American POW freed in prisoner swap. And the GOP doesn't like it.....

Are you suggesting that if I address your post, then tack on an ad hominem statement "along with," that it's somehow baptized?

 

And in related news:

Official: US moving ahead with Guantanamo closure

IAMI (AP) — President Barack Obama is moving ahead with his push to close the Guantanamo Bay prison despite the uproar over the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for a captured American soldier, an administration official said Thursday.

Related Stories

US says its moving ahead with Guantanamo closure Associated Press
Bergdahl swap may make closing Guantanamo harder Associated Press
Obama: Congress consulted on prisoner exchange Associated Press
Obama win on Guantanamo prison may be short-lived Associated Press
Republicans question U.S. prisoner swap with Taliban Reuters
The government has been working to reduce a backlog of prisoners already approved after a security review for transfer to their homeland or repatriation elsewhere, the official told reporters.

The official said a "significant number" of prisoners are on their way toward release, but he declined to say precisely how many or when they would leave Guantanamo. The remarks were made on condition of anonymity amid fierce criticism in Congress over the decision to swap the five Taliban for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Full Story:

http://news.yahoo.com/official-us-moving-ahead-guantanamo-closure-224810678.html

Alternate Headline: "Tone-Deaf Administration Moves Ahead with Plans to Restock Taliban Leadership Ranks"

SMH.

 

copy and paste faile on me. Read the link.

 

Since we Treeman and Booby are our resident vets, if a soldier exhibits a pattern of behaviour detrimental to the morale and safety of the unit, whose responsibility is it to recognize and deal with that behaviour?

How far up the chain of command you think the reprimands for failure deal with Bergdahl before he got out of hand will go? Does this point to a failure of oversight in the evaluations of mental states in a war zone?

 

It is his chain of command's responsibility. Team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, platoon leader... It usually won't go above that.

When I was in Iraq I was a team leader, one of my guys was the unit Gomer Pyle. He kept falling asleep on post and losing his weapon (yes, losing his weapon in a warzone - until I chained it to him for the rest of the deployment...). I and my platoon sergeant went to the First Sergeant and Unit Commander (a Captain) and asked that the fukup be removed because he was a danger to the rest of the unit. If the detainees got past him while sleeping and took his weapons, then people most certainly would have been hurt. They told us no dice, we needed the numbers. We told them we wanted that in writing and didn't want to be responsible if something happened. We got nothing in writing and were told to just suck it up and do the best we could to keep him out of trouble.

That's how the Army works. Had anyone gotten hurt my Plt Sgt and I probably would have been held responsible.

 

And in the news, noted right-wing nutjob (he must be, right?) critical of the swap:

In Pittsburgh, Leon Panetta questions prisoner swap with Taliban

A former top adviser to President Obama on Wednesday questioned the release of dangerous terrorists in exchange for an imprisoned American soldier as anger spread among lawmakers in Washington over the secret deal to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

“I don't fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don't go back into battle,” former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a gas industry gathering in Pittsburgh.

Panetta, who was in the Cabinet for four of the five years Bergdahl spent in Taliban custody, said he opposed a swap for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he was Defense secretary.

“I said, ‘Wait, I have an obligation under the law,'” Panetta said during a lunchtime address at the Hart Energy Developing Unconventionals DUG East conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. “If I send prisoners from Guantanamo, they have to guarantee they don't go back to the battlefield. I had serious concerns.”

He said talks fell apart because the Taliban “asked for five top guys.” He did not say when during his 2011-13 tenure in the Pentagon that discussions took place.

“I just assumed it was never going to happen,” Panetta said.

Full Story:

http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/6228667-74/panetta-bergdahl-obama#axzz33rps6R3d

Sounds like Leon underestimated the chutzpah of his former boss.

 

2nd time within the past month I heard of "chaining" weapon to the soldier. One of my co-worker was just describing a similar situation with his unit. Must not be that uncommon

Not surprising, but the Army sucks for ignoring that.

 

How many of them are Taliban?. I asked earlier in this thread... once the US pull out of Afghanistan and the "war" end with the Taliban, what do we do will all of them?

