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Bowe Bergdahl freed by Taliban after five years of captivity
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http://news.yahoo.com/freed-us-soldier-celebrated-xmas-played-badminton-captors-181447547.html
This, in addition to the news about the five that were released... it just keeps getting worse.
Also, because Chardon is a lazy cunt:
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/143...al-story-fears-reprisal-obama-administration/
There are all the relevant tweets that I mentioned earlier.
This, in addition to the news about the five that were released... it just keeps getting worse.
Also, because Chardon is a lazy cunt:
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/143...al-story-fears-reprisal-obama-administration/
There are all the relevant tweets that I mentioned earlier.
brownindian
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I saw that the twitter page was down but this link gives all the tweets before the page went down.
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/143...al-story-fears-reprisal-obama-administration/
I am surprised that not much is being made out of this sort of deal !
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/143...al-story-fears-reprisal-obama-administration/
I am surprised that not much is being made out of this sort of deal !
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Yeah, I've concluded that this deal completely sucks. This is not what "leave no man behind" means.
Damage
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https://twitter.com/CodyFNfootball
Wow, go back about 20 hours(right after the tweet about Lebron getting sexually harrassed by Lance :chucklesit's an amazing read. Bergdahl, who Cody refers to as "B", had stopped showering, was learning the enemy's language, committed a premeditated desertion, the villagers said he was saying he wanted to join the Taliban...AND we lost several soldiers to IED's while searching for this asshole.
We swapped 5 terrorists for this guy??? What in the name of fuck????
Yea, what an asshole. There's that dangerous hate speech I was looking for. What if the person we were swapping for was a republican? What if he was Todd Palin? You literally have no idea what happened. And neither do I, so excuse me while I reserve judgement.
Stop making assumptions and calling people asshole's based off one persons account (not saying he isn't credible or this isn't true). Also, let's stop pretending that war doesn't mentally fuck people up, especially while they are in the thick of it.
Actually, let me ask you this - do you consider Pat Tillman an asshole ?
Damage
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What does it mean then? Not saying this deal does or doesn't suck, just asking.
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Guy is a deserter, people looking for him get killed...sorry, that's an asshole in my book.
If it was a Republican i still wouldn't swap the Gitmo 5 for him...i wouldn't swap anyone. If it was Todd Palin, i'd probably drone strike him...or swap Sarah for him. Not sure of your point...
There's a lot more than one person's account out there. Who's pretending anything of the sort?
No. How in your world are you tying him into this conversation?
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Well, I think the deal sucks because we gave up 5 very dangerous guys (else we wouldn't have been holding them in Gitmo), for a deserter/AWOL guy. I wouldn't give them up even for a guy who'd been captured, much less this, well, POS. As to why the POS, here's what he was writing home before he went AWOL:
That's why I think the deal sucks. As for "not leaving a man behind" -- which was a line the President used in explaining this -- that refers to men who are wounded or captured in combat, or whose bodies were left. And in that case, it means you don't give up trying to recover the men or their remains. It doesn't refer to guys who desert, and never has. There are guys who deserted during Vietnam, and some still live there. Those guys aren't the reason we fly POW flags.
I have some comrades who are still on active duty or just recently retired, and know a lot of active duty guys, and to a man, they're pissed about this.
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We Lost Soldiers in the Hunt for Bergdahl, a Guy Who Walked Off in the Dead of Night
For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl. Now we can talk about what really happened.
It was June 30, 2009, and I was in the city of Sharana, the capitol of Paktika province in Afghanistan. As I stepped out of a decrepit office building into a perfect sunny day, a member of my team started talking into his radio. “Say that again,” he said. “There’s an American soldier missing?”
There was. His name was Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, the only prisoner of war in the Afghan theater of operations. His release from Taliban custody on May 31 marks the end of a nearly five-year-old story for the soldiers of his unit, the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. I served in the same battalion in Afghanistan and participated in the attempts to retrieve him throughout the summer of 2009. After we redeployed, every member of my brigade combat team received an order that we were not allowed to discuss what happened to Bergdahl for fear of endangering him. He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth.
