US Army POW is released in swap for 5 Gitmo detainees.

[davekc]

We are not talking about a tourist, or a college student. We are talking about a soldier, who volunteered without being forced, to accept the terms of duty. He was assigned a guard post, and walked away, putting everyone one in his unit lives in danger. Lives were lost looking for him, after he walked away.

IF he had decided he could no longer serve as ordered he SHOULD have went the route that a man of honor would take, go through proper channels, and deal with the situation. Instead, he ran. Abandoning a guard post? In a combat zone? Are you kidding me?

Too hard to make a assessment. The guy can barely speak English. At this point or any earlier point, the guy could be mentally ill? The problem is, we don't have all the facts. Especially since they were trying to obtain this guy for the last five years. I'm not convinced we really have all the facts.
I do agree if the guy was a conscience objector, he never should have signed up in the first place.

 

[layoutshooter]

Too hard to make a assessment. The guy can barely speak English. At this point or any earlier point, the guy could be mentally ill? The problem is, we don't have all the facts. Especially since they were trying to obtain this guy for the last five years. I'm not convinced we really have all the facts.

Assuming the facts are as those who were there, in his unit, are saying, shoot him. That is what deserters deserve, and that is much too nice. We already paid too great a price when we lost soldiers who were out looking for him. That was far more than that deserter was worth, again, assuming it is as being reported.

The very idea of one of your fellow soldiers, leaving his guard post in a combat zone, would make ANY former, or serving, military member's skin crawl. Those in his unit lives were in grave danger, due to his actions.

That is one heck of a price to pay for this "man".

 

[muttly]

Assuming the facts are as those who were there, in his unit, are saying, shoot him. That is what deserters deserve, and that is much too nice. We already paid too great a price when we lost soldiers who were out looking for him. That was far more than that deserter was worth, again, assuming it is as being reported.

The very idea of one of your fellow soldiers, leaving his guard post in a combat zone, would make ANY former, or serving, military member's skin crawl. Those in his unit lives were in grave danger, due to his actions.

That is one heck of a price to pay for this "man".

Yes, his actions ultimately resulted in six additional soldiers killed, and five terrorists released to potentially kill more. Tall price to pay for sure.

 

[Turtle]

He was assigned a guard post, and walked away, putting everyone one in his unit lives in danger. Lives were lost looking for him, after he walked away.

According to members of his platoon, he did not abandon a guard post. He finished his turn on guard and was relieved, and sometime during the night after that he was missing.

From accounts thus far, it appears that he did not have a sudden epiphany of conscience, morals or ethics (if he had he'd have never abandoned his platoon nor his terms of duty). He was enamored with the idea of being Bear Grylls Rambo Survivor Dood alone up in the mountains. He told people he had been preparing all his life for such an existence because he's from, you know, Idaho, and it's really hard there. The reason he joined the Army in the first place was because he was rejected by the French Foreign Legion. He spent most of his time alone and wasn't "socially well liked" by the soldiers he served with. After infantry school at Ft Benning he was assigned to 25th Infantry Division at Ft Richardson in Alaska. While at Ft Richardson, over Thanksgiving instead of spending the holiday at the dinner table and socializing with his fellow soldiers he was off in the corner studying maps of Afghanistan, especially the mountain regions. He gave at least one of his peers a headsup saying if this Afghan deployment was lame that he'd just walk off up into the Pakistani mountains. One Sargent in his platoon noted that Bergdahl didn't want to be there where they were assigned, had a wanderlust, and realized that combat wasn't at all what he though it would be. Looks like he attempted exactly what he said he would, just walk off up into the mountains.

He's an American citizen not accused of treason, so we need to have him back (if for no other reason that the intel he can provide about his captivity), but negotiating with terrorists is not the way to do it. Five for one is a bit much, unless he's far more valuable than they're letting on. They keep talking about these health issues, issues which required a speedy resolution to get him swapped out and released, but they refuse to talk about what the medical conditions are, citing health privacy laws. In exchange for 5:1, the American people deserve to know what these issues are.

 

[layoutshooter]

I will get back to you on this. I read a different report, I will look for it again and post it.

IF it is as you are posting, and he just walked off into the dark, on his own, in a combat zone, he got what he asked for and it was not worth the lives lost looking for him and the 5:1 made it worse.

