WH Hiding Bowe Bergdahl Charges

January 27, 2015

Obama WH Hiding Bowe Bergdahl Charges - Treason Too?

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Transparency: The administration is said to be hiding for reasons of damage control a report on the soldier we traded five Taliban leaders for. Bowe Bergdahl's lawyers have already been given a charge sheet for desertion.
Both Fox News and now NBC News have reported that Sgt. Bergdahl will be charged with desertion. "I have been told and confirmed by two other sources that his attorney has been given what we call a charge sheet," retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a respected military analyst, told Fox's Bill O'Reilly on Monday. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski quoted senior defense officials on Tuesday as saying charges could be referred within a week.
"A charge sheet is the results of investigation listing out the articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that have been violated," Shaffer e xplained. "The key violation is desertion."
Shaffer, an analyst with the London Center for Policy Research, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who played a key role in the cover-up of administration malfeasance in the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans, has been laboring to keep this information under wraps as long as possible, perhaps to be included later in one of those Friday data dumps the administration is famous for.
We'd be stunned if any other decision were reached, for the uncontestable fact is that Bergdahl walked away from his combat post in 2009 in a time of war, leaving behind his weapon, his gear and his fellow soldiers. At least six soldiers were reported to have been killed in operations looking for him. He was not out for a walk to relieve stress or clear his head.
Bergdahl was believed to have been held by the Haqqani terror network in the tribal area of Pakistan's northwest frontier on the Afghan border. He was picked up in eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border, by a Navy SEAL team as part of a trade involving the return of five top Taliban commanders who'd been held at Guantanamo Bay.
After the trade, the Taliban released a statement attributed to their leader, Mullah Omar, declaring the release of the commanders from Gitmo a "great victory."
It was this trade that told the world that America was now ready to deal with terrorists, putting a price on all our heads. President Obama not only broke America's pledge that we will never negotiate with terrorists. He also broke a law that requires congressional notification of such a trade. Not coincidentally, ransom is now a prime source of income for the Islamic State.
There's another law the president himself may have broken — that of giving material aid and comfort to a terrorist enemy. As pointed out by Allen West, former congressman and Iraq War veteran, Obama recently signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which makes it a crime to offer or provide any material support to terrorist groups. It makes no exception as to who and under what circumstances.
"We have a federal statute which makes it a felony to provide material assistance to any terrorist organization," said Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano in support of West's opinion. "It could be money, maps, professional services, any asset whatsoever, including human assets."
Releasing official charges against Bergdahl for desertion would also indict Obama for illegal activities that benefit terrorism. Shaffer spoke of "a titanic struggle behind the scenes," with the Army trying to do the right thing while the White House worried about the images of a president welcoming the parents of someone now charged with desertion and a terrorists-for-deserter narrative coming out.
But it will come out, and it will be damning.

The Bergdahl Story You Haven’t Heard

June 4, 2014 4:00 AM
The Bergdahl Story You Haven’t Heard


The commander-in-chief endangers even more American lives over Bergdahl.
By Michelle Malkin



Five years ago, I publicly raised questions about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion from Blackfoot Company, 1-501 Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division.

A few weeks after his so-called “capture” in late June 2009, three conflicting accounts surfaced: U.S. officials told the Associated Press that Bergdahl had “walked off” the base with three Afghans; the Taliban claimed on its website that “a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison” and into their arms; and Bergdahl claimed in his Taliban “hostage video” that he had “lagged behind a patrol” before being captured.

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I asked on my blog: Were the AP’s sources mistaken? Or is the disturbing first account the right one? What about the “three Afghans” Private First Class Bergdahl reportedly “just walked off” with after his shift? Who are they? What’s going on?


Five years ago, one of the brave soldiers who risked his life to search for Bergdahl answered my questions, and I published his statement on July 20, 2009: “I know the story and the accounts that he was drunk or that he was lagging behind on patrol are not true — this soldier planned this move for a long time. He walked off the post with a day’s supply of water and had written down before that he wanted to live in the mountains. . . . He is an embarrassment to everyone who has worn the uniform.”