And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.
On the night prior to his capture, Bergdahl pulled guard duty at OP Mest, a small outpost about two hours south of the provincial capitol. The base resembled a wagon circle of armored vehicles with some razor wire strung around them. A guard tower sat high up on a nearby hill, but the outpost itself was no fortress. Besides the tower, the only hard structure that I saw in July 2009 was a plywood shed filled with bottled water. Soldiers either slept in poncho tents or inside their vehicles.
The next morning, Bergdahl failed to show for the morning roll call. The soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Blackfoot Company discovered his rifle, helmet, body armor and web gear in a neat stack. He had, however, taken his compass. His fellow soldiers later mentioned his stated desire to walk from Afghanistan to India.
The Daily Beast’s Christopher Dickey later wrote that "[w]hether Bergdahl…just walked away from his base or was lagging behind on a patrol at the time of his capture remains an open and fiercely debated question.” Not to me and the members of my unit. Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not "lag behind on a patrol,” as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.
Our deployment was hectic and intense in the initial months, but no one could have predicted that a soldier would simply wander off. Looking back on those first 12 weeks, our slice of the war in the vicinity of Sharana resembles a perfectly still snow-globe—a diorama in miniature of all the dust-coated outposts, treeless brown mountains and adobe castles in Paktika province—and between June 25 and June 30, all the forces of nature conspired to turn it over and shake it. On June 25, we suffered our battalion’s first fatality, a platoon leader named First Lieutenant Brian Bradshaw. Five days later, Bergdahl walked away.
His disappearance translated into daily search missions across the entire Afghanistan theater of operations, particularly ours. The combat platoons in our battalion spent the next month on daily helicopter-insertion search missions (called "air assaults”) trying to scour villages for signs of him. Each operations would send multiple platoons and every enabler available in pursuit: radio intercept teams, military working dogs, professional anthropologists used as intelligence gathering teams, Afghan sources in disguise. They would be out for at least 24 hours. I know of some who were on mission for 10 days at a stretch. In July, the temperature was well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit each day.
These cobbled-together units’ task was to search villages one after another. They often took rifle and mortar fire from insurgents, or perhaps just angry locals. They intermittently received resupply from soot-coated Mi-17s piloted by Russian contractors, many of whom were Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. It was hard, dirty and dangerous work. The searches enraged the local civilian population and derailed the counterinsurgency operations taking place at the time. At every juncture I remember the soldiers involved asking why we were burning so much gasoline trying to find a guy who had abandoned his unit in the first place. The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was all the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition.
On July 4, 2009, a human wave of insurgents attacked the joint U.S./Afghan outpost at Zerok. It was in east Paktika province, the domain of our sister infantry battalion (3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry). Two Americans died and many more received wounds. Hundreds of insurgents attacked and were only repelled by teams of Apache helicopters. Zerok was very close to the Pakistan border, which put it into the same category as outposts now infamous—places like COP Keating or Wanat, places where insurgents could mass on the Pakistani side and then try to overwhelm the outnumbered defenders.
One of my close friends was the company executive officer for the unit at Zerok. He is a mild-mannered and generous guy, not the kind of person prone to fits of pique or rage. But, in his opinion, the attack would not have happened had his company received its normal complement of intelligence aircraft: drones, planes, and the like. Instead, every intelligence aircraft available in theater had received new instructions: find Bergdahl. My friend blames Bergdahl for his soldiers’ deaths. I know that he is not alone, and that this was not the only instance of it. His soldiers’ names were Private First Class Aaron Fairbairn and Private First Class Justin Casillas.
Though the 2009 Afghan presidential election slowed the search for Bergdahl, it did not stop it. Our battalion suffered six fatalities in a three-week period. On August 18, an IED killed Private First Class Morris Walker and Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen during a reconnaissance mission. On August 26, while conducting a search for a Taliban shadow sub-governor supposedly affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss was shot in the face and killed. On September 4, during a patrol to a village near the area in which Bergdahl vanished, an insurgent ambush killed Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews and gravely wounded Private First Class Matthew Martinek, who died of his wounds a week later. On September 5, while conducting a foot movement toward a village also thought affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey stepped on an improvised land mine. He died the next day.
