till more facts are in. Interesting read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/us-soldier-srgt-bowe-bergdahl-of-idaho-pow-vanished-angered-his-unit.html

Don't know what other facts we need to know. He was a deserter.

I saw it in numerous sources, with no one refuting it, so I guess have more reason to assume it's true than to assume it isn't. If that makes me a right wing troll, so be it.

Bullied???????????? Really?

I saw it when I was in back in 1978 to 1982

I just think it doesn't make desertion excusable. People's lives depended on him doing his job. If he didn't, for whatever reason, then they have a right to be pissed.

He was 20 years old. He was old enough to deal with bullying--if it happened--as an adult, and not just walk away from his post.

From the US Army website:

POW personnel continue to be considered for promotion along with their contemporaries. Policy provides for each missing or captured officer/enlisted member to be considered for promotion to the next higher grade when they are eligible. The eligibility for officers is based on the date of rank in their current grade. For enlisted members, eligibility is based on time in grade and time in service.

Link to POW benefits

His promotion was based solely on time-in-grade

If they really thought he went AWOL, then why did they not object?

and either admit or deny guilt of desertion charges, because he was in captivity, I would assume. Benefit of the doubt.

CHARGED with desertion, unless it says so in the article. Presumably he wasn't able to offer any valid defense of himself because of his captivity.

I rather suspect that if they had serious reservations or suspicions about how he left, they might have held off on that stripe.

Refusing a promotion to someone who is in the hands of the enemy. As long as he wasn't officially labeled a deserter he will "stay in the system."

this morning. It was in a comment on an article I read, and I can't remember which article, so no link. The gist of it was that without promotion after a certain amount of time, the soldier would be a civilian, and no longer covered by the Geneva Conventions. It was necessary to promote him in order to continue the protections (and recourse) provided by the Conventions.

still brings you back home, even when you make a mistake or do something stupid. The outcry now, as if this was recently uncovered, is just political hay.

armed forces Bush created was driving him crazy. The GOP doesn't want to talk about what they did to the military. I think it's time the nation heard about it and I think it needs to heard on DU by those who served without being minimalized or twisted for ideological views. Over a million Americans went to Iraq and Afghanistan and they will be a big influence in this nation and the world for many years to come.

The article had numerous instances of how there was trouble with his squad, not his doing, before they shipped out and it just got more insane after that. He tried very hard to live up to his image of what a soldier was, trained diligently, all that. Perhaps he was naive, or just ignorant, but from what was described, what was going on way way off track.

The conditions described, and the death of a close friend precipitated this, IMO after reading the article. He wrote to his father many times asking what to do with something that was nothing like he was told he would be doing, and it sounded like he was suicidal.

The danger of aggressively going after him to rescue him to other soldiers and to Bergdahl himself, as the Taliban said they would kill him, was a very delicate situation.

There was never a stop in the efforts to find him, but with too aggressive of tactics the Taliban would likely kill him as a danger to them. Getting more soldiers maimed or killed was definitely not an attractive option. It was not a lack of interest on the part of the Obama administration that took so long. They were concerned about the end result and not using him as a martyr.

I think he fits in the class of those wounded in action. He was sick just before he was deployed with a bad staph infection in his leg, and his health was poor mentally and physically in captivity. In the article, it said he was clearly unwilling to be a POW.

Another article link posted here said he had tried to escape but was recaptured recently before the rescue. Several articles said he broke down crying when he realized he was finally coming home, that he had not been forgotten after all.

His father in the Rose Garden said that he could no longer speak English, or at least that was how I took his comment. I believe the man will take years to recover from this and will need all the help and protection they can give him.

JHMO.

I think it is the five terrorists in exchange for the Soldier that is the problem. I doubt that anyone complains about the Soldier coming home. It probably should have been one terrorist for one Soldier exchange.

Can't have a war without all these 'universal soldiers'.

(Don't know why.) but, the true believers will never walk away.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27645535

"There are questions regarding exactly how Sgt Bergdahl was captured by Taliban forces in 2009, with some reports indicating that he left his post without authorisation.

In the Daily Beast, soldier-turned-journalist Nathan Bradley Bethea details his experience as part of the extensive search-and-rescue effort the US military conducted after Sgt Bergdahl's disappearance - and its cost.

"Bergdahl was a deserter," he writes, "and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down."

He says that the US conducted daily search missions for Sgt Berdgahl "across the entire Afghanistan theatre of operations."

with a local?

what would it matter if he had ?
does that make his life less valuable?

people who think that these folks who were released aren't going to be watched (hell, that might even be the plan .. for them to lead the US back to others that are sought after) are kinda being naïve about or surveillance capabilities.. which is odd since most people on DU think they are extraordinary and overreaching

I'm sorry but that's bullshit.

And really fucking shitty for Bergdahl to be smeared like this by an anonymous Pentagon source.