I sure has heck would not want a dufus like that in any outfit I was ever in, military, fire fighting, or ambulance crew. I would want people I could count on, 100% of the time, even to the point of loss of life. When one takes on that kind of responsibility one should full fill that responsibility. IF, at some point down the line that person finds, for what ever reason, they are no longer able to full fill it, they should go through channels, and they do exist even in the military, and DO IT RIGHT! There is NO excuse, NO justification for putting lives at stake just because you have a wanderlust.

 

[layoutshooter]

Here is what I read, off of a CNN report:

"According to firsthand accounts from soldiers in his platoon, Bergdahl, while on guard duty, shed his weapons and walked off the observation post with nothing more than a compass, a knife, water, a digital camera and a diary."

IF this turns out to be true, he should be shot for desertion.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-deserter-or-hero/

Huff is reporting it with the above paragraph AND a quote from Rolling Stone more along the lines of what your post stated.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/02/bowe-bergdahl-captive_n_5431711.html

 

[paullud]

Or a guy with a conscience, morals, and ethics ... and the fortitude to act on them.

Maybe one that wasn't so indoctrinated and married to the brainwashing that he hadn't lost his ability to change his mind when observations and circumstances warranted.


Your post that I'm replying to is largely opinion ...

It says right in the article that if he didn't get the action he wanted that he would just walk off and find his own. So if he did that he is an arrogant piece of crap or at worst a traitor. I guess some people are just all caught up in proving America does the wrong thing at times to actually think about the evidence. What was that you said about being indoctrinated and married to the brainwashing? FYI I'm not using my opinion as fact.

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[paullud]

Facts don't matter. Bergdahl can't be at fault or wrong. Nothing matters actually other than America being wrong and at fault whether it's Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq or whatever. That's how some people roll.

The funny thing is that these same people are so indoctrinated to prove America is not perfect that they completely ignore the truth then try to debate the point with someone that freely admits it. We put young men and women in bad places when we go to war so we know that there are some that will do bad things. We know that there will be collateral damage because that is a byproduct of war. It's war, bad things will happen and accidents will happen because people are involved.

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[paullud]

Yeah ... that's kinda like saying Newton's observations about gravity no longer have any relevance ...

No actually it is nothing like that. It would be similar if new evidence came out that Newton was wrong and then you used Newton to prove you were right.

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[layoutshooter]

It says right in the article that if he didn't get the action he wanted that he would just walk off and find his own. So if he did that he is an arrogant piece of crap or at worst a traitor. I guess some people are just all caught up in proving America does the wrong thing at times to actually think about the evidence. What was that you said about being indoctrinated and married to the brainwashing? FYI I'm not using my opinion as fact.

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I don't don't know when you went into the military, but when I went in, part of our UCMJ training was about how to go about changing MOS's or getting out if one decided that they were unable to continue due to changed moral reasons. Was the process easy? Nope. Should it be easy? Nope. Only cowards just leave their post, or walk off the base, desert.

 

[paullud]

I don't don't know when you went into the military, but when I went in, part of our UCMJ training was about how to go about changing MOS's or getting out if one decided that they were unable to continue due to changed moral reasons. Was the process easy? Nope. Should it be easy? Nope. Only cowards just leave their post, or walk off the base, desert.

Never served. It seems like he just wanted to play survivalist and thought that is what he was signing up for, I guess the recruiter lied. My brother went into the Marines convinced by the recruiter that he was going to be James Bond with his MOS, guess what?

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[layoutshooter]

Never served. It seems like he just wanted to play survivalist and thought that is what he was signing up for, I guess the recruiter lied. My brother went into the Marines convinced by the recruiter that he was going to be James Bond with his MOS, guess what?

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Sorry, I though you had served.

WHAT? A recruiter lie? SAY IT AIN'T SO! LOL!!

Only a FOOL, even at 17 or 18, would not know that a recruiter lies. I sure knew what I was getting into when I went to see the recruiter. Didn't matter, it was enlist, get drafted, or run to Canada with the rest of the cowards. I enlisted just to have a little more control over my life. It worked.

