The evidence available certainly indicates he became disillusioned by the wars impact on the Afghan civilians and particularly the children.

-spence

a conspiracy to aide the terrorists would have to be proven
fat chance of that.... no witnesses
a terrorist label for deserting ...that's a stretch
firing squad is too barbaric for such a passive crime... he was ascared
wasn't like he was shooting back at his own troops... not seen
he was milked for info i'm sure over 5 years -a given
life in prison more likely considering how many lives were lost trying to find him ...thinking he was kidnapped

impeachment .... i think is do-able considering that he was asked specifically by a person in the audience when going for election
if he would attach a letter and circumvent congress and he said absolutely NOT - which proves him to be a complete Liar
and a far worse offense than Clintons oval office BJ or nixon's
cheating to get intel ....

Nobody is going to try and impeach a US President for getting a captive soldier home alive.

Reality check...

-spence

Desertion in time of war. I believe if you check the Manual of Courts Martial is a crime punishible by death.

And to a person not blinded by love of the sitting president, there is equally strong evidence that by virtue of being a "Taliban leader", these guys represent a serious threat.

I'm sure all the Afghan children, especially the little girls, will face better future prospects under the Taliban.

I'll bet they all have book deals by the end of the month :devil2:

-spence

So how would you have handled it differently? left him over there? Doesn't seem your MO, whatever his status was....

A fair question.

The answer is, you try as hard as you can to get him back on your own, but you don't negotiate with terrorists to do it, even if it means you lose the ability to get him back. And that applies whether he is a suspected deserter, or if he's Audie Murphy. Because if all the terrorists around the world see that we now are willing to trade 5 for 1, who (except Spence) would deny that incentivizes more terrorists to do the same thing?

If we have to kill a lot of people to get him back, fine. But you don't negotiate with these people, or reward them, for their behavior. That encourages more similar behavior, and that's exactly why we came up with the phrase "we don't negotiate with terrorists".

It's not the same as a prisoner exchange, because subsequengt to a prisoner exchange, after th ewar is over, the released prisoners pose to further threat. A child knows that's not the case with the Taliban or Al Queda.

Rockhound, when you tell your children "no" and they throw a fit, do you cave in and give them what they want? No. Why? Because even a kid can connect those dots and realise he can now get what he wants by doing the same thing.

It's not that complicated. It's horrible for the people who would be lost by not negotiating with those people, but there's no other way.

Your question assumes (incorrectly) that the only 2 choices were to cave in, or accept that we can't ever get him back. There is a 3rd alternative, and that's what I'd choose, and that's you use your brains and your brawn to get him back on our own terms.

When that ship captain got kidnapped by pirates off Somalia, why didn't we give the pirates a dump truck full of money like they wanted? Had we done that, the probably would have let him go, right? But we didn't, we let the SEALs take him back by force, even though th ecaptain easily could have been hurt during the exchange of gunfire. And the reason is exactly the same, because that would encourage more piracy. That was one of the very few that this Bolshevik Klown got right.

1. Sometimes, my kids win, yes.

2. If these guys were scheduled to be released; I've read mixed stuff on that, and they spend the next year in Quater, they don't seem to pose an immediate threat. My hunch is if they show up in intelligence at all, a drone will be over their shoulder pretty damn fast...

It's good you recognize that it's only a phrase. Terrorists are negotiated with all the time. Hell, Israel once release over a thousand Palestinians (we'll assume they were all terrorists right?) for a single low-level military captive...and they're supposed to be tough right?

I don't think they could determine exactly where he was. Looks like he was being moved around western Pakistan. That's not an easy rescue.

Totally different situation. With the Somali pirates we knew exactly where the captive was. The order to shoot was given as they thought the Captain was about to be killed.

-spence

Here's the thing…this entire event 5 years ago has been thoroughly investigated by the Army. The media frenzy wants to pretend it's happening in real-time.

I'd wager they have a pretty good idea of where it's all going.

-spence

"they don't seem to pose an immediate threat"

Based on what?

"Terrorists are negotiated with all the time." What you don't do, is give in to them.

Spence, it's really too bad for Hitler that Obama wasn't President in 1938. What would he have conceded in the face of that threat?

"I don't think"..."Looks like "...

Looks to me like you're grasping at straws.

"That's not an easy rescue."

Since when do we abandon the right course once we conclude it's "not easy"? Since January 2009, I guess...

"The order to shoot was given as they thought the Captain was about to be killed."

You sure about that? I thought the order to shoot was given when they had a clear shot. How could they (or you) have known he was about to be killed? Did the pirates announce over loudspeaker that he was about to be killed?

It appears you take a lot of liberties, and make a ton of assumptions, and 100% of them paint Obama in a favorable light. Do you deny that?

Look at what's happening in Ukraine. You don't think Obama wasn't playing chicken with Putin and for the most part appears to be winning?

Ok Scottw.

