Missing POW from Hailey Idaho

[YOhio]

I can't believe how ugly the reactions have been to this thing. Not a proud moment for America.

Does the guilt trip approach ever work for you?

[frank ryan]

I can't believe how ugly the reactions have been to this thing. Not a proud moment for America.

It is like some ppl would rather the soldier be dead or suffering in further captivity.

[Katy Lied]

I can't believe how ugly the reactions have been to this thing. Not a proud moment for America.

What do you think would be the ideal reaction to the situation? (Not being snarky, just curious on how to put lipstick on a desertion charge)

[Jeff Lebowski]

Does the guilt trip approach ever work for you?

YO, that bad feeling you are experiencing right now as you ponder your shameful behavior is what we like to call the "Light of Christ". If you continue to ignore it, it will go away. And that would be sad.

[Bo Diddley]

I can't believe how ugly the reactions have been to this thing. Not a proud moment for America.

Agreed. I think the politics, along with a general ignorance of the legal aspects of the scenario combined gets people fired up. Even among some of the brighter minds, wrapping their heads around the battle lines of who we are fighting, who is an enemy combatant, and who is a terrorist, what GITMO is, etc.

[imanihonjin]

It is like some ppl would rather the soldier be dead or suffering in further captivity.

Depending on the circumstances you may be right. If the accusations being leveled are true, it would have been better to let the fellow die or remain in captivity.

[Jeff Lebowski]

What do you think would be the ideal reaction to the situation? (Not being snarky, just curious on how to put lipstick on a desertion charge)

Ideal? I don't know. Something not involving death threats or wishing that we had left him there to rot for the rest of his life. His little hometown in Idaho had to cancel a welcome home event due to security and safety concerns.

By the way, I highly recommend this documentary about US soldiers that defected to North Korea. I believe it streams on Netflix.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473181/?ref_=fn_al_tt_6

One of the deserters married a Japanese woman who was kidnapped and forced to perform as an actor in propaganda movies. About ten years ago he and his wife and kids were allowed to leave North Korea and he returned to the US. What really struck me as I watched the film was how each of this soldiers seemed to have had a troubled youth (one was an orphan) and were seriously messed up in the head and then made a terrible, terrible decision that impacted the rest of their lives. The Jenkins guy that returned has said that he would give anything to go back in time and change what he did in a very brief moment. Really a tragic story.

I don't know much about the details of how this Idaho soldier deserted and I don't really care. If he wants to come home let's bring him home and then deal with any lingering desertion charges using our legal system and our laws. But don't threaten his life or the life of this family and friends and don't second guess the decision to bring him back. He is still an American.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Depending on the circumstances you may be right. If the accusations being leveled are true, it would have been better to let the fellow die or remain in captivity.

Yeah, the hell with the US constitution and due process.

[imanihonjin]

Yeah, the hell with the US constitution and due process.

What are you talking about? Where in the US constitution does it say anything about recovering a person who by the own volition entered into enemy territory?

[Bo Diddley]

Ideal? I don't know. Something not involving death threats or wishing that we had left him there to rot for the rest of his life. His little hometown in Idaho had to cancel a welcome home event due to security and safety concerns.

By the way, I highly recommend this documentary about US soldiers that defected to North Korea. I believe it streams on Netflix.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473181/?ref_=fn_al_tt_6

One of the deserters married a Japanese woman who was kidnapped and forced to perform as an actor in propaganda movies. About ten years ago he and his wife and kids were allowed to leave North Korea and he returned to the US. What really struck me as I watched the film was how each of this soldiers seemed to have had a troubled youth (one was an orphan) and were seriously messed up in the head and then made a terrible, terrible decision that impacted the rest of their lives. The Jenkins guy that returned has said that he would give anything to go back in time and change what he did in a very brief moment. Really a tragic story.

I don't know much about the details of how this Idaho soldier deserted and I don't really care. If he wants to come home let's bring him home and then deal with any lingering desertion charges using our legal system and our laws. But don't threaten his life or the life of this family and friends and don't second guess the decision to bring him back. He is still an American.

Or is he?

