It’s official: Obama traded five terrorists for a deserter

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It has been concluded that Bowe Bergdahl is a deserter:

The Army has decided to charge Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released by Taliban-aligned militants last year in exchange for five Guantanamo prisoners, with desertion, according to a former military intelligence officer.

Retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who now works at the London Center for Policy Research, told Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night that he’s learned of the military’s decision from two sources.

“The Army has come to its conclusion, and Bowe Bergdahl … will be charged with desertion,” he said.

Asked for comment on the claim, Army officials denied that any decision had been made. Spokesman Paul Boyce told Fox News on Tuesday that there is “no change” and that it is an “ongoing review at this time.”

Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s lawyer, did not comment when reached by Fox News.

But Shaffer said Bergdahl’s attorney has been given a “charge sheet” outlining the section of the military justice code Bergdahl allegedly violated.

“As a corporate entity, the Army has decided that they want to pursue Bergdahl for this violation,” Shaffer said.

This is now an embarrassing albatross around Obama’s neck and he wants nothing to do with it. So it’s being delayed:

Shaffer said there’s a “huge battle” going on inside the Obama administration, as some try to “suppress” this development. “This is shaping up to be a titanic struggle behind the scenes,” he said.

Shaffer said the Army “wants to do the right thing,” but the White House “wants this to go away.”

He said: “The White House, because of the political narrative, President Obama cozying up to the parents and because of he, President Obama, releasing the five Taliban … The narrative is what the White House does not want to have come out.”

Bergdahl being a deserter is nothing new to readers of Flopping Aces.

“The horror that is America is disgusting.”

– Bowe Bergdahl

That was just for starters:

“The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong,” Bergdahl reportedly wrote his father. “I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be american (sic). The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”

He also attacked the army saying it cut down people “for being honest,” and rewarded sycophants. “The title of US soldier is just the lie of fools,” he wrote. “I am sorry for everything here.

Let’s recall Obama proudly standing with the parents of Bowe Bergdahl, Bergdahl’s father sporting his best jihadi beard.

Obama boasted:

He wasn’t forgotten by his community in Idaho, or the military, which rallied to support the Bergdahls through thick and thin. And he wasn’t forgotten by his country, because the United States of America does not ever leave our men and women in uniform behind.

Except that Bergdahl left his uniform behind when he deserted.

It was a great day for America, said the famously vapid Susan Rice:

“It was an extraordinary day for America,” Rice told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Many American troops lost their lives searching for Bergdahl:

One of my close friends was the company executive officer for the unit at Zerok. He is a mild-mannered and generous guy, not the kind of person prone to fits of pique or rage. But, in his opinion, the attack would not have happened had his company received its normal complement of intelligence aircraft: drones, planes, and the like. Instead, every intelligence aircraft available in theater had received new instructions: find Bergdahl. My friend blames Bergdahl for his soldiers’ deaths. I know that he is not alone, and that this was not the only instance of it. His soldiers’ names were Private First Class Aaron Fairbairn and Private First Class Justin Casillas.

Though the 2009 Afghan presidential election slowed the search for Bergdahl, it did not stop it. Our battalion suffered six fatalities in a three-week period. On August 18, an IED killed Private First Class Morris Walker and Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen during a reconnaissance mission. On August 26, while conducting a search for a Taliban shadow sub-governor supposedly affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss was shot in the face and killed. On September 4, during a patrol to a village near the area in which Bergdahl vanished, an insurgent ambush killed Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews and gravely wounded Private First Class Matthew Martinek, who died of his wounds a week later. On September 5, while conducting a foot movement toward a village also thought affiliated with Bergdahl’s captors, Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey stepped on an improvised land mine. He died the next day.

Those with knowledge of Bergdahl’s actions were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Bergdahl’s father declared his son’s release a “Muslim victory.”

Reports say that Obama traded five Taliban prisoners for a deserter. The five Obama freed were really bad guys. Truth be known, Obama traded sixteen for Bergdahl:

The five released weren’t any common purse snatchers. They were described as the “Dream Team” of terrorists. They were considered so dangerous that no country really wanted them. And they weren’t the first released. Last year Obama released five detainees as an “olive branch” to the Taliban. So Obama didn’t trade five detainees for a deserter. It wasn’t ten either. He traded sixteen for one deserter. Ten Taliban and six American soldiers who died trying to rescue the deserter.

Gitmo has been a thorn in Obama’s side since the day he promised to close it. Obama traded for Bergdahl because Bergdahl was a useful took for Obama in his quest to close Gitmo. Obama screwed up Iraq in his quixotic pursuit of ending the war, and screwed up big here as well. Yet let’s not forget that Obama’s actions aren’t about what’s best for the country. They continue to be about what’s best for him.