 

Damn... They treat missing weapons different in the Marine Corps. Once, our squad leader who was a sergeant left his rifle unattended. He knew where it was but he just left it on top of the generator for no more than 3 minutes. He came back to the generator and it was missing. He panicked and discovered our first sergeant took it and was teaching him a lesson. He was then promptly NJP'd and dopped down to corporal and was no longer our squad leader. He eventually recovered and regained his position. He was a good leader. Just ****ed up once. I have other crazy rifle stories such as when our company comander started shot puting rifles because we decided to stack them like we always did and leave one person on watch. Marine Corps treated unattended rifles harshly at least the infantry units did. Can't speak for the non infantry ones though.

 

Any platoon leaders NJP'd for losing a soldier?

 

That's pretty much how it goes, yeah. I mean, you have to understand why it would be a logical fallacy in the first place. It's not a logical fallacy because you're being a dick, it would be a logical fallacy if you were being a dick INSTEAD of making a valid response. Tacking on an insult to a logically valid point doesn't make the statement logically fallacious.

 

Well, at least we're not talking about Benghazi anymore.

 

I would still be against trading 5 Taliban leaders for the best PFC in the Army. Now that doesn't mean I'd want to leave him for dead, I wasn't suggesting leaving the deserter for dead, just not making a terrible trade for him.

As to the crime of desertion in a combat zone, it's one of the worst things a soldier can do because it often directly or indirectly leads to the death of others in your unit. It's a selfish act that directly violates the first general rule given to soldiers in basic.

 

I can't tell if Obama is rope-a-doping the GOP or they're deliberately trying to lose the next election by chasing all these political dead ends.

 

Well, you can see he does know how to keep the "outrage-o-meter" topped out for the bunker dwelling crowd.

 

Yes you did. In fact you said it would have been better if he committed suicide.

 

That's a non-sequitur. Saying that it would have been better if he would have committed suicide rather than deserting his unit is not saying he should have been left for dead. I've actually said several times in this thread that I would have supported an op to go get him, but not trading 5 Taliban leaders for him.

 

Uh oh looks like the "6 died looking for Bergdahl" meme might be falling apart. But the truth was never the objective when the myth started coming together.

stay tuned

 

Why? Was there a DOD report or something? Of course, if you go by their reports, Bergdahl was captured while out on a patrol and Pat Tillman died in a gunfight with insurgents.

 

Interesting read from Rolling Stone...most of this is from 2 years ago.

13 Things You Need to Know About Bowe Bergdahl

By Tim Dickinson
June 2, 2014 6:00 PM ET

The late Michael Hastings wrote the definitive magazine profile of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for Rolling Stone in June 2012. Now that America's Last Prisoner of War has been released, in a prisoner exchange for five high-ranking Taliban officials, Hastings' piece continues to offer crucial context – about why Bergdahl volunteered for service in the first place, about how this intense, moral young man became so horrified by America's "good war" that he walked away from his unit's remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009, and about the abortive negotiations that could have secured Bergdahls release years ago.

Here 13 things you need to know about the American POW who is coming finally home, in the words of Hastings' 2012 feature.

Read Hastings' full feature on Bowe Bergdahl, "America's Last Prisoner of War"

1) Bowe grew up near Hailey, Idaho, the son of California expats and ski bums Jani and Bob Bergdahl, who lived "nearly off the grid" on 40 acres, home-schooling Bowe and his sister Sky in a demanding curriculum:

Devout Calvinists, they taught the children for six hours a day, instructing them in religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. "Ethics and morality would be constant verbiage in our conversations," his father recalls. "Bowe was definitely instilled with truth. He was very philosophical about perceiving ethics."​

2) Obsessed with Bear Grylls and Man vs. Wild, Bowe sought at age 20 to join the French Foreign Legion.

He traveled to Paris and started to learn French, but his application was rejected. "He was absolutely devastated when the French Foreign Legion didn't take him," Bob says.​

3) Seeking adventure, instead, in American uniform, Bergdahl enlisted in the Army in 2008. His intensity alienated fellow soldiers. A friend from his unit, Jason Fry, recalled Bowe's fierce independence and his prophetic warning:

"He wanted to be a mercenary, wanted to be a free gun," says Fry. "He had a notion he was a survivalist, claimed he knew how to survive with nothing because he grew up in Idaho…. Before we deployed… him and I were talking about what it would be like," Fry recalls. Bowe looked at his friend and made no bones about his plans. "If this deployment is lame," Bowe said, "I'm just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan."​

4) Bergdahl's unit in Afghanistan — part of the Obama surge — was beset by deficits of leadership, "a collapse in unit morale and an almost complete breakdown of authority."