After news broke this weekend of President Obama’s trade of five high-level Taliban commanders at Gitmo for Bergdahl’s “freedom,” I heard from another soldier who served on the search team. “Many of my brothers died because of Bergdahl’s actions, and this has been a very hard day for all Geronimos,” he told me after documenting his proof of service. Other journalists ignored his attempts to get the truth out. My source still holds a highly sensitive position, so you won’t see him all over the cable news shows. But he wants all of you to know the hell he and his comrades have been reliving:

“I was assigned to 1st Platoon of Blackfoot Company,” based out of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Salerno in Khost, Afghanistan, he said. “Bowe’s platoon was assigned to conduct security and stability operations out of FOB Sharana and other locations in Paktika. The untold background that led to Bowe’s situation involves an article and pictures published by Guardian reporter Sean Smith.” One of the battalion leaders punished soldiers, including Bergdahl (who had been photographed snoozing in his armored vehicle), with extra guard-duty assignments for conducting operations in an unprofessional manner at Outpost MEST (OP MEST).

“Bergdahl was already disenchanted with the war effort,” my source said, “and I think the extra duty was the last straw for him.” On the morning of June 30, 2009, “Bergdahl completed a guard shift, removed his equipment, weapon, and sensitive items, and left OP MEST with several Afghan security forces personnel. He took a compass, a couple bottles of water, and two knives and his journal. His exact intentions may never be known, but he willingly walked off OP MEST and was secured by enemy forces not long after.”

My source, who had been up the previous night on a separate raid, was “shaken awake” on the afternoon Bergdahl disappeared. “We were told there was a DUSTWUN (Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown) and to pack for a three-hour assault. We received a brief that Bergdahl was missing, and we were going to get him. . . . Sometime after dark we boarded CH-47s to assault an objective thought to contain Bergdahl. We never made it to the landing zone, as the helicopters took very heavy fire on approach to the objective and had to divert.”


The soldier’s Focused Targeting Force (FTF) platoon was not told that it was being diverted to OP MEST. When they landed, he said, “We thought we were in enemy territory, so I recall my friends and I screaming ‘vehicles’ and preparing to engage with the LAW and SMAW-D rockets we carried. We soon realized the lights were from RG-31 and Maxpro MRAPs, friendly vehicles, and de-escalated the situation. The CH-47s had dropped us off at OP MEST and did not relay that information.”

With that near-disaster over, the soldier recounted: “We averaged 18 to 22 kilometers a day on foot, clearing house to house, room to room, looking for Bergdahl. . . . We even went as far as rappelling down wells and crawling through tunnels to look for him.” The standard procedure for recapturing Bergdahl was not “normal,” the soldier noted. “He was very good with knives and trained to throw and fight hand-to-hand with knives. We did not know the mental state of Bergdahl at the time. All we knew was he left on his own, he caused us lots of hardship, and if we entered a room and saw him, we would put him down because he could attack us.”

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On the morning of July 4, 2009, the soldier recalled, “we assaulted several objectives looking for Bergdahl. . . . We executed the mission without incident and were waiting to be exfiltrated. Our aircraft were in sight when they turned and flew in the opposite direction. At the time we did not know why, but we were stranded. The enemy took advantage of Bergdahl’s capture and attacked numerous outposts that morning.”


“Combat Outpost Zerok was almost overrun, multiple soldiers were wounded, and PFCs Justin Casillas and Aaron Fairbairn lost their lives fighting that day,” the soldier told me. (I wrote about their deaths in my July 8, 2009, column, not knowing they were related to the Bergdahl mess.)

My source continued: “We learned later that our exfiltration aircraft were diverted to support COP Zerok and that the situation there was so dire that at one point there were two Apache gunships on station that went Winchester, meaning they expended all ordinance and ammunition, but they would not abandon the soldiers still fighting, so they resorted to low-level unarmed passes to distract the enemy. Bergdahl’s actions undoubtedly caused these events. We spent the remainder of Independence Day walking in the desert . . . waiting for aircraft that did not come for many, many hours.”

