A Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military decided not to exert extraordinary efforts to rescue him, according to a former senior defense official who was involved in the matter.
Instead, the U.S. government pursued negotiations to get him back over the following five years of his captivity — a track that led to his release over the weekend.
Bergdahl was being checked and treated Monday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany as questions mounted at home over the swap that resulted in his freedom in exchange for the release of five detainees who were sent to Qatar from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba.
Even in the first hours of Bergdahl’s handoff to U.S. special forces in eastern Afghanistan, it was clear this would not be an uncomplicated yellow-ribbon celebration. Five terrorist suspects also walked free, stirring a debate over whether the exchange would heighten the risk of other Americans being snatched as bargaining chips and whether the released detainees — several senior Taliban figures among them — would find their way back to the fight….
And in Kabul Monday, the Afghan Foreign Ministry called the swap “against the norms of international law” if it came against the five imprisoned Taliban detainees’ will. The ministry said: “No state can transfer another country’s citizen to a third country and put restriction on their freedom.”
Tireless campaigners for their son’s freedom, Bob and Jani Bergdahl thanked all who were behind the effort to retrieve him. “You were not left behind,” Bob Bergdahl told reporters, as if speaking to his son. “We are so proud of the way this was carried out.” He spoke in Boise, Idaho, wearing a long bushy beard he’d grown to honor his son, as residents in the sergeant’s hometown of Hailey prepared for a homecoming celebration.
The five detainees left Guantanamo aboard a U.S. military aircraft flying to Qatar, which served as go-between in the negotiations. They are to be banned from leaving Qatar for at least a year. Among the five: a Taliban deputy intelligence minister, a former Taliban interior minister with ties to the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and a figure linked by human rights monitors to mass killings of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.
Questions persisted, too, about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s 2009 capture. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to comment on earlier reports that the sergeant had walked away from his unit, disillusioned with the war. Such matters “will be dealt with later,” Hagel said.
But the former Pentagon official said it was “incontrovertible” that he walked away from his unit.
The military investigation was broader than a criminal inquiry, this official said, and it didn’t formally accuse Bergdahl of desertion. In interviews, members of his unit portrayed him as a naive, “delusional” person who thought he could help the Afghan people by leaving his army post, the official said.
U.S. military and intelligence agencies had made every effort to monitor Bergdahl’s location and his health, the official said, through both signals intelligence and a network of spies.
Nathan Bradley Bethea, who served as an officer in Bergdahl’s unit, said in an article Monday on the Daily Beast website that Bergdahl was not on patrol, as some reports have suggested.
“There was no patrol that night,” he wrote. “Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon_including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”…
WHAT HAS OBAMA DONE HERE?
Obama has liberated these Taliban killers of Afghans essentially and he has also liberated this traitor American who obviously with his Father will work to extend the Jihad in America.
This situation in America fast developing but which isunclear to many of us because of much obfuscation, with very dangerous asides, see my post on Pamela Geller website (will place it below) has to be understood along with this in Europe and this very useful report from Commentary
(begin extract here)
The revelation that the Belgium police have now made an arrest in relation to the recent shooting at the Jewish museum in Brussels, and more significantly that the suspect is a Muslim radical who spent time fighting in Syria, confirms what many had suspected about that attack; that it was the work of Islamic militancy and the Jew-hatred that constitutes a core aspect of that ideology. When a similar shooting attack took place in 2012 at a Jewish school in Toulouse, much of the media initially attempted to speculate that this was the work of a far-right white supremacist. No doubt the liberal media was holding out for such a result this time too. But in both cases these attacks were the work of home-grown Islamic extremism. These acts may for the moment only concern a very small number of radicalized individuals, yet such individuals emerge from a much wider sub-culture of hate that Europe’s elites not only attempt to ignore, but that is even excused and legitimated by the prevailing narrative in Europe.
The suspect in question has been named as 29-year old French national Mehdi Nemmouche, who spent a year fighting with rebels in Syria. It’s not as if there haven’t been enough warnings about the dangers represented by the phenomenon of large numbers of European Muslims going to fight in Syria, but if European governments have proven incapable of preventing these individuals from making their way to Syria, then one also has to wonder how they were so easily able to slip back into Europe. Still, the case of the Toulouse shooting provides a noteworthy parallel. The gunman in that case, Mohammed Merah, had already spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan and now it is widely believed that Merah’s sister Souad is also currently in Syria.
It is more than just a little revealing that so many of Europe’s Muslims are drawn to fight for Islamic causes in far off countries in the first place; there are an estimated 600 French Muslims fighting in Syria and almost as many from Britain. It is similarly telling that when these people return they not only continue to engage in acts of violence, but that their violence is directed toward Jews. Of course we shouldn’t ignore the violence against Jews coming from Muslims who haven’t first been radicalized via Syria or elsewhere; on the same day as the shooting in Brussels two French Jews were assaulted in Paris as they were leaving a synagogue. There is hardly space here to rehearse all the recent incidents from Europe of Muslims attacking Jews, but a European Union survey from the fall exposed how in most European countries Muslims were by far the leading group responsible for anti-Semitic incidents, closely followed by individuals identified as being on the far left.
Europe’s elites have proven completely incapable of confronting and tackling this worsening phenomenon because they are incapacitated by a worldview that barely even allows them to openly acknowledge the problem. Most types of racism and bigotry in Europe have been swept away not by government legislation but by a culture of political correctness imposed by Europe’s media and cultural institutions that sets such views beyond the pale. Yet because that very doctrine of political correctness holds immigrant communities and particularly Muslims to be a victim group of the highest order, it has become impossible for Europeans to imagine that these people might themselves be the perpetrators of racism and bigotry. The model doesn’t allow for such a notion, especially not when the victims are Jews. Since Europeans perceive Jews as being white, Western, and affluent, that places them on the side of the oppressors and not among the oppressed.
Then there is the Israel factor. As much as critics of Israel like to stress that it’s Zionists and not Jews they take issue with, whenever Jews are attacked, liberals and liberal Europeans inevitably make the Israel connection and in so doing invalidate their own pretense that they view the two as being entirely separate. When Jewish children were mowed down by bullets as they made their way to school in Toulouse and the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton was obliged to concoct some words of sympathy, she stunned observers by using this event to note how, “we see what is happening in Gaza.” It seems that for people like Ashton, it is impossible to acknowledge Jewish victimhood without also footnoting Palestinian suffering, as if in some attempt to explain away whatever has just been done to the Jews in question.
European liberals delight in expressing horror and gleeful outrage at the sight of American Evangelical Christianity. They warn against reactionary Christian attitudes on any social issue that arises in their own country and they are always sure to castigate the Catholic Church whenever the opportunity presents itself (Pope Benedict’s visit to London was marred by large and angry protests). But if Europeans were really concerned about ultra-conservative religious extremism then they would act to prevent the proliferation of radical Islam in Europe. Similarly, if they were serious about ending racism then they would crack down on the only form of racism in Europe today that still kills people: Islamic Jew-hatred.
Tom Watson on Commentary
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/01/the-brussels-shooting-and-why-europe-wont-confront-islamic-jew-hatred/
4international does not just observe and write. Today I broke connection with the Martin Sherman Facebook page. Not because of any difference with Sherman. But it is a con…the whole Facebook thing is a con. Yesterday I placed a post on BDS in Ireland…important really important stuff for all Jews and all of us…Result NOT ONE comment. Now that is farcical!
I am not interested, really not interested, in going through the forms…4international is going to intervene in order to challenge these Fascist BDS types in Ireland and the 5000 friends of Sherman WERE NOT INTERESTED!!!
4international 