It is important to name all these names. For the veterans of the units that lost these men, Bergdahl’s capture and the subsequent hunt for him will forever tie to their memories, and to a time in their lives that will define them as people. He has finally returned. Those men will never have the opportunity.
Bergdahl was not the first American soldier in modern history to walk away blindly. As I write this in Seoul, I'm about 40 miles from where an American sergeant defected to North Korea in 1965. Charles Robert Jenkins later admitted that he was terrified of being sent to Vietnam, so he got drunk and wandered off on a patrol. He was finally released in 2004, after almost 40 hellish years of brutal internment. The Army court-martialed him, sentencing him to 30 days' confinement and a dishonorable discharge. He now lives peacefully with his wife in Japan—they met in captivity in North Korea, where they were both forced to teach foreign languages to DPRK agents. His desertion barely warranted a comment, but he was not hailed as a hero. He was met with sympathy and humanity, and he was allowed to live his life, but he had to answer for what he did.
The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition.
For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl. Now we can talk about what really happened.
It was June 30, 2009, and I was in the city of Sharana, the capitol of Paktika province in Afghanistan. As I stepped out of a decrepit office building into a perfect sunny day, a member of my team started talking into his radio. “Say that again,” he said. “There’s an American soldier missing?”
There was. His name was Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, the only prisoner of war in the Afghan theater of operations. His release from Taliban custody on May 31 marks the end of a nearly five-year-old story for the soldiers of his unit, the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. I served in the same battalion in Afghanistan and participated in the attempts to retrieve him throughout the summer of 2009. After we redeployed, every member of my brigade combat team received an order that we were not allowed to discuss what happened to Bergdahl for fear of endangering him. He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth.
And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.
On the night prior to his capture, Bergdahl pulled guard duty at OP Mest, a small outpost about two hours south of the provincial capitol. The base resembled a wagon circle of armored vehicles with some razor wire strung around them. A guard tower sat high up on a nearby hill, but the outpost itself was no fortress. Besides the tower, the only hard structure that I saw in July 2009 was a plywood shed filled with bottled water. Soldiers either slept in poncho tents or inside their vehicles.
The next morning, Bergdahl failed to show for the morning roll call. The soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Blackfoot Company discovered his rifle, helmet, body armor and web gear in a neat stack. He had, however, taken his compass. His fellow soldiers later mentioned his stated desire to walk from Afghanistan to India.
The Daily Beast’s Christopher Dickey later wrote that "[w]hether Bergdahl…just walked away from his base or was lagging behind on a patrol at the time of his capture remains an open and fiercely debated question.” Not to me and the members of my unit. Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not "lag behind on a patrol,” as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.
Our deployment was hectic and intense in the initial months, but no one could have predicted that a soldier would simply wander off. Looking back on those first 12 weeks, our slice of the war in the vicinity of Sharana resembles a perfectly still snow-globe—a diorama in miniature of all the dust-coated outposts, treeless brown mountains and adobe castles in Paktika province—and between June 25 and June 30, all the forces of nature conspired to turn it over and shake it. On June 25, we suffered our battalion’s first fatality, a platoon leader named First Lieutenant Brian Bradshaw. Five days later, Bergdahl walked away.
His disappearance translated into daily search missions across the entire Afghanistan theater of operations, particularly ours. The combat platoons in our battalion spent the next month on daily helicopter-insertion search missions (called "air assaults”) trying to scour villages for signs of him. Each operations would send multiple platoons and every enabler available in pursuit: radio intercept teams, military working dogs, professional anthropologists used as intelligence gathering teams, Afghan sources in disguise. They would be out for at least 24 hours. I know of some who were on mission for 10 days at a stretch. In July, the temperature was well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit each day.