He continued: “A few days later, we (FTF) conducted a daylight raid on some tents looking for Bergdahl. We took heavy small-arms and RPG fire on approach and ran off the CH-47s in contact. Our entire element engaged the enemy, who turned out to be a Taliban shadow governor and his bodyguards. . . . Multiple people died that day. . . . All of this happened because Bergdahl got tired of playing soldier. The remainder of that deployment was focused on recovery efforts. Countless members of the brigade were wounded, and we lost good friends, among them PFC Matthew Martinek and 2LT Darryn Andrews. I have no doubt these great men would be alive if Bergdahl did not leave.”

In addition to Andrews, Casillas, Fairbairn, and Martinek, Private First Class Morris Walker and Staff Sergeants Clayton Bowen, Kurt Curtiss, and Michael Murphrey died as a result of Bergdahl’s abandonment. That’s eight dead American soldiers (not six, as the rest of the media have reported) betrayed by selfish Bergdahl and reckless President Obama.

My source did not mince words: “The fact that our government negotiated with terrorists and our enemy is incomprehensible. The fact that they exchanged five war criminals for a traitor is sickening. The worst part for those of us that suffered through that time is that PFC Bergdahl is being hailed as some kind of hero. He was automatically promoted to specialist and sergeant, ranks he does not deserve and did not earn. I have no doubt he will receive back pay for these past five years, a substantial sum. There will be book deals, and his family are celebrities. I am glad he is safe, and happy for his family, but he should return home to face a court martial.”

Are you listening, Capitol Hill and America? The Bowe Bergdahl mess isn’t just a story about one deserter, but two. There’s the muddle-headed lowlife who left his post and brothers behind. And there’s the corrupt commander-in-chief who has jeopardized more American soldiers’ lives to “rescue” Bergdahl by bowing to the Taliban, while snubbing the surviving heroes and the eight dead American soldiers who lost their lives because of him. This cannot stand.

Some Dems Have "Had Enough"

By Ron Fournier

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June 9, 2014

The email hit my in-box at 9:41 p.m. last Wednesday.  From one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, a close adviser to the White House, the missive amounted to an electronic eye roll. "Even I have had enough."

Another Democrat had quit on President Obama.

The tipping point for this person was the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl case—not the soldier-for-Taliban swap itself as much as how the White House mishandled its obligation to communicate effectively and honestly to Congress and the public. More than that, Obama's team had failed once again to acknowledge its mistakes, preferring to cast blame and seek cover behind talking points.

"DC is hard, and depressing," the Democrat wrote. "I still believe good comes from government (e.g. 8 million in ACA). But that Politico story is a cautionary one: good reminder that you can't go so in the bunker [and] no longer identify legitimate criticism." That day, Politico had posted a story channeling the White House communications team's response to the Bergdahl backlash.

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White House aides were aware Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had been tagged a deserter, and that they would be grilled over not keeping Congress in the loop. But they figured people would be most outraged over the national security implications.
The White House has been surprised by how much attention has remained on the questions about Bergdahl, from the circumstances of his disappearance to the wild beard his father grew while he was being held that's even led to Bergdahl's hometown canceling a celebration. All this, Obama aides say, is in their minds a proxy for the hatred toward the president.
The new approach: Frame the criticism as another example of Republicans complaining about something just because Obama was the one to do it.

To this senior Democrat, the Politico story showed the White House to be both tone-deaf and arrogant, two vices that are undermining what could have been a great presidency.

I share this email to make the broader point and to offer a disclosure: In the 18 months since I began writing columns focused on the presidency, virtually every post critical of Obama has originated from conversations with Democrats. Members of Congress, consultants, pollsters, lobbyists, and executives at think tanks, these Democrats are my Obama-whispers. They respect and admire Obama but believe that his presidency has been damaged by his shortcomings as a leader; his inattention to details of governing; his disengagement from the political process and from the public; his unwillingness to learn on the job; and his failure to surround himself with top-shelf advisers who are willing to challenge their boss as well as their own preconceived notions.

