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| Afghanistan |
| Finding Bergdahl – The Final Chapter |
| 2017-10-24 |
| [DangerousMagazine] In the fifth and final chapter of this saga we go deep inside the back room negotiations to release Bergdahl and the controversy that would await him after his release. by Robert Young Pelton By late 2013 Bowe Bergdahl had been a prisoner of the Haqqani’s in Pakistan for almost half a decade. According to Bergdahl’s account, he fought back , he refused to convert, refused to eat cooked food (an insult to Pashtuns) and he refused to bathe. He escaped multiple times ending up in a small cage. Like most of his decisions, he ended up choosing the one that would make it harder on him. Bergdahl had no idea how to deal with being a hostage in a region where kidnapping was perfected as part of the culture. Just in-country and eager to understand the strange land he quickly began to dislike his commander and in June 2009 he left his small group of 33 soldiers to walk 30 kilometers north to the unit’s headquarters and file an official report on his unit. The naive US soldier was quickly kidnapped and after some clumsy attempts by tribesmen to trade him to the base commander he was hustled over the border to Pakistan. My previous chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 were published in Vice to detail this extraordinary event. I chose to ignore Bergdah and let him tell his own story. My focus was learning from the insiders who tried to help, and sometimes hinder, his torturous path to freedom. Bowe Bergdahl has now told part of his story in a bizarre Hollywood discussion with a producer and again through a detailed video interview with former hostage Sean Langan but his story is only beginning to be told. The story of Bergdahl and the efforts to free him also are tossed in an ocean of angry condemnation, biased news reports, slanted commentary and stern accusations from five years of speculation on Bowe Bergdahl’s motives and that is then whipped up into a by a storm of personal agendas that sunk any chances of Bergdahl had of ever being understood calmly and fairly. |
| Posted by:newc |
| #2 The story of Bergdahl and the efforts to free him also are tossed in an ocean of angry condemnation, biased news reports, slanted commentary and stern accusations from five years of speculation on Bowe Bergdahl’s motives and that is then whipped up into a by a storm of personal agendas that sunk any chances of Bergdahl had of ever being understood calmly and fairly. Um, Bergdahl was like stupid and deserted...ran away...stabbing his unit in the back...that was his personal agenda. And like, Obama traded the five highest ranking Taliban war criminals for this like minded deserter...stabbing the US in the back...that appeared to be Obama's personal agenda...and I don't understand it. This is not the end of this story...those five war criminals will return to the battlefield...if they haven't already done so...and they will do their damndest to kill US troops. That means even as I write this, an American soldier(s) is enjoying his life...that will be brutally taken from him by the future actions of these released war criminals. |
| Posted by: Tennessee 2017-10-24 10:45 |
| #1 After extensive investigation, the Army concluded that six guys dying looking for this clown would be bad for the Obama administration and so ...... |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2017-10-24 07:47 |