CNN is reporting that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will meet next week with the general who’s looking into how the now-freed prisoner of war was captured by the Taliban in 2009, the Army and his attorney said.
Attorney Eugene Fidell told CNN he will know for sure next week exactly when the meeting will take place.
Bergdahl has met once before, briefly, with Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, the point person for the Army’s investigation.
The 28-year-old soldier spent five years in the hands of Taliban militants after he disappeared in Afghanistan in June 2009.
After he was released in May in exchange for five senior Taliban members held by the U.S. military, Bergdahl underwent counseling and medical care at a hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been a prisoner of war in Afghanistan for five years, has been shifted to outpatient care at a Texas military base, the U.S. Army said in a statement Sunday.
Bergdahl, 28, had been receiving inpatient treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston. He is now receiving outpatient care on the base in San Antonio, according to the statement. The Army said his “reintegration process” is proceeding with exposure to more people and a gradual increase in social interaction.
The Idaho native was captured in June 2009 and freed by the Taliban on May 31 in a deal struck by the Obama administration in which five senior Taliban officials were released from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
If Bowe Bergdahl only knew the hate and venom being spewed about him here in America by the Republicans and the conservative media, he would kindly ask his Taliban captors to please take him back. But instead, the unsuspecting American troop, a prisoner of war, has boarded a plane from Germany and is on his way back to the land he calls home!
Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left a military hospital in Germany on Thursday afternoon and will arrive in the United States early Friday, officials said.
The former Taliban prisoner is expected to land in San Antonio overnight and be taken to the Brooke Army Medical Center.
Bergdahl will not make any public appearances during Phase 3 of his reintegration process, and there will be no media access to his return or his stay at Brooke Army Medical Center.
‘Our first priority is making sure that Sgt. Bergdahl continues to get the care and support he needs,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
At this point, the only relevant question I can think of asking in the tale of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is this: If he was the son of a member of the U.S. Congress, would anybody be questioning his patriotism? Perhaps in this hyper-partisan atmosphere we have the answer might be yes, but I doubt it.
As more details emerge about Sgt. Bergdahl’s captivity, it’s becoming clearer to me that a large swath of our citizenry simply has not learned the lessons of the past and is too ready to jump on anything negative in a person’s background to deny them basic human rights. Yes, he had a habit of wandering when he shouldn’t have and, yes, U.S. soldiers were killed trying to find him. It is a tragedy that those soldiers died and their families have every right to be angry over the circumstances of their deaths. That should never have happened. This kind of thing happens in war. That’s why I hate it.
The worst, unfortunately, is yet to come. Sgt. Bergdahl will come home to a town and country that is deeply divided over whether he should have even been freed, much less traded for five suspected terrorists. He will be called terrible names in person and in the media by those who believe that they are the country’s moral arbiters. I have one word for them: Vietnam.
Last week I took my classes to the New Jersey Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. It’s a trip that’s become a yearly ritual at my school, and this year it was even more valuable because it provided some historical relevance in light of Sgt. Bergdahl’s story. Vietnam veterans lead all of the tours and are available for discussion, question and answer periods, and explanations of some of the exhibits at the memorial and education center. To a man, and they were all men, they recounted their experiences as soldiers returning to a divided country in the 1960s and 1970s. They told us about being called baby killers, village burners, Nazis, fascists and murderers. They were young men, some who were drafted and some who enlisted, who saw it as their duty to fight for their country, and their country turned their back on them. Today, they are kind, thoughtful men who are proud to be grandfathers and are happy to tell the younger generation about their experiences.
I thought of Bowe Bergdahl. Not the Sergeant; just the young man, and what he faces in the near future. For the Vietnam veterans there was some strength in numbers. Bowe Bergdahl will face the country alone. John McCain met President Nixon as a hero. I hope that President Obama sticks to his position and does the same for Bergdahl. Yes, he made a terrible mistake which became a tragedy for some of his fellow soldiers. But to hang this whole tragedy on him would be a terrible mistake. Let’s hope that we haven’t forgotten the lessons of 40 years ago.
As usual, Republicans once again find themselves on the wrong side of history.
General Stanley McChrystal, the General in charge when Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl went messing is just the latest in a group of knowledgeable military experts calling out the ignorant Republicans, pundits and Fox commentators for opposing the process involved in bringing Bergdahl home.
In an interview with Yahoo News, McChrystal made it clear that in our military, “we do not leave Americans behind. That’s unequivocal,” he said.
“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 told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview. “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.”
