Reply With QuoteReporting now indicates that he may very well have flipped sides.
Somebody watched too much of a certain TV show.
America's Last Prisoner of War
Reporting now indicates that he may very well have flipped sides.
America's Last Prisoner of War
Three years ago, a 23-year-old soldier walked off his base in Afghanistan and into the hands of the Taliban. Now he’s a crucial pawn in negotiations to end the war. Will the Pentagon leave a man behind?
Bowe Bergdahl prepares for graduation from basic training near Fort Benning in Georgia.
Courtesy of the Bergdahl Family.
By Michael Hastings
June 7, 2012 8:00 AM ET
The mother and father sit at the kitchen table in their Idaho farmhouse, watching their son on YouTube plead for his life. The Taliban captured 26-year-old Bowe Bergdahl almost three years ago, on June 30th, 2009, and since that day, his parents, Jani and Bob, have had no contact with him. Like the rest of the world, their lone glimpses of Bowe – the only American prisoner of war left in either Iraq or Afghanistan – have come through a series of propaganda videos, filmed while he's been in captivity.
In the video they're watching now, Bowe doesn't look good. He's emaciated, maybe 30 pounds underweight, his face sunken, his eye sockets like caves. He's wearing a scraggly beard and he's talking funny, with some kind of foreign accent. Jani presses her left hand across her forehead, as if shielding herself from the images onscreen, her eyes filling with tears. Bob, unable to look away, hits play on the MacBook Pro for perhaps the 30th time. Over and over again, he watches as his only son, dressed in a ragged uniform, begs for someone to rescue him.
"Release me, please!" Bowe screams at the camera. "I'm begging you – bring me home!"
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz22QSPnH3q
Reporting now indicates that he may very well have flipped sides.
Somebody watched too much of a certain TV show.
Just sad to watch. I hope they bring him home very soon
Originally Posted by Reader I am
Not quite. Let's just say this is known to have some truth behind it.
Stockholm Syndrome. He's spent 3 years with the same captors with most likely no outlet to the outside world. Could very well have mentally deteriorated a bit.
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It doesn't matter what the Army tells you, the needs of the service will always come first.But what Bowe found in the Army, according to his parents, was a "deception" – one that started from the moment he was recruited. Bowe had been enticed to join the Army, they say, with the promise that he would be going overseas to help Afghan villagers rebuild their lives and learn to defend themselves – "the whole COIN thing," says Bob, citing the shorthand for America's strategy of counterinsurgency. "We were given a fictitious picture, an artificially created picture of what we were doing in Afghanistan."
If he walked off the base under his own accord doesn't that make him a deseter...why should the military be concerned with him then?
Genuine question, I'm not trolling.
He is an American citizen and it paints the military in a brutally negative light if they just abandoned a captured soldier to the Taliban. It is also very significant that he is the only American POW in this conflict still unaccounted for, so media coverage will be substantial, with all the focus on him.
Substantial?
How many Americans know his name, know how many POW's the United States may or may not have in enemy hands, and more importantly, how many care?
Until he comes home, we may never the whole truth. Until we do, I am willing to give him the benefit of every doubt.
I don´t want to be disrespectful but from the very first moment I thought that there was something wrong about it. Why should one soldier step outside his base (COP right ?) and walk straight into hostile territory ?
Substantial in regards to being the only POW unaccounted for in Afghanistan. It made a fairly large splash several years ago when he was captured. Many working-class Americans would care in that they are the ones sending their sons and daughters into the service; it does not reflect well if the military forsakes them to enemy hands, regardless of circumstance.
Agreed. I'm just finding the networks and the whole support the troops a bit shallow at the moment.
I think if they can find Bin Laden they can find this poor kid. I just hope it doesn't take as long.
What I recall is that he departed his COP in order to get drunk with some locals.
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