The unruly situation was captured by … a British documentary filmmaker [whose] footage shows a bunch of soldiers who no longer give a ****: breaking even the most basic rules of combat, like wearing baseball caps on patrol instead of helmets.​

5) As his tour dragged on, the hellish reality of war — including seeing an Afghan child run over by an American truck — weighed on Bergdahl, who came to see America's presence in Afghan as "disgusting."

"I am sorry for everything here," Bowe told his parents. "These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid…

"We don't even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks."​

6) After receiving an email from his father exhorting him to "OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE," Bowe slipped out of his unit's barracks on June 30th, 2009. One man versus the wilds of Afghanistan, Bergdahl was equipped with just a knife, water, a digital camera and his diary. Barely 24 hours later, he'd be taken prisoner. Bergdahl's capture is recorded in radio intercepts later released by WikiLeaks:

"WHAT HAPPENED. IS THAT TRUE THAT THEY CAPTURED AN AMERICAN GUY?"

"YES THEY DID. HE IS ALIVE."​

7) Bergdahl could have been freed in a prisoner exchange almost immediately, but the American officer in charge did not pull the trigger on a prisoner swap:

Tribal elders from the nearby village...had been asked by the Taliban to arrange a trade with U.S. forces. The insurgents wanted 15 of their jailed fighters released, along with an unidentified sum of money, in exchange for Bowe. The officer hedged, unwilling or unable to make such a bargain, and no deal was struck.​

8) There was an official cover-up — one that included White House pressure on the New York Times and AP to keep Bergdahl's name out of the papers.

[T]he Pentagon also scrambled to shut down any public discussion of Bowe. Members of Bowe's brigade were required to sign nondisclosure agreements [forbidding] them to discuss any "personnel recovery" efforts – an obvious reference to Bowe…. As Bowe's sister, Sky, wrote in a private e-mail: "I am afraid our government here in D.C. would like nothing better but to sweep PFC Bergdahl under the rug and wash their hands of him."​

9) At one point during his captivity, Bergdahl escaped:

For his part, Bowe does not appear to be a willing hostage. [In] August or September [of 2011], he reportedly managed to escape. When he was recaptured, he put up such a struggle that it took five militants to overpower him. "He fought like a boxer," [said] a Taliban fighter who had seen Bowe.​

10) Negotiations to bring Bergdahl home have been in the works for years — with Obama originally imagining the prisoner swap as an election-year overture toward a durable peace with the Taliban.

President Obama [has] announced that the United States will now pursue "a negotiated peace" with the Taliban. That peace is likely to include a prisoner swap – or a "confidence-building measure," as U.S. officials working on the negotiations call it – that could finally end the longest war in America's history. Bowe is the one prisoner the Taliban have to trade. "It could be a huge win if Obama could bring him home," says a senior administration official familiar with the negotiations. "Especially in an election year, if it's handled properly."
​

11) But the swap didn't have the backing of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, who weren't ready to negotiate an end to the war, preferring the bloody path of counterinsurgency operations.

...Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are very wary about making a swap for Bowe. "Panetta and Hillary don't give a **** about getting him home," says one senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations. "They want to be able to say they COINed their way out of Afghanistan, or whatever, so it doesn't look like they are cutting and running."
​

12) The negotiations were also impeded by Senator John McCain, who was typically level-headed in this exchange with future Secretary of State John Kerry.

McCain, who endured almost six years of captivity as a prisoner of war, threw a fit at the prospect of releasing five Taliban detainees.

"They're the five biggest murderers in world history!" McCain fumed.

Kerry, who supported the transfer, thought that was going a bit far. "John," he said, "the five biggest murderers in the world?"

McCain was furious at the rebuke. "They killed Americans!" he responded. "I suppose Senator Kerry is OK with that?"​

13) The bureaucratic cluster**** in Washington had even led Bergdahl's heartbroken father to seek his own negotiations with Bowe's captors — explaining Bob Bergdahl's beard and controversial command of conversational Arabic and Pashto.

Bob has considered going over to Pakistan – he's grown a bushy beard, and he has sent his own YouTube video, directed at the Taliban, asking for his son's release. "I'll talk to them," he says. "I'll bring him home myself."
​

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ow-about-bowe-bergdahl-20140602#ixzz33tj7e4wA