[frank ryan]

Depending on the circumstances you may be right. If the accusations being leveled are true, it would have been better to let the fellow die or remain in captivity.

What are you talking about? Where in the US constitution does it say anything about recovering a person who by the own volition entered into enemy territory?

I can't decide if you are a robot or just a hateful person.

[SoonerCoug]

One mentally ill soldier wanders off, and republicans want to crucify him over it.

Even the Taliban acknowledged that he was acting very strangely. The guy has mental illness. How pitiful to pick on an ill soldier who wandered off.

[LA Ute]

Apparently the intelligence file on this guy that was passed to the Senate Intelligence Committee was whitewashed of what the people on the ground thought had happened. Saxby Chambliss expressed surprise when all of the other soldiers came out and expressed their outrage at the hero treatment this guy was getting.

Which leads me to believe that perhaps Obama himself and his top advisers received the same intelligence file. This is a political disaster and I simply can't believe that Obama would have walked into this. If one wants to look at how the Democrats cobble together a voting majority, the main constituents are: 1) minorities; 2) white urban and suburban liberals; 3) single women; and 4) working class, unionized whites (a shrinking constituency). What gets either the GOP or the Democrats over the top are those true undecided independents like, for instance, the soccer moms. Which of these groups would react favorably or neutrally to this exchange and a hero's welcome to a deserter? Worse, there are reports from the likes of CNN and the WaPo that Bergdahl actively sought out the Taliban? In my mind, the only group that won't have a problem with this are the white urban and suburban liberals who hate the idea of Guantanamo holding prisoners into perpetuity. Unfortunately for Obama, this is the group that dominates his White House staff.

I've relayed this story before about my brother. He was at Yale law school back around the time when white liberal elites were wringing their hands about all those poor guys in Gitmo who were on holiday from killing their less faithful countrymen, depriving their women from schooling and plotting how to kill more American soldiers. There was what could be described as an obsession about this issue amongst that group. My brother, with a substantial background in the military and an understanding or how the law worked in the military, was present for one of the countless discussions. He politely told the group that the legal process they were outraged over was the same process used for decades (if not centuries) with issues involving American military soldiers, they were just now being applied to captured terrorists. He then reminded them that their outrage over this process notably didn't extend to our own servicemen and seemed to only come around now that the Bush administration was using it against some of the worst shit stains on the globe.

It wouldn't surprise me if mid-level do-gooders at the Department of State and perhaps the intelligence agencies whitewashed these files because they thought it would help clear a few guys out of Gitmo. In the echo chamber where these people reside, it's possible they had no clue what kind firestorm this would produce.

This theory is probably not correct, but I can't wrap my head around the whole thing. I can see Obama making this swap and then making an announcement that we have to make bad choices in order to get all our soldiers back no matter what the background is. This probably would have blown over within a couple days. But to invite Bergdahl's loony toons dad to the WH and then send out Susan Rice to talk about how Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction?" How could Obama not have seen the outrage coming if he had been fully briefed on Bergdahl?

This is the best set of comments I've seen on this whole mess.

[imanihonjin]

I can't decide if you are a robot or just a hateful person.

So you are telling me that, assuming the accusations are true, you are cool with sending honorable soldiers in and having as many as six die in the search and rescue of a dude who by his own free will walked into enemy territory and conspired with the enemy? That's not hateful, that is logical. How many lives are you cool with spending to recover a traitor?

[Jeff Lebowski]

So you are telling me that, assuming the accusations are true, you are cool with sending honorable soldiers in and having as many as six die in the search and rescue of a dude who by his own free will walked into enemy territory and conspired with the enemy? That's not hateful, that is logical. How many lives are you cool with spending to recover a traitor?

Former top Afghan commander disagrees with you.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...ch-107466.html

“We don’t leave Americans behind. That’s unequivocal,”

...

“After Sgt. Bergdahl, then Pvt. Bergdahl, came up missing, we did a huge number of operations to try to stop the Taliban from being able to move him across the border into Pakistan,” McChrystal said. “And we made a great effort and put a lot of people at risk in doing that.”“But that’s what you should do. That’s what soldiers do for each other, so it wasn’t the wrong thing to do,” he added.