I am very interested in seeing how the press handles this.

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Not surprising. He traded the U.S. economy for Solyndra and some magic beans!

Obama is the Commander in Chief of the Army. No one is going to be charged unless he says so. Period.
I’d love to see otherwise, but it’s simply not going to happen unless Obama wants it to.
Fantastic article otherwise, though.

Think it will slow his ascending poll numbers ?

OK.
So, next comes the Article 32 hearing.
An Article 32 hearing is somewhat similar to a civilian grand jury, but, in the military, a single commanding officer, known as the convening authority, will decide whether or not to actually convene a court-martial – a general court-martial in this case because of the severity of the crime.
So, it becomes WHO is that single commanding officer who makes this decision as to going on with charges or not.
It falls to the commanding officer of SoCom, the Southern Command.
Currently, the commanding officer of SoCom is a Marine Corps General named John F. Kelley.
He’s the guy Obama put in charge of our military in Africa ”fighting” ebola.
I hope he’s not a bought and sold Obamite.

I can’t shake the feeling this trade was supposed to have included our ambassador.

Bergdahl’s father declared his son’s release a “Muslim victory.”

The site linked in the Original Post in the above sentence strongly implies Obama is a Muslim.
Well, if that were true why on earth did he not control Michelle in Saudi Arabia today?
Michelle met the new king with no sleeves and no head cover!
That forced the official Saudi state TV coverage to blur her out of every scene!
(Wish our TV news could copy them. 😉 )
Saudi Twitter feeds opened using the hashtags #Michelle_Obama_Immodest and #Michelle_Obama_NotVeiled.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/27/michelle-obamas-face-blurred-by-saudi-state-televi/
A Muslim man would have known better.
Obama made her cover her head in Mosques, after all.
Obama is no Muslim, he’s far too hedonistic for that religion.

I’ll wait to hear what the Army has decided from the Army. In this country we consider people to be innocent until proven guilty. We don’t abandon soldiers on an assumption that they’re guilty. Bergdahl might be guilty of desertion. It’s also possible that he might be guilty of having had some sort of mental breakdown.

I don’t know what business Retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer thinks he has making announcements on FOX News ahead of official sources. He got paid by FOX for the appearance, of course. No doubt they knew what the story would be before they scheduled him to deliver it.

@Greg: Greggie Greggie Greggie, you had NO problem agreeing with Senator Reid that Romney cheated on his taxes. I asked you to prove yourself and of course you failed!! Hillary abandoned those who died in Benghazi and then spit on their coffins by saying a video caused this terrorist act!!

I would point out that you’ve just responded with a tu quoque fallacy, but you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

@Greg:

In this country we consider people to be innocent until proven guilty.

No, not quite. In this country, on the left, no crime is considered having been committed if it can be covered up and/or lied about until everyone looses interest. Certainly Cheney, Bush, Zimmerman, Romney, Wilson, Gingrich, DeLay or Perry are not considered innocent until proven guilty. Hell, the left cannot even consider them innocent once proven NOT guilty.

Sheesh. Give me a break.

We don’t abandon soldiers on an assumption that they’re guilty.

The one and only reason for bringing Bergdahl home is to bring him to justice for the lives lost during the search for his deserted ass.

@John:

Think it will slow his ascending poll numbers ?

Those would be “ass-ending” poll numbers.

Obama may be the commander in chief in name and position, but he will lose what ever respect he has of the millions of people who served in the military or have friends and relatives who served in the military. This may be the last straw.

@Greg:

I would point out that you’ve just responded with a tu quoque fallacy, but you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

The fact that a person makes inconsistent claims does not make any particular claim he makes false (although of any pair of inconsistent claims only one can be true – but both can be false). Also, the fact that a person’s claims are not consistent with his actions might indicate that the person is a hypocrite but this does not prove his claims are false.

Pretty weak accusation you’ve made there, in that to level an Ad Hominem Tu Quoque fallacy claim, it is necessary to explain what makes it a false claim of hypocritical content. Otherwise you are doing the same.

Just part of Obama’s legacy that he so desires.

No Keystone Pipeline, just Keystone Kops under Kindercare Kerry. So many czars, so little time to evaluate.

@Greg:

Greg
The guy walked off his post voluntarily. He left his uniform and weapon behind. The Taliban do not as a rule keep prisoners. This is more about cleaning out Gitmo than it is about Bergdahl.

@John:
About the polls, from the 1990s in which a majority of Democrats favored repealing the Public Affairs Act of 1975 because Bill Clinton was said to recommended repeal, with the punch line being that there is no such thing as the Public Affairs Act of 1975. It was a contrivance of pollsters to check on public ignorance.