These cobbled-together units’ task was to search villages one after another. They often took rifle and mortar fire from insurgents, or perhaps just angry locals. They intermittently received resupply from soot-coated Mi-17s piloted by Russian contractors, many of whom were Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. It was hard, dirty and dangerous work. The searches enraged the local civilian population and derailed the counterinsurgency operations taking place at the time. At every juncture I remember the soldiers involved asking why we were burning so much gasoline trying to find a guy who had abandoned his unit in the first place. The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was all the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition.
On July 4, 2009, a human wave of insurgents attacked the joint U.S./Afghan outpost at Zerok. It was in east Paktika province, the domain of our sister infantry battalion (3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry). Two Americans died and many more received wounds. Hundreds of insurgents attacked and were only repelled by teams of Apache helicopters. Zerok was very close to the Pakistan border, which put it into the same category as outposts now infamous—places like COP Keating or Wanat, places where insurgents could mass on the Pakistani side and then try to overwhelm the outnumbered defenders.
One of my close friends was the company executive officer for the unit at Zerok. He is a mild-mannered and generous guy, not the kind of person prone to fits of pique or rage. But, in his opinion, the attack would not have happened had his company received its normal complement of intelligence aircraft: drones, planes, and the like. Instead, every intelligence aircraft available in theater had received new instructions: find Bergdahl. My friend blames Bergdahl for his soldiers’ deaths. I know that he is not alone, and that this was not the only instance of it. His soldiers’ names were Private First Class Aaron Fairbairn and Private First Class Justin Casillas.
Though the 2009 Afghan presidential election slowed the search for Bergdahl, it did not stop it. Our battalion suffered six fatalities in a three-week period. On August 18, an IED killed Private First Class Morris Walker and Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen during a reconnaissance mission. On August 26, while conducting a search for a Taliban shadow sub-governor supposedly affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss was shot in the face and killed. On September 4, during a patrol to a village near the area in which Bergdahl vanished, an insurgent ambush killed Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews and gravely wounded Private First Class Matthew Martinek, who died of his wounds a week later. On September 5, while conducting a foot movement toward a village also thought affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey stepped on an improvised land mine. He died the next day.
It is important to name all these names. For the veterans of the units that lost these men, Bergdahl’s capture and the subsequent hunt for him will forever tie to their memories, and to a time in their lives that will define them as people. He has finally returned. Those men will never have the opportunity.
Bergdahl was not the first American soldier in modern history to walk away blindly. As I write this in Seoul, I'm about 40 miles from where an American sergeant defected to North Korea in 1965. Charles Robert Jenkins later admitted that he was terrified of being sent to Vietnam, so he got drunk and wandered off on a patrol. He was finally released in 2004, after almost 40 hellish years of brutal internment. The Army court-martialed him, sentencing him to 30 days' confinement and a dishonorable discharge. He now lives peacefully with his wife in Japan—they met in captivity in North Korea, where they were both forced to teach foreign languages to DPRK agents. His desertion barely warranted a comment, but he was not hailed as a hero. He was met with sympathy and humanity, and he was allowed to live his life, but he had to answer for what he did.
The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition.
Damage
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Let me rephrase a few things, cause there are ethical questions at play here, many of which could be textbook examples to ask classrooms.
I honestly think it doesn't matter who we exchanged. The notion that these 5 guys are all of a sudden going to give the Taliban that extra oomph to get over the hump is absurd. The notion of terrorism, or people who are anti-west, will always exist. These 5 guys have been replaced. There will always be 5 more guys ready for a cause. So it's not the sheer number or the who that matters to me, it's the what, the act itself of negotiating with any terrorist. I see both sides of this and want to read more and wait until the facts are clear before I cast a formal opinion.
The guy was absolutely a deserter. One could assume that, by his actions, he should have known there would be many people looking for him, which could result to deaths (it did). But it's not like he all of a sudden said "Fuck it, I'm out". He had been displaying odd behavior for a while. There needs to be a thorough mental examination before I can start calling him an asshole or screaming treason. I know, easy for me to say sitting from my desktop, but his mental state is the biggest story here.
