What are your thoughts on this whole situation? It seems that a lot of folks are coming out about how the guy was a deserter and what not. Not to mention the whole notion of this opening up the table for negotiation with terrorists and possible future prisoner swaps.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, the highest-ranking American military officer.
The U.S.' top military official on Tuesday defended the controversial prisoner swap that freed Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, even as he said the military would look into the circumstances surrounding Bergdahl's capture.
"Like any American, he is innocent until proven guilty," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said in a statement Tuesday morning.
" Our Army’s leaders will not look away from misconduct if it occurred," the statement continued. But Dempsey defended the Obama administration's decision amid a burgeoning controversy over its decision to free five prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bergdahl's release.
After the weekend prisoner exchange, s everal soldiers who served with Bergdahl said he willingly deserted his unit . And Republican lawmakers have leveled claims that the swap was illegal because it proceeded without a timely notification of Congress.
Dempsey said the deal presented the "last, best opportunity" to recover Bergdahl. He said freeing U.S. soldiers from enemy captivity is a priority regardless of the speculation about Bergdahl's conduct. And he thanked those who tried, and ultimately succeeded, in securing Bergdahl's release.
Here's Dempsey's full statement:
"In response to those of you interested in my personal judgments about the recovery of SGT Bowe Bergdahl, the questions about this particular soldier’s conduct are separate from our effort to recover ANY U.S. service member in enemy captivity. This was likely the last, best opportunity to free him. As for the circumstances of his capture, when he is able to provide them, we’ll learn the facts. Like any American, he is innocent until proven guilty. Our Army’s leaders will not look away from misconduct if it occurred. In the meantime, we will continue to care for him and his family. Finally, I want to thank those who for almost five years worked to find him, prepared to rescue him, and ultimately put themselves at risk to recover him."
Still too much smoke and posturing to make a truly informed decision. That being said, my inclination is to listen to the guys who served with him in the field. I'll take a grunt's word over a politician's any day. Too many suspicious things leading up to his "departure" from his unit.
Now let's wait for the administration proclamation that he's a real world Jack Bauer and he's been undercover for 5 years. And hope that he's not another Nicholas Brody. (Damn, I know more about pop culture than I thought, at least TV characters)
My own feeling is, if he's a deserter, you get him back and then you prosecute him for desertion. I don't think you just leave him there as a "fuck you."
climber511 wrote:One for five - and the one is questionable it seems. We're not very good at this exchange stuff it looks like.
If he was not a deserter and our intel guys shoved RFI's into them to track them, firgure out who they meet with and when it looks like a good catch, killbox them and any around them.
Then it be worth it, especially since Obsama is pulling them out after getting more killed there than Bush. Tying our guys hands is pretty fucked up.
Making them bleed and then pissing away what they bled for (like Iraq, now on the Iranian tip) is pretty shitty IMO.
"God forbid we tell the savages to go fuck themselves." Batboy
If he runs for Congress, look for a crazy blonde chick pulling the strings.
"The reason that 'guru' is such a popular word is because 'charlatan' is so hard to spell."
@GSElevator: Can we please stop calling them hipsters and go back to calling them pussies?
Blood eagles solve everything.
Just heard a local radio interview with Evan Buetow , Bergdahl's Team Leader. Everyone on the ground believed he deserted. In the following months, soldiers in that region patrolled nonstop, looking for Bergdahl. At least six soldiers were killed in those patrols.
And Taliban attacks quickly became much more effective after Bergdahl deserted. Treason. That deserves an investigation and a trial.
Bowe Bergdahl’s team leader at the time when he went missing said that intelligence from the search revealed that Bergdahl had walked off base in search of the Taliban, adding that his departure coincided with the Taliban making more effective attacks on American forces.
“Following his disappearance, IEDs started going off directly under the trucks,” Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “They were getting perfect hits every time. Their ambushes were very calculated, very methodical, like they knew what we were going to do.”
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Bob Wildes wrote:How fucked up do you have to be to get turned down by the French Foreign Legion?
Unless there's something you know that I don't the idea that anyone can just walk in off the street and join the Legion is an incorrect one. We've got a former Legionnaire here who also has 20+ years of Marine Corps time that can answer the question.
johno wrote:Just heard a local radio interview with Evan Buetow , Bergdahl's Team Leader. Everyone on the ground believed he deserted. In the following months, soldiers in that region patrolled nonstop, looking for Bergdahl. At least six soldiers were killed in those patrols.
And Taliban attacks quickly became much more effective after Bergdahl deserted. Treason. That deserves an investigation and a trial.
The issue is too political now for that to ever happen.
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
WildGorillaMan wrote:Israel negotiates prisoner swaps pretty regularly. Nobody would ever accuse them of being soft on their enemies.
They don't get a 5:1 ratio a lot of times either.
The US negotiates with terrorists every day, it's just that most of them have business cards.
Hamas got over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit.
As far as I know Gilad Shalit did not desert the IDF.
No, he didn't, but since I wasn't speaking to that point I fail to see yours.
It poses a question: at what cost do you return someone who has intentionally put themselves in a physically dangerous and politically sensitive situation?
There are plenty of cases where someone goes off into the mountains here in the US, gets lost, and has to be rescued and then ends up with a S&R bill to cover the cost. In this case, you can't pay back for prisoners or lives killed, so you have to assign a value. Is 5 prisoners + possibly 6 serviceman a good number? What about 10 + 12? 100 + 200? Where do you draw the line? And once you draw a line here, every similar future situation will be compared to that one.
Another important question is why now? What specific incident prompted the idea that this needs to happen now?
Bud Charniga's gaping asshole wrote:Again, my own feeling is that, if he's a deserter, you get him back and then prosecute him. That he deserted hasn't been proven at this point.
Get him back for how much? Seriously what's a good number?
Bob Wildes wrote:How fucked up do you have to be to get turned down by the French Foreign Legion?
Unless there's something you know that I don't the idea that anyone can just walk in off the street and join the Legion is an incorrect one. We've got a former Legionnaire here who also has 20+ years of Marine Corps time that can answer the question.
I have plenty of respect for the FFL. particularly the paras and some of the other units. I do not in any way think that their
boot camp is not a very challenging event and probably on par with or harder than 90+ % of all other boot camps in the world.
I did assume that they would take almost any physically fit male from 17-35 that did not have too bad of a criminal record.
No, I don't have any special insight to their acceptance standards and would welcome any insight from the man you mentioned.
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