A large part of the better poll numbers for Obama is the drop in gas prices. Truth be told if Obama got his way they would be HIGHER much higher, 5 dollars a gallon or more. Go check your history. He is just taking credit for something he had nothing to do with and the ignorance of those polled reflect that.

That forced the official Saudi state TV coverage to blur her out of every scene!

I’m wondering how an islamic state can have TV in the first place. Don’t they have some sort of ban on producing an image of the human form?

To quote Nicholas “Irv” Irving, the first black sniper in his battalion, who was serving in Afghanistan at the time Bergdahl went missing:

I think he should definitely be put to death,” said Nicholas “Irv” Irving, the author (with Gray Brozek) of The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers, said on this writer’s radio show. “He’s given a lot of information to the enemy and he should pay the price.”

“I can’t get too in depth about what I know and what occurred,” he said. “But I knew he had deserted long before the news had reported it.”

Irving said he was particularly distressed by the back pay that Bergdahl received after spending five years with the Taliban.

That money shouldn’t have been released until after his trial,” said Irving, who now lives in San Antonio. “And it should have been given to the families of the men who died trying to ‘save’ him.”

The Pentagon has confirmed that six soldiers died in military operations searching for Bergdahl after he left his unit without permission.

Another not-quite-as-inside-baseball quote:

No administration that gave up five terrorists,” retired Army colonel David Hunt said, “is going to turn around and execute the guy that they got back.”

@Jim S: I wish we could blur their images… permanantly.

In my opinion, that’s six cigarettes and six blindfolds. Five at least.

IMHO if Barky overrules the Pentagon on this one, every Four Star in there is guilty of dereliction of duty if they do not immediately resign their commission and hold a press conference to annouce the reasons to the world.

@Virginia Conservative, #21:

I’m guessing that FOX News is setting the stage to make an accusation of White House interference, should the Army decide not prosecute Bergdahl. They’re planting a false expectation so that a claim can be made later that something has been overruled.

To be clear, the Pentagon has denied the claim Retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer’s made on FOX News. According to an official Pentagon spokesman, no decision about Bergdahl has been reached.

@Greg: I think you are falling prey to a lawyerly bit of gamesmanship with semantics.
you write:
According to an official Pentagon spokesman, no decision about Bergdahl has been reached.
A court martial has NOT taken place, so no decision about Bergdahl has been reached.
However, according to some, a list of charges has been sent to Bowe’s lawyer.
That usually takes place BEFORE the court martial.
It even takes place before the Article 32 hearing that either leads to or stops a court martial.

So, both what the Pentagon says AND what the retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (and NBC’s other source) says can be true.
There is a multi-step process.

It is neither warranted, normal, expected nor proper for the CiC to micro-manage and involve himself in courts martial proceedings. For Obama to do so would be a direct insult to the command structure and process of military justice.

“We never leave anyone behind that is unequivocal”
Gen Stanley McCrystal
Dr j is a bit obsessive about Obama

And LtCol Shaffer has hoaxed our good Doktor before
Schaffer was the liar who first said that Obama was in the situation room watching the BENGHAZI !!!! Attack in real time
That of course was thoroughly debunked by all of the 15+ investigations
Thanks for mentioning him again Dr j

@John:

“We never leave anyone behind that is unequivocal”
Gen Stanley McCrystal
Dr j is a bit obsessive about Obama

Obama didn’t have any problem leaving Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi to rot in a Mexican prison. He nor anyone in his administration lifted a finger to free him or even make sure he was getting medical treatment. Was Obama afraid Mexico would cut off our supply of illegal immigrants? We could have traded 12 million “hostages” for Tahmooressi. If Obama feels so strongly about “no man left behind”, why did he never even bring Tahmooressi up when he spoke to the Mexican President? Why did he let the Mexican President address our Congress to press for them to ignore MORE immigration laws without demanding fair treatment, if not outright release of our Marine? Or, Jon Hammer?

Obama just wanted to release 5 hardened terrorists and score some sympathy points at the same time.

Weak argument, John. Mighty weak.

Terrorists? Are you sure? They look a lot like the fellows Reagan invited to the White House who were fighting the Russians for us

@Ditto: As well as illegal. “Undue Command Influence”. But, then again, when has obama ever worried about “Legal” anything?

@Nanny: Just wait, Greggie will find a way to blame Bush and the Republicans if all his other arguments fail!!

@John: Of course, we now know Obama was asleep during the Benghazi attack, making sure he was rested up for his fundraising duties as President.

@Bill, #27:

Obama didn’t have any problem leaving Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi to rot in a Mexican prison.