If, in the end, it comes out that he left the base to actually join/sympathize with the Taliban (lots of conflicting reports on his intentions and that he was living it up with them), then yea, I have a big problem with this exchange, no matter his mental health (a traitor is a traitor, no matter how he got there).
The Palin example was just me being an asshole, pointing out that this in no way should be politicized. This shouldn't be a left vs right issue, an I hate Obama thing - this is way bigger than that. Did Barry do this start emptying Gitmo? Kinda seems like it.
Personally, I think Tillman is a fucking hero, but I'm only using him to make a point. Tillman was strongly against the Iraq war, hated the Bush Administration, said the war was "Fucking illegal" during his tour, and urged people to vote for Kerry. The tie is both could be considered treasonous acts, considering it could effect judgement, moral, etc.
AZ_
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Daily Beast
You should at least cite the fact that these "sources" have what can only be described as a remarkable lack of objectivity.
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Mullah Omar hails release of 5 top Taliban commanders as 'great victory'
By THOMAS JOSCELYNJune 1, 2014
Mullah Omar, the reclusive head of the Taliban, has purportedly released a statement hailing the transfer of the top five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo to Qatar. Omar says their freedom is a "great victory."
The five Taliban leaders were exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban since 2009.
A copy of the statement attributed to Omar has been posted on the Taliban's Urdu-language web site.
Omar thanks the government of Qatar, as well as its emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, for his help in brokering the deal and for hosting the Taliban leaders. In earlier statements, both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry similarly thanked Qatar for its assistance.
Omar offers his "heartfelt congratulations to the entire Afghan Muslim nation," including "all the mujahideen and to the families and relatives of the prisoners for this great victory."
The Taliban had demanded the release of the five commanders from Guantanamo for years. In early 2012, the Taliban announced that it had established a "political office" in Doha for the expressed purpose of securing their freedom.
In addition to Omar's statement, the Taliban has also posted pictures of the now ex-Guantanamo detainees being greeted by supporters and family members in Qatar. As The Long War Journal has previously documented, all five were closely linked to al Qaeda prior to their detention and deemed "high" risks to the US, its interests, and its allies, according to leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessments.
By THOMAS JOSCELYNJune 1, 2014
Mullah Omar, the reclusive head of the Taliban, has purportedly released a statement hailing the transfer of the top five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo to Qatar. Omar says their freedom is a "great victory."
The five Taliban leaders were exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban since 2009.
A copy of the statement attributed to Omar has been posted on the Taliban's Urdu-language web site.
Omar thanks the government of Qatar, as well as its emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, for his help in brokering the deal and for hosting the Taliban leaders. In earlier statements, both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry similarly thanked Qatar for its assistance.
Omar offers his "heartfelt congratulations to the entire Afghan Muslim nation," including "all the mujahideen and to the families and relatives of the prisoners for this great victory."
The Taliban had demanded the release of the five commanders from Guantanamo for years. In early 2012, the Taliban announced that it had established a "political office" in Doha for the expressed purpose of securing their freedom.
In addition to Omar's statement, the Taliban has also posted pictures of the now ex-Guantanamo detainees being greeted by supporters and family members in Qatar. As The Long War Journal has previously documented, all five were closely linked to al Qaeda prior to their detention and deemed "high" risks to the US, its interests, and its allies, according to leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessments.
Damage
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Does the ranking of these 5 guys really matter? And btw, we have held sheep herders, farmers, teachers at Gitmo. Not saying these guys were (they weren't) - just pointing out that, just because someone was held at Gitmo doesn't mean they are dangerous. Which is why that operation should have been shut the fuck down years ago.
Man, if you inserted that quote for a major corporation, it would read just the same (minus human lives at stake, obviously)
Damage
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What did you expect them to say? Of course that's what they'd say.
Ohh, let's also not play the WC in Qatar please.