—
McChrystal, who commanded the war effort in Afghanistan at the time of Bergdahl’s June 2009 vanishing, declined to shed any more light on the circumstances of his disappearance. “We’re going to have to wait and talk to Sgt. Bergdahl now and get his side of the story,” he said. “One of the great things about America is we should not judge until we know the facts. And after we know the facts, then we should make a mature judgment on how we should handle it.”
Asked whether he would have made the same prisoner swap, McChrystal replied: “We don’t leave Americans behind. That’s unequivocal.”
The hypocrites over at Fox News. Remember them? They are the ones who formed the Republican coalition around Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty a few months ago when they thought he was being unfairly treated by the left winged media.
Fox News and the Republicans loved Phil Robertson and his Duck Dynasty crew. The defended them as brave capitalist, patriotic Americans, even inviting a member of the show to the president’s State of the Union Address… beard and all. But yesterday, Fox stooped to a new low when they picked on the father of Bowe Bergdahl calling him a Taliban because of his beard. A beard he grew in support of his son who was held in captivity by the Taliban.
SaidFox host Brian Kilmeade, “I mean, he says he was growing his beard because his son was in captivity. Well, your son’s out now. So if you really don’t — no longer look like a member of the Taliban, you don’t have to look like a member of the Taliban. Are you out of razors?”
Jon Stewart had something to say about that new level of hypocrisy.
“Well, that got ugly fast,” Stewart said. “First of all, who the f*ck are you to judge what a guy does if he thinks it might help him get his son back? And I don’t want to complicate your hatred of facial hair there, friend, but my guess is if you gave Bob Berg-dahl a bandana and a duck, you’d like him just f*cking fine.”
It has been no surprise that Fox News and the Republicans are against of the release of the American soldier kept prisoner by the Taliban for five years. But attacking the soldier’s father because he grew his beard in support of his captured son?
“You wonder why, given the fact that a couple of years ago they had already discounted him as a deserter, why would the president of the United States embrace his family in the Rose Garden?” Fox News host Steve Doocy opined.
Co-host Brian Kilmeade accused Bowe Bergdahl’s father, Robert Bergdahl, of making “some anti-American tweets and statements” because he had said he was working to free the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and that “God will repay the death of every Afghan child.”
“Really?” Kilmeade asked. “I mean, he says he was growing his beard because his son was in captivity. Well, your son’s out now. So if you really don’t — no longer look like a member of the Taliban, you don’t have to look like a member of the Taliban. Are you out of razors?”
So you’re still wondering if Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2016? Well you’re probably the only one still wondering.
The former Secretary of State has weighed in on many issues concerning today’s version of American politics, and the decision by President Obama to oversee the release of an American soldier captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan prompted a response from the next American president, Hillary Clinton. 🙂
Speaking at an event hosted by the Denver Post, Hillary Clinton defended the president’s decision.
“This young man, whatever the circumstances, was an American citizen — is an American citizen — was serving in our military,” Clinton said Monday evening, according to the Associated Press. “The idea that you really care for your own citizens and particularly those in uniform, I think is a very noble one.”
Needless to say, Republicans are trying to use the release of this American prisoner as another false issue to attack the President on. It is obviously their position that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl should have remain captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. You would think that bringing home prisoner of war, an American soldier who went to fight for this country would have been a good thing, but not with these republicans.
Now I’m not sure what Chris Hayes is trying to accomplish here, maybe he wants to be known as an impartial reporter or someone who has no allegiance to any one group or party. Maybe he wants to be impartial. And although an impartial reporter is something to be admired, impartial reporters are a dying breed in today’s political landscape, and they are dying because most of this country have already picked a side and are prepared to defend that side to the end. Impartiality unfortunately, has no audience here.
If you read this blog often, you have already realized that I, like the rest of the nation, have picked a side. So imagine my surprise when Chris Hayes of MSNBC brought on a Republican and a former White House employee on his show, to argue the constitutionality of a president deciding to go off on his own and do stuff without the okay of Congress.
In this particular case, the group discussed the recent decision by President Obama to “negotiate” the release of a United States prisoner, Bowe Bergdahl
Of course, Republicans all argue that the US prisoner should stay in captivity. Amazingly, they used the Sunday morning networks to complain that the United States should not have released five Gitmo prisoners to get the Taliban to release one US soldier. They were all livid! How dare the president make such a decision?
Chris brought on Republican Senator Jason Chaffetz to plead the Republican’s case. But Michael Gottlieb,the former White House Presidential Special Assistant, was making more of a case that the president made the right decision in acting swiftly to secure the release the captured soldier. That is when Chris Hayes pulled out a recording for the President denouncing George Bush when Bush acted alone on certain occasions.
At the end of the recording, the Republican’s face lit up as he happily applauded Chris Hayes and MSNBC for beating Fox News to this bit of ammunition against the President.
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