"Dem Party is F****d," wrote a Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill during the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act website.

A Democratic House member whose endorsement in 2008 helped lift the Obama candidacy told me in January, "He's bored and tired of being president, and our party is paying the price."
"Talented guy but no leader," said a Democratic lobbyist and former member of Congress in March. "If he could govern half as well as he campaigns, he'd be a good-to-great president."

Questioning why the Veterans Affairs Department hadn't been overhauled months ago as promised by Obama, a senior White House official conceded privately to me, "We don't do the small stuff well. And the small stuff is the important stuff."

The level of disquiet among Democrats reminds me of President George W. Bush's second term, when my best sources were frustrated
Republicans. (Interviewing Republicans today is like interviewing Democrats in 2006: predictably partisan, rarely insightful.)

Few frustrated Democrats are willing to complain openly. I grant them anonymity, which creates a problem: Readers, for good reason, don't trust anonymous quotes. One way to avoid deluging readers with unnamed Democrats is for me to digest their complaints along with other reporting to shape my columns and tweets.

Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas & the Bergdahl Swap

June 5, 2014 8:05 am / 1 Comment / victorhanson

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

President Obama’s exchange of 5 high-ranking Taliban murderers for a soldier who possibly was a deserter and collaborator encapsulates everything that is wrong with this administration’s foreign policy. The serial failures of the past 5 years reflect a toxic brew of partisan politics and naïve ideology.


The staging of the announcement last Saturday in the Rose Garden obviously was intended to milk every drop of photogenic pathos and political gain from a decision rife with moral hazard and questionable legality. To reap political advantage from this disaster of a deal, lies and half-truths were necessary for creating the narrative behind the picture of Obama flanked by Bergdahl’s joyful, if somewhat bizarre, parents. Contrary to the president and his supporters, Bergdahl was not a “hero” or “prisoner of war.” Nor had he served with “honor and distinction,” or been “captured on the battlefield,” as the terminally mendacious Susan Rice said on a Sunday morning news-show.

In fact, evidence continues to mount that Bergdahl voluntarily left his post to connect with English-speaking Taliban, a move consistent with his renunciation of his citizenship and disgruntled anti-American emails. Whether he is just a flake, as his earlier biography and strange comments suggest, or had more sinister motives will become clearer as more information surfaces. He may even be a traitor.

His team leader on the night he disappeared, former Army Sergeant Evan Buetow, has told CNN that radio intercepts revealed that Bergdahl was looking for the Taliban, and that after his capture, the Taliban’s attacks on Americans became “far more directed.”
The serious questions about Bergdahl were known to the administration, if only from a 2012 Rolling Stone article. Yet consistent with Obama’s foreign policy approach, facts are never an impediment to political advantage, as his record shows. The Benghazi disaster was created by politics and covered up for political reasons. Beefing up security for the diplomatic mission was nixed because it contradicted the political narrative that the multilateral “leading from behind” removal of Ghaddafi had started Libya on the road to Jeffersonian democracy and peace, when in reality it had unleashed hundreds of feral jihadists gangs now armed with missiles and other weapons. Likewise blaming the attack on an obscure video rather than an al Qaeda franchise reinforced the “al Qaeda on its heels” and “bin Laden dead” memes peddled during the presidential campaign in order to prove the success of Obama’s anti-Bush foreign policy.

