“At least the Taliban were honest enough to say, ‘I’m the guy who’s gonna cut your throat,’ ” Bergdahl tells British TV journalist Sean Langan in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine of London headlined "The Homecoming from Hell."
“Langan, too, is a former Taliban hostage.”
“Bergdahl, 31, from Hailey, Idaho, says he never quite knew where he stood with the Army as he performed “administrative duties” while awaiting his desertion trial. “Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life,’’ he says. “We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs.”
“Bergdahl is expected to appear for sentencing Monday in a military courtroom in Fort Bragg, N.C., after pleading guilty to desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy. He could face life in prison.”
LOL! Yes, He does have a point. Why not hang him as a traitor and be done with it? Why drag out the Inevitable with all this ‘due process of law’, giving SSG Bergdahl a chance to defend and justify himself before a court martial when we all know he’s guilty?
Who knows, but if he went to trial instead of copping to a plea he might have convinced the panel that he had a plan. It’s majority decision that decides the verdict with a court martial jury, so he wouldn’t even have had to convince the whole jury, just a majority of its members. No less than F. Lee Baily said that if he had to be on trial for his life he would rather be tried by a military court martial than any other court, because he trusted the essential fairness, impartiality and desire to find the truth of the military court martial system. Something that he said didn’t exist in the civilian adversarial court system. Instead SSG (for now) Bowe Bergdahl chose not to defend himself, as he knows even in his addled mind that he has no excuse. Rather he chose to plead guilty and throw himself at the mercy of the court. Yet he has the temerity and ingratitude to complain about the unfairness of it all, calling it a ‘kangaroo court’ and a ‘lynch mob’. WTF? I can only imagine somebody must have spoke harsh words to him, looked cross at him or just shunned him for some odd reason while he was assigned to administrative duties in the lead up to his court martial disposition, eh?
Alas, poor Bowe Bergdahl is what we in the military colloquially refer to as ‘flake’. A consummately unreliable and ineffectual person. One prone to poor judgement, delusional and wishful thinking and who seldom seems to be inspired to do what he really should be doing at the moment. In his own mind he is a ‘secret king’ , a unique and special person who the rest of world just can’t seem to understand or appreciate for his specialness. He eventually disappoints everyone he meets with his foolish and unreliable behavior. Such a person can’t ever admit he just screwed up, rather he always has some preposterous explanation for why it was necessary for him to do what he did, no matter how unsatisfactory the outcome. And now Bowe Bergdahl is going to suffer even more simply because he chose to give of his time to serve this stupid, evil, racist, imperialist and two-faced country in its military. Alas and alack!
Deserter Bergdahl says Taliban more 'honest' than US Army
“22. When you return from a scout, and come near our forts, avoid the usual roads, and avenues thereto, lest the enemy should have headed you, and lay in ambush to receive you, when almost exhausted with fatigues.”
•Roger’s Rangers Rules 1757
Obviously a major intelligence and operational security (OPSEC) failure in Niger (or knee-JURE if you prefer). Such ambushes are usually enabled by insider information. No doubt the local government is infiltrated by jihadist sympathizers and/or people who were induced to provide info to ISIS under bribes, blackmail and/or threats, especially to their families.
Sounds like SGT Johnson’s body was able to be retrieved because he had a personal locator beacon of some sort on him.
Missing soldier found nearly a mile from Niger ambush, officials say
“The young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Today’s military rejects include tomorrow’s hard-core unemployed.”
- President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Actually the fact that the Army is having trouble attracting recruits is good news for the country as a whole. It means that the economy is growing and there are many more job openings available now.
The perennial problem the Army faces is that the most of the people the Army wants DON”T want to join the Army and many of the people who DO want to join the Army the Army doesn’t want. Let’s face it, for a certain percentage of recruits the military is merely the employer of last resort. But even in times like these the Army is fussier than most people believe about who it accepts. A lot of prospective recruits are rejected for all sorts of issues, both medical and behavioral. The Army has been granting waivers for admissions of ‘experimental use’ of marijuana for about 25 years now, but it still doesn’t want habitual stoners.
Army is accepting more low-quality recruits, giving waivers for marijuana to hit targets
“The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. “
– Oliver Cromwell, statement before the battle of Marston Moor (2 July 1644)
So what’s up? Usually the government doesn’t authorize the recall of retirees unless there is a war or some other ‘national emergency’ on going. Like they did at the height of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan 2003-2009. During World war II the U.S. government had plans to draft men up to 64 years old. The plan was to use the older men to run stateside training, logistic and administrative installations and free up the younger men for deployment to the war zone. Fortunately the war went well for the USA and such a comprehensive and extreme mobilization of manpower was never necessary
This pilot shortage is highly unusual for the Air Force. Usually the Zoomies don’t have any trouble finding prima donnas who want to fly for a living. Even the competition from the commercial airlines has heretofore mostly served to funnel people into the service who were ultimately looking to make a career for themselves as an airline pilot. Most of the pilots in the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard are commercial pilots in civilian life for that matter.