Tahmooressi wasn’t “left behind” on a battlefield. He landed in a Mexican prison after crossing the border with firearms that it’s illegal to take into Mexico. The Mexican authorities didn’t believe it was accidental. In such a situation, you can expect prolonged difficulties.

@Greg:

Tahmooressi wasn’t “left behind” on a battlefield. He landed in a Mexican prison after crossing the border with firearms that it’s illegal to take into Mexico.

Ah. So, you are OK with Mexico throwing a US Marine in one of their shit-hole prisons and being beaten for getting lost at a darkened, confusing border crossing, stopping and asking Mexican authorities for help and DECLARING the personal weapons (along with everything else he owned) that were in his truck? That is OK with you. Well, that is cleared up.

However, while Obama golfed, vacationed and campaigned, leaving Tahmooressi to rot in a Mexican jail, suffering from PTSD from serving his country and protecting us citizens, he worked to get
Jeffrey Fowle, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller, Merrill Newman from North Korea and sent Clinton to effect the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee… they “broke laws” as well.

So, why does Obama selectively abandond Marines while trading dangerous terrorists for a deserter or moving heaven and earth to gain the release of citizens?

@Greg: Well, now the administration is saying that the Taliban is not a terrorist organization so they could defend their position of not trading with terrorists. Give up Greg! Obama and his buddies are even more incompetent than Carter’s.

@Randy: Can this administration not find lies-persons to vomit forth their inconceivable talking points that do not possess a name that is so easily satirized? First, it was “Josh Earnest”, now its some guy named “Schultz”.

“I know nottink!! Nottink!!”

Perhaps the pool is drying up of even liberals willing to go before the cameras and make the argument that the Taliban, who sends men and women with suicide vests into markets, buses and public places, is not a terrorist organization.

@Bill: Perhaps the pool is drying up of even liberals willing to go before the cameras and make the argument that the Taliban, who sends men and women with suicide vests into markets, buses and public places, is not a terrorist organization.

Freedom fighters, like the American founders and their army fought their own battles and bled their own blood.
The Taliban (so-called by WH ”armed insurgents”) doesn’t just use volunteer ”men and women with suicide vests,” but rather:

A 10-year-old girl was forced to carry out suicide attack after she was abducted by Taliban group in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan.

WHEN was this?
Last Sunday!
Jan 25th, 2015.

Is it an aberration?
Last month, December 2014, a 15-year-old child was used to carry out a suicide attack in in French Institute at Estiqlal high school in capital Kabul.
Also in a 10-year old child identified as Spoghmai was reportedly forced by her brother who was a Taliban commander to suicide attack the Afghan national security forces in Khanshin district of Helmand province.
Are these ”freedom fighters,” or, ”armed insurgents,” not terrorists because they are killing only their enemies who are combatants?
Not at all.
That’s not what they do.
On the 12th of this month Taliban murdered a TEACHER.
On the 7th of this month Taliban murdered two children gathering firewood!
On New Years’ Eve (less than a month ago) Taliban murdered five males trying to surrender to them!

Armed ”insurgents”, my ass!
Sure they want their version of Sharia as opposed to ISIS’ version or the legal gov’t’s version, but ”armed insurgents?”

ah, once again, Greggie blindly wanders into the fray completely unprepared and as usual denying reality so as to support his all mighty President. Nothing new there folks. 🙂 I just wish his banality didn’t tick me off so much! in the end though, reality is a bitch and he as always loses the argument.

Now a serious question. Can the so called Commander in Chief order the Army to withhold the charges or worse drop them? Hell, he has covered up or lied about everything else he’s done the last six years! Seeing he and his talking heads keep telling us how the deserter, which in my eyes translates to traitor,served “with honor and dignity” (you really can’t make this crap up) could it be once again Obama will choose to protect his sorry ass rather than let the truth come out?

Kind of like same shi.., different day as far as the White House is concerned, especially if one considers the open disdain this President has for real soldier, you know, those who believe in the oath they take. Unfortunately Bergdahl more in the mold of the Clown in chief.

If the Taliban is not a terrorist organization, what was our rationale for driving them out of Afghanistan? (Back in the day, when we didn’t negotiate with them…)

@proof, #39:

If the Taliban is not a terrorist organization, what was our rationale for driving them out of Afghanistan?

When their government was in control of Afghanistan, they willingly provided a base of operations for al Qaeda.

@Greg: So, instead of a terrorist group, they merely aided, abetted and enabled terrorists. Got it.

Distinctions can sometimes be helpful when you’re weighing actions and responses. Both pitbulls and Chihuahuas can be properly categorized as dogs. The fact that they can both be regarded as such might not be the most useful point to focus on under all circumstances.

@Greg: What a profound statement! Yes, I can imagine death by Chihuahua!