So too the Bergdahl weeper is another episode in the “end the wars and bring the troops home” political narrative demonstrating the superiority of “collective action” and “diplomacy and development, sanctions and isolation, appeals to international law, and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral military action,” as Obama said at West Point, over George Bush’s alleged trigger-happy, blood-for-oil, Halliburton-enriching unilateralism. Just don’t think about the 6 soldiers who died looking for Bergdahl, or the violation of legal protocols for releasing Guantanamo detainees, or the dismissal of the concerns of the intelligence community, or the snubbing of 

Congress in making the deal, or the moral hazard of paying ransom to hostage-takers. Never mind that under Obama’s watch Iraq is once again an inferno of sectarian violence and is fast becoming a satellite of Iran. Just forget that the Taliban, given a date-certain for our withdrawal, are poised to reassert control over large swaths of eastern Afghanistan, squandering the sacrifices made by our troops. 

Those facts must be obscured in order to achieve a political advantage. So too the enormous risk to our soldiers’ lives and our national interests that attends the release of 5 battle-hardened jihadist murderers does not figure in political calculations for firing up the base ahead of the midterm election.

Politics may be all there is to Obama’s foreign policy. With some justification, he may calculate that despite a few occasional bleats of protest, the ovine press corps will always watch his back and deliver the political dividends his actions seek. The scandal of Benghazi––both the incompetence that lead to 4 dead Americans, and the blatantly dishonest cover-up afterwards––that unfolded a few months before the 2012 elections should have put his reelection at risk. Yet with an indifferent press corps downplaying the story, and partisan hack Candy Crowley watching his back during the presidential debates, the worst scandal of his presidency had no effect on the election. So we shouldn’t be surprised that team Obama thinks this latest shameless political stunt will work too. As Guy Benson at Townhall.com analyzes the Obama crew’s thinking, “They figured that the feel-good nature of the ‘POW’ returning home narrative would be blindly seized upon and enabled by a media exhausted by the egregious VA scandal story. Unpleasant details would be whitewashed or mostly ignored, and the only real outrage would emanate from the usual suspects on the Right. They thought they could counter critiques of the nature and terms of the trade with faux-indignant questions about whether skeptics were in favor of ‘leaving Americans behind.’” In short, the White House’s political modus operandi on every bonehead decision for the past 5 years.

Yet there is also an ideology behind Obama’s foreign policy, one shared by most progressives. This naïve view assumes the whole world is just like us, wants freedom, human rights, leisure, and prosperity as much as we do, and is kept from achieving those boons by environmental forces, lingering superstitions like religion, and the fallout from historical crimes most of which have been committed by the West. Thus it assumes America’s guilt and need to atone for its neo-colonial and neo-imperialist sins, and its racism, plunder of resources, and militarist adventurism, the very attitude struck in Obama’s infamous 2009 Cairo speech. Then follows the imperative for American withdrawal and retreat, a dangerous dereliction of global duty rationalized with the magical thinking of “international law,” “engagement,” “multilateralism,” “smart diplomacy,” “sanctions,” “international pressure,” and all the other camouflage for an unwillingness to make the tough, risky choices necessary in a hard world of bad men. This ideology bespeaks a monumental failure of imagination, and a parochial inability to understand that different peoples and cultures have different mores and goals.

Every one of Obama’s foreign policy debacles reveals this shopworn idealism. It explains the impulse to rely on negotiations and concessions with enemies like Iran, who only yield at the point of a gun; the reliance on bluster and bluff with killers like Bashar al Assad, who can read every tell announcing a weak hand; or the feeble threats of disapproval from an international community issued to 

Vladimir Putin, whose past brutal behavior in Chechnya and Georgia shows that he cares nothing for the estimation of some imagined “international community” that still wants to buy his oil. And now comes Obama’s absurd claim that releasing 5 seasoned killers will “open the door for broader discussions among Afghans about the future of their country by building confidence that it is possible for all sides to find common ground.” That Obama thinks the Taliban––who brutally murdered their own people in a soccer stadium, stone homosexuals, throw acid in the face of schoolgirls, honor-kill their own wives and daughters, and blow up women and children–– can have any “common ground” with anyone not sharing their barbarous religious ideology is profoundly delusional. 

As the Bergdahl fiasco shows yet again, partisan politics and bad ideas make for a world dangerous to our interests and security.

