 'Nam, that damn war was in our living rooms everyday. When you see the kid from down the street coming back from a recon mission with that dead look in his eyes, or worse, being brought back on a stretcher, screaming...well it kind of changes you. All the flag waving doesn't mean a lot. But BushCo made sure we didn't get to see all the shit these soldiers are dealing with. The flag draped coffins came in at night. There was no nightly count on the news as to how many people and planes we lost today. It was all a damn game to those chicken hawks who lied us into this mess.

So, yeah. I HOPE Bowe's actions are examined carefully, because I'm sure the truth will show he did not collaborate with the enemy, or commit any treasonous actions. He survived the best he could under horrible circumstances, and did what he had to do. Just like John McCain.

Oh, and welcome to DU!!

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They remembered clearly how full-on news coverage that splashed blood across every American dinner table in the evening - via Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley - brought the war starkly home, straight into your face. You saw the blood and carnage and misery. It made America at large turn away from Vietnam and begin protesting it openly, noisily, and unavoidably. Walter Cronkite's personal turn away from the war led to our whole country turning away, losing faith, and fighting to stop it. The neocons realized that must not be allowed to happen again. Conditions quickly ran away from LBJ and other war supporters and they couldn't control them anymore. These neocons of our recent days did everything they could to prevent that from happening.

And what smarter ways than to own and operate their own slanted snake pit that could reliably provide limited and controlled coverage? The corollary to that was - muzzling ANY contrary input. NO war opponents got face time. NO opposing views were sought out for interviews. And those who tried to force their comments into the national spotlight were laughed at, minimized, talked (or shouted) over, lambasted, insulted, denounced, and declared traitors and veritable enemies of the state. Anyone who tried to take photos and make them public, write about or speak about what was really going on over there in Iraq was punished severely. Fired. Shunned. Denounced. Called a traitor and anti-Americans and Saddam-lovers and al Qaeda sympathizers, and the old fall-backs - "commies," "socialists," "fascists," and more. In public. We were constantly demanded - "WHY do you hate America?" In public. People lost their livelihoods, their reputations, their jobs, their homes, their families. People lost their loved ones and NEVER got even close to finding solutions. And the rest of us, while we protested under cones of silence, kept being fed the same shit - "we need to give it another six months, and then we'll see." HOW MANY OF THOSE " another six months" did we get? HOW MANY TIMES WAS THAT SHIT SHOVED DOWN OUR THROATS??? How many more veterans did America create - with legs blown off - in any of those many six-months-and-we'll-see intervals?

bush/cheney made sure that NO images of the scores of flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq EVER got coverage. EVER got any attention or honor or any solemn public welcome home or thank-you from a grateful nation or Commander-in-Chief on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base. NEVER. We NEVER were allowed to see the real cost of war. They anticepticized it. Cleaned it all up. Showed only carefully-manicured and vetted images of the glory of war, without any gory details. They didn't want to risk any adverse coverage that would turn America's stomach, and then turn America's will AGAINST their murderous greedy adventurism over there. BASTARDS!!!! BASTARDS!!!!! BASTARDS!!!!! I wish I could know where they all will be laid to their final rests, whenever that time comes. So I can go and pour a full container of salt all over their graves. To sour the soil so nothing will grow.

That's one thing I will ALWAYS appreciate about President Obama. Let's never forget - one of his first official duties as Commander-in-Chief was to GO AND MEET THE COFFINS coming back from Iraq. In the middle of the night. He invited the cameras and the reporters and the news coverage. Come and see and witness and document this. And he showed himself, in person. He wasn't some chicken-shit who felt the need to hide himself and keep America in the dark about the true costs of war and that so-casually-referred-to cheap-ass, meaningless "freedom-y" thingie. He wasn't afraid to stand up and show the rest of America and the world what the true cost of war was. Something we should have been seeing YEARS earlier.

For that reason ALONE I am and will always be a supporter of President Obama. He has - and PROVED, THAT NIGHT, that he has more macho, and more of a conscience, than all the neocons and warmongers and bush/cheney-ites put together.

to keep FAUX busy for years to come. So, I'd suggest FAUX and their ilk leave Bowe alone and go after the ones who are buying our country.

Bowe was home-schooled and seems to have been a bit naïve. I can see where his view of how the Americans should have acted would be far above what was actually happening over there. Pretty sad to say, but that's been how I've felt from the get-go.

He seems like he led a protected childhood...nothing wrong with that...but for him to have been raised that way and then see what the world is today, it had to have been a real shocker for him. Who, in their right minds, could run down children and not be affected?

I just hope his mind isn't so messed up he can't recover.

About as good as it gets are Article 106 (Spies) and 106a (Espionage). A soldier can only commit the crimes that are listed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and if they can't prove he provided secrets to the enemy (which will be hard to prove - a private first class who is in the infantry doesn't have access to any) those two are right out.

My barracks-lawyer reading on this: He tried to escape twice. If he claims he was attempting to return to friendly lines, and he almost certainly will, that's a factor in mitigation. The general rule is, if you're gone more than 30 days you're a deserter, 30 or less you're just AWOL. Second factor in mitigation: it's kinda hard to get back to the company if you've been taken prisoner. Yes he was gone over 30 days, but that's what happens when you're hanging by your fucking ankles in some asshole's cave in Pakistan. My bet: AWOL, 7 days in the stockade suspended, honorable discharge so he can use the VA.