“President Trump signed an executive order Friday allowing the Air Force to recall as many as 1,000 retired pilots to active duty to address a shortage in combat fliers, the White House and Pentagon announced. By law, only 25 retired officers can be brought back to serve in any one branch. Trump's order removes those caps by expanding a state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush after 9/11, signaling what could be a significant escalation in the 16-year-old global war on terror.”
"We anticipate that the Secretary of Defense will delegate the authority to the Secretary of the Air Force to recall up to 1,000 retired pilots for up to three years," Navy Cdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. But the executive order itself is not specific to the Air Force, and could conceivably be used in the future to call up more officers and in other branches.”
Air Force could recall as many as 1,000 retired pilots to address serious shortage
On Bitches
link › jameslafond.blogspot.com
I had a few 'special' guys in my division on the ship I served on. They were usually black. Dealing with people who think they're special is a full-time job and really sucks. Bergdahl must be very special because he never seems to know when to shut up. He appears to get that from his dad whose tweets bordered on the Islamic/insane before his son was returned.
Figures that the only white guy Obama would stand up for was a real piece of work.
"Bowe Bergdahl chose not to defend himself, as he knows even in his addled mind that he has no excuse"
Bergdahl actually does have an excuse: he told himself and reporters he'd never get a fair trial in the US because of the nasty things DONALD J. TRUMP said about him which would influence the jury. I think you're right, though, he should've gone to trial.
My faith in the military justice system took several hits after it took 4 years to prosecute Nidal Hasan and the dunce in charge of Ft. Hood got up and praised diversity of all things after the incident.
You bring up a good point PR, especially in light of recent developments. Although ‘excuse’ is probably the wrong term here, rather there WAS the possibility of a ‘mitigating factor’ or a legal technicality that could have conceivably helped him escape punishment. What you are referring to, of course, is the Post WWII U.S. military legal concept of ‘unlawful command influence’ (UCI- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_command_influence), due to the charge that God-Emperor Trump’s public statement that he thought SGT (not SSG, my bad) Bergdhal was guilty had prejudiced his case so severely that it would be impossible for him to get a fair trial and would be grounds for dismissal of the charges. I say ‘was’ because Bergdahl’s defense counsel already filed for dismissal of all charges on those grounds and was denied. They lost on appeal as well and subsequently pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Thus SGT (for now) Bergdahl is currently scheduled to face the music in the sentencing portion on Wednesday 25 October, 2017. What punishment will the military judge impose? Misbehavior before the enemy, 10 U.S. Code § 899 - Art. 99, can be punished by death (law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/899). Although capital punishment seems unlikely given how squeamish and kind-hearted to a fault we have all collectively become and how the Leftist media controls public perception. Even during World War II only one single man (Eddie Slovik) was ever executed for desertion under fire, and then only because he refused to make a good act of contrition and accept reinstatement to a line unit. What judge today, even a military one, would be able to endure the media led shit-storm of social opprobrium that would hit him (AND his family) if he sentenced a hapless ‘conscientiously objecting’ dunderhead like Bergdahl to death? What always fascinates me is how so many Americans expect unsparing harshness from the modern military justice system and then they are shocked and amazed at how often it is lenient in its sentencing as well as solicitous of the rights of the accused. Just all kinds of due process of law rather than a drumhead trial and swift sentencing. Much as in the case of Major Nidal Hasan. Although Hasan DID receive the death penalty. We’ll just have to wait for some years while more due process is carried out and the obligatory Leftist appeals are filed before his sentence will be executed. It’s not like the good ole’ days: youtube.com/watch?v=EHqnSX4SJ_A (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge – From the Story by Ambrose Bierce).
I'm going to hazard a guess that psychometric criteria weigh heavily when the equipment costs as much as a fighter plane. Otherwise the pilot deficit would be quickly remedied by minority hires.
Bob,
You have to have smart men flying planes, period. Especially fighter planes. Women don't have the physical skills for it nor the ability to think fast in emergency situations nor the situational awareness. Affirmative action candidates wash out in flight school. The reason is that no one is going to pass a candidate through a checkout ride when it's just going to result in a mishap (crash) later and come back on the flight instructor. As our country gets dumber, the pool of available candidates will naturally get smaller.
Then there are the issues for trained pilots: the government requires a minimum of 10 years of service from military pilots AFTER flight school. Often nowadays this means flying a drone remotely. Pilots want to actually fly, not fly a drone where they're held accountable for all the weapons dropped based on data coming from thousands of miles away through a real time delay.
There is also the issue of op tempo: our military is simply being used in too many places at once, requiring those serving to do more with less. Our politicians can't stop playing God overseas, requiring our military to deploy more often. THis gets old, fast. I traveled a moderate amount overseas in a civilian job for about 5 years and it got old. Imagine having to travel in Indian country for 10 - 20 years while your family struggles stateside without you. We never seem to reach any objective, measurable goals with all of these overseas military actions so servicemen probably conclude, "What's the point?"
Finally, the nation-state, particularly ours, is decaying. Military service is a big sacrifice. It has to be worth it. Countries are losing the ability to wage war for lack of young men willing to fight it. Martin Van Creveld wrote much about this in "The Rise and DEcline of the State" which you can read for free as a .pdf.