Bergdahl Never Listed By Pentagon As Prisoner Of War

CBS Washington DC ^ | June 3, 2014 | Staff

[QT3.14]

In his five years of captivity, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was never listed by the Pentagon as a prisoner of war.

Nor has the U.S. applied that term to any of its Taliban prisoners — including the five senior Taliban figures who were released last weekend from detention at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom.

A look at how that process works:

[Hulka]

Actually, POW is a status given to “any person captured or interned by a belligerent power during war.” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/477235/prisoner-of-war-POW

A belligerent power can range from an insurgent to a terrorist organization to a sovereign nation.

A formal congressional declaration of war is not required to be classified as a POW. . .try taking away POW status and purple hearts from those that were captured in Korea, Vietnam or in Gulf War I, or those injured in the WOT. What about those killed or injured at the Ft Hood shooting? If you deny them Purple Hearts you side with the feeling it was merely ‘work-place violence’ and no benefits/Purple Hearts are permitted.

At Gitmo they are held as ‘detainees’ purely because of legal technicalities—to keep them out of the civilian courts.

The question is not one of the US not knowing what to do with them, it is one of how best to avoid the lawsuits and legal hassles associated with prosecuting in civilian court each and every terrorist we capture on the battlefield.

The Law of Armed Conflict has basically two categories; combatants and non-combatants, and terrorists do not qualify as ‘combatants’ but yet they also do not qualify as non-combatants. This means they are legally ‘illegal non-combatants,’ meaning legally they did not qualify for POW status and are subject to criminal prosecution.

So, the US was faced with a tough choice, put them in jail and try each and every one of them (imagine that nightmare where rules of discovery, evidence, witness testimony and cross-examination apply. . .captured on the battlefield and the soldiers that captured him in a firefight being called back to the states every-time a court hearing is held).

The solution was to hold them off-shore on non-US soil so they were technically not ‘in’ the US and therefore not subject to the civilian legal system.

[Hulka]

Oh, and Bird-Dawg was never classified as a POW because the leadership knew he deserted/went AWOL.

[Grampa Dave]

Our Spec Op leaders called him a deserter!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3163137/posts

Special forces found Bergdahl and captors but wouldn’t risk rescue for ‘deserter’

Washington Times ^ | 06/03/2014 | Guy Taylor

Posted by SeekAndFind

The Pentagon on several occasions had ground-level intelligence on where ArmySgt. Bowe Bergdahl was being held captive at various times — down to how many gunmen were guarding him — but special operations commanders repeatedly shelved rescue missions because they didn’t want to risk casualties for a man they believed to be a “deserter,” sources familiar with the mission plans said.

Commanders on the ground debated whether to pull the trigger on a rescue several times in recent years, according to one of the sources, a former high-level intelligence official in Afghanistan, who said the conclusion each time was that the prospect of losing highly trained troops was too high a price to pay for rescuing a soldier who walked away from his unit before being captured by the enemy.

A second source told The Washington Times that the rescue operation plans were “high risk” and became even less attractive in recent months when officials in the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command grew convinced that the Taliban and the militant Haqqani network, whose operatives were holding Sgt. Bergdahl, were eager to cut a deal for his release.