Free Bowe Bergdahl, Then Court-Martial Him For Desertion

Free Bowe Bergdahl, Then Court-Martial Him For Desertion

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
 Posted 06/05/2014 06:08 PM ET

What is it with Susan Rice and the Sunday-morning talk shows? This time she said that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had served in Afghanistan "with honor and distinction" — the biggest whopper since she insisted that the Benghazi attack was caused by a video.

There is strong eyewitness evidence that Bergdahl deserted his unit and that the search for him endangered his fellow soldiers.

Otherwise, there would be no national uproar over his ransom, and some of the widely aired objections to the deal would be as muted as they are flimsy. For example:
 
1. America doesn't negotiate with terrorists.

Nonsense. Of course we do. Everyone does, while pretending not to. The Israelis, by necessity the toughest of all anti-terror fighters, in 2011 gave up 1,027 prisoners, some with blood on their hands, for one captured staff sergeant.

2. The administration did not give Congress 30-day notice as required by law.
 
Of all the jurisdictional disputes between president and Congress, the president stands on the firmest ground as commander in chief.

And commanders have the power to negotiate prisoner exchanges.

Moreover, from where did this sudden assertion of congressional prerogative spring?

After five years of supine acquiescence to President Obama's multiple usurpations, Congress suddenly becomes exercised over a war power — where its claim is weakest. Congress does nothing in the face of 23 separate violations of the president's own Affordable Care

Act. It does nothing when Obama essentially enacts by executive order the DREAM Act. It does nothing when the Justice Department unilaterally rewrites drug laws.

And now it rises indignantly on its hind legs because it didn't get 30 days' notice of a prisoner swap?

3. The Taliban release endangers national security.

Indeed it does. The five released detainees are unrepentant, militant and dangerous. The administration pretense that we and the Qataris will monitor them is a joke. They can start planning against us tonight. And if they decide to leave Qatar tomorrow, who's going to stop them?

The administration might have tried honesty here and said:

Yes, we gave away five important combatants. But that's what you do to redeem hostages. In such exchanges, the West always gives more than it gets for the simple reason that we value individual human life more than do the barbarians with whom we deal.

No shame here, merely a lamentable reality. So why does the Bergdahl deal so rankle?

Because of how he became captive in the first place. That's the real issue. He appears to have deserted, perhaps even defected.

The distinction is important. If he's a defector — joined the enemy to fight against his country — then he deserves no freeing. Indeed, he deserves killing, the way we kill other enemies in the field, the way we killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who had openly joined al-Qaida. A U.S. passport does not entitle a traitor to any special protection.
(Caveat: If a POW is turned, Stockholm-syndrome-like, after falling captive, these condemnatory considerations don't apply.)

Assume, however — and we will find out soon enough — that Bergdahl was not a defector. Simply wanted out — a deserter who walked or wandered away from his duty and his comrades for reasons as yet unknown. Do you bargain for a deserter?

Two imperatives should guide the answer. Bergdahl remains a member of the U.S. military and therefore is (a) subject to military justice and (b) subject to the soldiers' creed that we don't leave anyone behind.
What to do? Free him, then try him. Make the swap and then, if the evidence is as strong as it now seems, court-martial him to the fullest extent for desertion.

The swap itself remains, nonetheless, a very close call. I would fully respect a president who rejected the deal as simply too unbalanced.

What is impossible to respect is a president who makes this heart-wrenching deal and then does a victory lap in the Rose Garden and has his spokesmen and acolytes treat it as a cause for celebration. This is no victory. This is a defeat, a concession to a miserable reality, a dirty deal, perhaps necessary as a matter of principle but to be carried out with regret, resignation, even revulsion.

The Rose Garden stunt wasn't a messaging failure. It's a category error. The president seems oblivious to the gravity, indeed the very nature, of what he has just done. Which is why a stunned and troubled people are asking themselves what kind of man they have twice chosen to lead them.

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