I heard all the "James Bond" stuff, after all it was the ASA I was going into. The most elite, intelligence wise, outfit in the US Army. He was even right when he said that ASA promotions did not come out of the Dept of the Army, but straight out of DOD.

There was nothing thrown at me that I did not expect. Why? I asked questions from others who were already in. That made basic go smoother and the rest was a piece of cake.

 

[aristotle]

There was something unseemly about Obama's urgent rush to have a photo-op with the parents. Grandstanding? An attempt to change the national conversation away from the VA scandal and Benghazi. Obama is not being well served by his staff by creating some gussed up euphoria media event to announce the exchange of a dubious soldier for the Taliban's varsity team. Has anyone in the upper echelon of Obama's inner circle ever served in the military? The Obama team seem woefully disconnected from military traditions and culture.

 

[layoutshooter]

There was something unseemly about Obama's urgent rush to have a photo-op with the parents. Grandstanding? An attempt to change the national conversation away from the VA scandal and Benghazi. Obama is not being well served by his staff by creating some gussed up euphoria media event to announce the exchange of a dubious soldier for the Taliban's varsity team. Has anyone in the upper echelon of Obama's inner circle ever served in the military? The Obama team seem woefully disconnected from military traditions and culture.

Obama, his team and his supporters, are woefully disconnected from ANYTHING that requires honor, a sense of responsibility or tradition, not only the military.

 

[Pilgrim]

It says right in the article that if he didn't get the action he wanted that he would just walk off and find his own. So if he did that he is an arrogant piece of crap or at worst a traitor. I guess some people are just all caught up in proving America does the wrong thing at times to actually think about the evidence. What was that you said about being indoctrinated and married to the brainwashing? FYI I'm not using my opinion as fact.

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Leave it to Barack Hussein Obama to rescue a deserter in exchange for 5 Muslim terrorists while leaving an honorably discharged US Marine rotting in a Mexican prison because he missed a poorly marked exit at the Mexican border. If BHO wanted a photo op, this would have been the one.

It sounds like this guy never should have been in the military in the first place, and should have been eliminated by the psych eval in basic training. However, these recruiters are under pressure to fill quotas and can find ways to get riff-raff like this through the cracks. He must be one of these "free spirits" that should have spent his life smoking pot and hiking the Appalachian Trail - no commitments, no responsibilities, no problems. Hopefully he'll find himself at the opposite end of the lifestyle spectrum in the stockade at Ft. Leavenworth.

 

[muttly]

The irony of that. We release five terrorists from Gitmo for one of our own, and then put him in prison.

 

[TeamHutch]

I would hope we do anything we could to get our people back, specially our brave soldiers who fight for our freedom. Wether he cracked under pressure, made a mistake or deserted has seemed to be all hearsay. If he deserted he should be tried not left for dead.

I feel one American life is worth way more the 5 terrorist.

 

[layoutshooter]

I would hope we do anything we could to get our people back, specially our brave soldiers who fight for our freedom. Wether he cracked under pressure, made a mistake or deserted has seemed to be all hearsay. If he deserted he should be tried not left for dead.

I feel one American life is worth way more the 5 terrorist.

Several American lives were lost looking for him. The cost was already too high if he deserted. There will likely be far more lost at the hands of the five they traded. It is easy to see that Barry never had his stones on the line before. It is also very obvious that he has little respect for those who do now or ever have in the past.

 

[RLENT]

Too hard to make a assessment. The guy can barely speak English. At this point or any earlier point, the guy could be mentally ill? The problem is, we don't have all the facts. Especially since they were trying to obtain this guy for the last five years. I'm not convinced we really have all the facts.

Words of wisdom ...

Apparently the military isn't convinced they have all he facts either ...

Of course, many of the geriatric armchair quarterbacks are convinced that they do ...

I do agree if the guy was a conscience objector, he never should have signed up in the first place.

From what I can gather, he wasn't a C.O. when he went there ... he sure might have become one after he got there and found out what was really going on tho' ...

 

[RLENT]

The thing that bothers me, is not that they traded....but the uneven trade. "IF" you do negotiate....seems a 1 for 1 trade is fair......but 5 for 1 ?

Israel traded 1027 for 1 (Gilad Shalit) ...

Might say a little something about the value they place on their soldiers lives ...