Posted on 06/09/2014 9:30:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, still in recovery, has become a political football to be kicked around by just about everyone, including Hillary Clintonwho is using Bergdahls release to distinguish herself, just ever so slightly, from President Obama. In her book, whose release this week will dominate the airways and news media, and in an interview tonight with Diane Sawyer, Clinton finesses the fact that she originally opposed making a deal with the Taliban for Bergdahl, a decision she portrays as one of the hard choices she had to make. Though now shes defending Obama over the Bergdahl decision, she stressed to ABCs Sawyer that there were competing interests and values involved in the decision. Its a waffle typical of Clinton, who tries simultaneously to pander to hawks while placating the liberal base of the Democratic party.
Heres the bottom line: if Bergdahl did desert, or leave his post without permission, then bully for him. If only more American troops had deserted that war, or refused to serve, or simply stopped enlisting in the volunteer army. Perhaps Bergdahl was simply shell-shocked, or suffering from PTSD. Perhaps he had just had enough. Perhaps he did indeed intend to seek out the Taliban in his own version of peace talks. Perhaps he, himself, cant really explain why did it, althoughas reported here last weekthe evidence reported two years ago in Rolling Stone suggests that he had thoroughly been alienated by the war and by the conduct of American forces. If any of that is true, than the Republicans ought not wish to out Bergdahl on trial. Because he, and his lawyers, could turn such a trial into a broader inquiry into the insanity of a war that has lasted thirteen years, and which appears will continue through 2016 at least.
The say-anything conservatives and Republicansmany of whom slammed Obama for years for not doing more to get Bergdahl released, only to say now, like Charles Krauthammer, that Bergdahl is a deserter and a traitorarent daunted by the fact that Bergdahl has described his years in captivity in stark terms. After twice trying to escape, he was put in a cage, and tortured. But that hasnt stopped Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican, from saying that he doesnt necessarily believe Bergdahls account:
I think there are going to be a lot of things that Bergdahl tells the Army and the medical folks that hes talking to now that is going to be very difficult to validate. Thats not to say theyre not absolutely true, but we werent there. We have nobody who was on the inside. So we dont know exactly what happened in his life over the last several years, except we do know he was captured and hes been in the Talibans hands.
Yesterday, appearing on ABCs This Week, the leader of the House intelligence committee raised what appears, at first, to be a legitimate point about the negotiations to free Bergdahl. His release, said Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who heads the House intelligence committee, was initially designed as part of a broader set of talks to make a deal with the Taliban. (Lets leave aside Rogerss comment that the White House made a serious, serious geopolitical mistake, adding, Weve empowered the Talibanwho, of course, have a lot of muscle and dont need any empowering by the United States.) Rogers, along with Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, reports the New York Times, argued that in 2011 the discussion of releasing Sergeant Bergdahl was couched as a confidence-building measure to allow a broader reconciliation with the Taliban. Though efforts were made to strike such a deal, the talks eventually went nowhere. Said Feinstein, according to the Times:
If you release them upfront, there would be no reconciliation; if you release them after progress or at the end and had the agreement to do so, that you might get a reconciliation agreement. And that, subsequently, apparently, fell apart.
But thats all mixing apples with figs. As both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have pointed out repeatedly, and as even Hillary Clinton acknowledges, getting Bergdahl released was a good thing, in itself, whether or not it led to or helped engineer a reconciliation with the Taliban. On the other hand, its fair to question whether or not the Obama administration has done everything it could to negotiate a deal with the Taliban. For years, and especially since Obama took office in 2009, its clear that the only way out of Afghanistan that could result in a relatively stable political arrangement was to rebalance the Afghan government, bring the Taliban in, set up some sort of federal system giving the southern, Pashtun areas a measure of autonomy, andabove allgetting Pakistan, India, Iran and others in the region to buy in to the new set-up. Despite efforts along those lines, beginning with Richard Holbrookes work years ago, the administration never really invested appropriate energy in that direction.
For the Republicans who are accusing the Obama administration now of mismanaging the Bergdahl release, however, the real issue isnt whether or not Washington was working hard enough to make a deal with the Taliban; indeed, had such a deal been reached, most Republican would probably have condemned it as appeasement or worse.
Meanwhile, in a sign of how despicable some anti-Obama people can be, the FBI is now investigating threats made against Bergdahls parentsthreats that may have been made made by people angered by charges, whether spurious or not, that American troops were killed while conducting searches for Bergdahl.
The controversy will continue all week, during briefings by US intelligence and other officials on Capitol Hill and when Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel testifies on Wednesday before what is sure to be a raucous and hostile House Armed Services Committee.
Alright. I read the article: It moved me...literally.
Gotta go.
Same advice for the female soldiers?
"Cocaine is a helluva a drug..." - Rick James
I agree that this could explode in the GOP’s face if the Obama administration decides to run an operation against the American people as they did with Benghazi. They could come up with paperwork that shows Bergdahl had been a long time spy. They could come up with paperwork showing they had been in a subterfuge operation with the entire Bergdahl family. They could come up with paperwork showing Bergdahl had a psychotic break years ago.
They could do a number of things, and the media would be their lackeys, as usual.
The problem for the GOP is covering all the available types of lies they could come up with prior to their coming up with them.
Undercover agent: send inquiries NOW to all agencies and to the administration, to his platoon, and they would have to have senior military, in my opinion, at about the brigade/division level aware of what was going on, so also to the entire chain of command.
Family subterfuge: this is best disproven by Bergdahl’s packing his possessions prior to his desertion. So, the desertion charge would still stick. It would make it hard to disprove collaboration, though, since family subterfuge would include that. Of course, if there were ever evidence that Bergdahl fired on or planned the firing on American troops, then that would override any subterfuge plot.
Psychotic break: if the government comes up with such paperwork, then it had to exist prior to the desertion. One has to be highly skeptical of the authorities/chain of command not taking action when that came to their attention.
Claiming a psychotic break the time frame of the desertion would be conjecture.
Packing his possessions and shipping them home is a huge argument against a host of claims that could be made, in my opinion.
Someone has not gotten the memo.
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