No eye witnesses. None of his platoon saw what happened. Bergdahl has not been available to give his side yet suddenly its "incontrovertible"?

informed about it. They're already pissed. Frankly, they should release all of the Guantanamo detainees and bring all of our military personnel from Afghanistan home. Obama can't tie is f'ing shoes without the Republicans disagreeing about how he knotted the bow.
Hopefully this will all backfire on these twits.

I'm missing why this is relevant to his being rescued. He was a US soldier being held prisoner during a time of war. We have responsibilities to him no matter what state of mind he may have been in at the time he was captured.

info, on the day after he was captured, the intercept of Taliban communications, said they captured him in the latrine. You are allowed to use the latrine when you are on post, right? How is this desertion, I don't understand.

http://wikileaks.org/afg/event/2009/06/AFG20090630n1790.html

The facts are: he went missing. There is a (Wikileaks) documented US intelligence intercept of Taliban the next day, saying they captured him in the latrine. All the rest is pure conjecture. "He was odd, he was studying languages with Rosetta Stone, he was studying the culture, he kept to himself, he was disillusioned". He wanted to "walk the earth". This is what the RW says indicates he was a deserter. Seriously?

It doesn't make sense that he wrote a weird note about leaving to his dad, boxed up his uniform and mailed it home, asked whether he could take sensitive equipment off post, and then got captured inside the fence while using the biffy, without anybody else noticing intruders.

Imagine that, Taliban ninjas sneak in, soundlessly steal one guy, and it's the guy who was showing every sign in the world that he was going to split that night anyway?

Come on, use sense.

floating around, and it's not clear from anyone where Bergdahl was going--but the intercept says "we were attacking POST" when they say they caught him. So he perhaps didn't get far from his base. Some soldiers say they saw intel that said he was "crawling through the weeds on his belly" as reported by children--not terribly reliable either.

The intercepted calls didn't say he was taking a expletive, whoever did the transcript was summarizing and cleaning up as they went.

Why would two Taliban guys say they were attacking " post"? Especially when they seem to be uncertain about the details and trying to fill each other in? They would say "we were attacking the Americans in Whatevername Valley" or "attacking Camp Whatever, around back where the generators cause a lot of noise" or whatever but they wouldn't just say "the post" because it's not specific- these guys would be attacking more than one installation, if they only ever attacked the closest one those guys always would be ready for them and it would be futile.

"The Post" is like telling an American suburbanite that you'll meet them at The Starbucks.

I also know it doesn't matter in terms of bringing Bergdahl home.

We brought one of our own home.

The circumstances will be sorted out here, on our soil. All that matters to me is that he is alive and coming home.

Give his family this, at the very least, he is home, he is alive.

I'm also reserving judgment. I don't feel that all of the facts of this case have been revealed. I'm really sickened by the right wingers who are trying to imply that the father had some sort of devious involvement in all of this.

As far as I can tell, he was a father grieving over the fact that his son was in enemy hands for five years, and until I have proof otherwise, the father and the entire family have my heartfelt sympathies for what they've had to endure.

Has any bearing on leaving Bowe behind. Those 5 Gitmo detainees were going to have to be released when we leave the country anyway. Also, I guess none of these republican fuckwits know that Nixon traded prisoners to bring Senator McCain home when we was being held captive.

and a whole host of other things, so I think we should all reserve judgment and let the folks at Fox make fools of themselves.

Good lord, this thread.

He was really a SFC Green Beret or something

Maybe he was taking an expletive...

He could have had a nervous breakdown like so many other soldiers. Does that mean that we should just have left him to rot?

What is the matter with people?

Then IF and I say IF they have done something wrong, we try them here. Men risk their lives just to retrieve a dead American body from a hot zone. We don't leave fellow Americans to politics when they are POW regardless of how it may please the gop chicken hawks.

In Afghanistan. One of the harshest places on Earth. As some young white suburbanite. Never having lived less than 5 miles from a supermarket or military commissary.

What could his plan have possibly been?

That's suicide and, if true, he was lucky Afghans found him. I am guessing it is probably not true. I think he just got lost, or was really trying to commit suicide, or is just ridiculously dumb.

He'd taught himself some Pashto. He was from BFE Idaho and thought of himself as a wilderness survival expert. He only joined the army because the French Foreign Legion didn't want him.

Obama has all the information definitely more than we have. He brought him home.

Even if he did walk away from his post for whatever reason, that would be no reason to leave him behind in enemy hands. Even if he was going AWOL (which I don't think has been established yet) he'd still be an American citizen, and the government would still be obligated to retrieve him.

I certainly agree.

that alone allows the C-in-C to act w/o telling congress.

Going AWOL is unacceptable.

I hope it is not true and he is innocent until proven guilty.

Can't say who or how they are involved.

As for my personal opinion, I'm with you.

I mean, where could he possibly go in Afghanistan that would be safe?