I appreciate the information as I'll probably be having this conversation with folks who think Faux Noise is the fount of all truth, so it'll be good to be armed with actual facts.
*Heavy sigh* Unfortunately, I'll be dealing with people that don't deal well with facts.

They will go after him as an American hating liar.

no less surprising than it was I served. Man after man would come back aboard from liberty with complaints about how stupid and uncivilized the people were. One day I asked a man why he was talking like that.

He told me how the stupid bastards ripped him off!

BB speaks the truth.

but I don't think that they will succeed. I think Bergdahl has a lot more smarts and compassion and knows a thing or two about blatant lieing bullshit than people giving him credit. Be prepared to be totally surprised at the humility, dignity, and gratitude that this man will show, when he starts to come out in public.

We need him to do so, very, very badly.

in Vietnam. Tells what about war and it's effect on soldiers and how nothing has changed from my time in harms way till now. How very sad.

courage to stand up for my convictions, at that time, such as he and Chelsea Manning have done. My family has served this country, under arms, for generations. I cared more, subconsciously I guess, about what it might do to them if I did walk away than the damage being wrought by our war machine. Just fact nothing else......I didn't even think about it.

guts to stay.

Tim O'Brian's work, The Things They Carried, where the author discusses going to Canada rather than being drafted to Vietnam, and concludes that he did not have the courage to head to Canada, and that it was cowardliness that got him into the war.
There is a lot of truth packed into a few words here.

A soldier in Vietnam takes off and his Army Infantry platoon goes after him, traveling around the world trying to find him and bring him back. No spoilers from me, but eventually the reader discovers what is really going on...

I have not read Going After Cacciato. I will get a copy.
O'Brian's insight into war and what it does to people is invaluable.

and not the Lord of the Flies platoon members on Fox. The damage they have done to this young man is reprehensible.

eom

But truth hurst, expecially in fascists ranks who prefer cover their ears and eyes, and instead goes into insulting the true patriots.

.

Here at home, destroying this young man AND his family, after what they've been through...... it's just so sick, and WRONG, and to see what he wrote, in his own words......

I just. ..it's too wrong. It's worse than barbaric....and knowing our fucking media attack weasels will never make amends......

And all for perverted repuke hate politics.......GODDAMN THEM

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but someday, maybe, war will be outlawed and despised as a way to settle differences or as in the case of Iraq, gaining resources. Thank god for "compassionate people" who might get caught up in the hype of serving one's country, I raise my hand, but end up facing the reality's and injustices of war, I raise my hand again, and bringing true scrutiny to bear on war's effect on the men and women who bear arms and the civilians caught in the crossfire

Blatant racism against the Vietnamese people.
The US military leadership did absolutely nothing
to mitigate it.
It was a major factor of my turing against the war.
Troops with a brain did indeed not only "walk away"
from the war in every manner possible, they also
mutinied by the thousands.

they want to discredit him so he won't be believed when he talks about the horrors that were committed by the troops.

when three guys pissed out the back of a 2 1/2 truck on a German couples car that was following us. Amurika!

don't think all troops were this bad though.

they are in the National Guard and their unit was deployed twice. Anyway, there is a game in Iraq they were telling me about called Hit the Haji... and they kept score of how many "Haji's" they hit with their Humvees. I don't know if these two guys participated in the game, I would hope not because they seem like decent men... but war does funny things to some people.

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I believe him when he speaks about the horrors forced on the Iraqi people by us and our arrogance. I've spoken with other vets who, while they don't know each other, tell the same kinds of stories.

A friend of mine married a vet and the very first time we met he told me about being ordered to kill orphaned children because if they survived, then they might seek revenge for the deaths of their family members. I still don't know if I totally believe him, it just sounds too horrible to comprehend.

But I did watch a documentary a few weeks ago about our wars and another solider spoke about an incident (for lack of a better word, other then maybe war crime) in which he and his team were ordered to take out a vehicle that was getting too close for their comfort. It turned out to be a mini-van with a father and his daughter and son inside. The father died instantly (gun shot wound I think) but the children (both of them, iirc) were still barely alive and quickly dying. Their little bodies were ripped open and full of glass from the van's shattered windows.

When the soldiers realized what they had done, one guy threw up while one of his team mates tried to give aid to the kids. The leader of the whole group came back on the radio and asked the soldiers what the hell they were doing, and the one who was trying to keep the kids alive asked for medical help for them. He was basically yelled at and told that those dying children didn't mean shit and to stop wasting his time on them.

This shit is why people, who were perfectly ok before the wars, are coming back with PTSD and depression and drug/drinking problems and issues with rage.

What have we done?

ETA: I was 14-16 when 9/11 happened and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started. While I wanted to bring down the murderers behind the attacks, I've never been real sure about the way we went into Afghanistan and, after reading reports that were not from the American MSM, I never supported going into Iraq. That made no sense to me at all and even as a teenager I could tell the Bush administration was lying about the made-up 9/11-Iraq connection.

Oddly enough, I knew about the taliban almost 2 years before all that happened. I found on on-line Feminist group that was trying to warn others that these taliban dudes were not good guys. They stone rape victims FFS. Of course no one listened, they just keep dealing with the taliban until it became too costly to do so.

Sorry, I'm not trying to derail the thread, I just wanted to get that off my chest. I can't even begin to imagine what the vets who just wake up one day and realize that they've been lied to and now see war for what it really is, or at least these 2 wars.