Do you not think if the military had a feasible plan before they wouldn't have tried it? Oh I forgot, Obama hates the troops.

My understanding is that they had a weapon pointed at his head which prompted the action.

The more I think about this whole Bergdahl situation the more it disturbs me. This is a propaganda campaign to lash out at Obama using an active service member as the proxy.

-spence

seeing him in that leather bomber jacket made me ILL

"Do you not think if the military had a feasible plan before they wouldn't have tried it?"

I never said they'd abandon him. You were the one who said it wouldn't be easy to get him back on our own terms, and I pointed out, correctly, that doing what's right is more important than doing what's easy.

"Obama hates the troops.Obama hates the troops.

He doesn't hate them, but he is completely oblivious to the type of person who answers the call to serve. Hence the repugnant "cling to their guns and religion because they are bitter and racist..." remark. I'll say this, I thank God I didn't serve under him.

"My understanding is that they had a weapon pointed at his head "

regardless of your skewed understanding, the fact is he was in a tiny raft with 3 armed pirates and he would necessarily had guns pointed at him repeatedly. Instead of giving me your understanding, how about either some facts to support your claim, or admit it was pure speculation.

Oh, I missed that one. Yeah, Putin is really on the ropes. Assad too.

Yuck. Maybe he visited a "corpse-men". Yeah, he's a huge fan of the military...

It is being reported that 2 of the 5 released detainees are currently wanted by the UN for war crimes. Not sure if it's true. Why wouldn't we have handed them over if we had them?

30 posts defending terrorists, a traitor/deserter and a lawless president...hit the trifecta on this one...good job Spence :)

--"I am ashamed to be an american."
-- "The US army is the biggest joke ... It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies."
-- "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."
-- "The horror that is america is disgusting."
-quoted from emails sent by Bowe Bergdahl to his parents, three days before he walked away from his unit in search of the Taliban.

The true horror in this? This country that Bergdahl decribed as "ashamed" of, that he called a "joke", "conceited", and a "horror"...that terrible country sacrificed several young men in the search for Bergdahl. When his brother in arms voluntarily put themselves in harm's way trying to find him, was that conceited, horrible, a joke? Was it "disgusting"?


I hope we get to the facts here. I can certainly sympathize with a troubled person, inflicted with any of the typical human frailties, many of which are exacerbated in combat. But part of me is disgusted at the price we paid to get him back, especially the young American lives sacrificed to help what could be a disgrace of an American.

I wonder if Obama has learned any of this on the news yet.

Hey, it looks like you wrote your own post!

-spence

He certainly wouldn't be the first person to be challenged with the reality of war. How many commit suicide or worse, lash out against others? I'd be curious to see what the internal investigation said about his direct leadership.

I'll let the Army make the call on this one.

To enlist to serve our country and then later walk unarmed into enemy territory isn't behavior you'd associate with a stable person. What I still can't calculate is how an active duty soldier help captive for 5 years could be so pilloried before the full story is even known. Wait, I can calculate it...

-spence

You imply that all such action would be associated with an unstable person. Are most traitors unstable? Or do they rationally choose to change sides. If you don't discount what he has said about this country, the military, Afghanistan and its people, it rings more of a rational decision to do what he did than an unstable one.

Your dot . . . dot . . . dot implication seems to leave what you call pillorying out of the "full story". He was "pilloried" by his fellow soldiers, then and now, more than by anybody else.

The Devil's Advocate persisting beyond reason becomes . . . how do you put it . . . vapid.

"Devil's Advocate"....that's just perfect isn't it?...

'it's not the bad guys(terrorists, deserters, lawless president), in fact they aren't even really that bad(hardcore), it's those horrible people who "appear" to have it in for the bad guys, they are the ones that are really "disturbing" '....

good grief.....someone is unstable alright:uhuh:....

now he states that he was beaten and tortured....what did he expect to be welcomed with open arms even though he was not carrying any weapons....I believe that he was...history shows that in every war american prisoners were beaten, tortured and some were shot.... he is a lucky boy.

Or it simply bolsters the position that he had lost it.

I'm sure his peers felt betrayed. I don't fault them for that.

I still haven't reconciled the justification for the outright venom directed at an active duty service member on limited information. Is that reasonable?

-spence

According to FOX he was a turncoat who swore an oath to Allah to destroy America. His father, a suspected Muslim (i.e. the beard) is likely running a sleeper cell...

To be fair and balanced I can't say it's all of FOX. Shep!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGMEJiLkLmM#t=62

-spence

Is that where U get most of your information?...LOL

So, on the one hand you don't fault his peers for "outright venom", but if someone else responds as they do, then the "outright venom" is not justified. And, what was the "limited information" which informed Susan Rice to say that Bergdahl served with "distinction"? How have you "reconciled the justification" for all that?

Can the truth be considered "outright venom"? And if the truth is relative to "context" and "perception," then who are you to pronounce someone else's perception "outright venom"?

And is "outright" an absolute?