Did Afghan “Police” Sell Bowe Bergdahl to the Taliban?

That seems very likely if we credit as accurate the account in a Wall Street Journal article on the Army Sergeant (neé Private before two promotions given him while in captivity as an apparent sop to his parents) traded after five years in the Taliban’s talons for five ranking Taliban officials and commanders who were imprisoned in the U.S. military gulag at Guantanamo Bay, occupied Cuban territory. [1]

Promoting Bergdahl to Sergeant was perhaps also a way to help justify swapping five “high-value detainees” for him, as opposed for a trade for a lowly Private. Maybe they should have made him a General. [2]

The Wall Street Journal account, based on interviews with members of the Army unit Bergdahl lived with on the outpost in Afghanistan he walked away from, states that Bergdahl frequently went outside the American base to hang out with Afghan “police” at a nearby outpost, and mused to his comrades about living among the Afghans. One soldier says of Bergdahl: “I remember him asking me what I thought it would be like to be with these people, how he could see himself living in a culture like this, how it would be an adventure to be like they are, running through the mountains.”

A very telling quote. Bergdahl seems typical of a certain type of young man, restless and full of energy, bored with the routine existence of societies not in upheaval, seeking excitement. He was also an emotional extremist, in the article’s telling, swinging from wanting to kill Taliban to apparently romanticizing at least Afghans generally if not the designated foe. Just before deployment to Afghanistan he asked his squad leader if he could cut off the face of the first Taliban he killed and wear it as a mask. (The squad leader’s reply isn’t reported. I hope he told him no.) The article describes his schizoid swings from exasperation at what he viewed as a too-soft U.S. military strategy towards the Taliban to disenchantment with the war.

But here’s the key fact: the soldiers say that on the same day Bergdahl disappeared, two of the Afghan “policemen” he fraternized with at the outpost “mysteriously fled.” This leads to the obvious suspicion that he asked them about blending into Afghan society or perhaps even joining the Taliban, and they delivered him into Taliban captivity, probably for money. [3]

This fact isn’t in the military report on Bergdahl’s disappearance. On the other hand, while the U.S. government has put it about that Bergdahl had a habit of wandering off, his erstwhile comrades from Afghanistan had no recollection of this, at least the ones the WSJ interviewed, who presumably would know, as this was a small outpost near the Pakistan border, not a major base. [4]

Could this be another Benghazi-type Obama regime deception? In the Benghazi, Libya, killing of the U.S. ambassador and three U.S. security guards there, the Obama regime rushed out with the false story that the attack on the U.S. consulate was a spontaneous reaction by an unorganized mob who were angry over a dopey anti-Muslim video made in America by a Federal parolee with mysterious funding. That story was put out to try and stave off anticipated political pain from the true story. It could be that similar disinformation about Bergdahl merely being a guy with chronic wanderlust is being told to try and deflect or blunt criticism over the great deal the Taliban got in the swap. So much better than Bergdahl being seen as a deserter or traitor. (Which I’m not saying he is, just that he looks more like that when one deletes the “prior wandering offs” from the story. Personally I think he was an emotionally volatile, immature young flake. But an empire can’t be too choosy about who it enlists as its hired killers. Just look at the criminal scum the French Foreign Legion welcomes with open arms- and provides with pseudonyms to help hide them! That’s a more extreme example to make the point. Look, is wanting to kill and maim normal, for human beings?)

The thesis of there being another Obama spin operation going on is buttressed by the fact that Bergdahl is being held incommunicado in a U.S. military hospital in Germany. Bergdahl would be likely to say something that undermines the Obama regime’s “narrative,” especially around the circumstances of his “disappearance.” [5]

Various media reports (e.g. NPR, New York Times, the Daily Beast) have stated that Bergdahl said he was held in a cage in total darkness for several weeks following his two escape attempts from them. (Hey, that’s a U.S. torture method too! So the U.S. and the Taliban have something in common! Nothing like common ground for bringing enemies together.) (See footnote #5 below.)

But whatever Obama would have done or not done, the Republicans and their media allies would be attacking him. If he left Bergdahl in the Taliban’s clutches, he’d be condemned by these same cynical partisans for “abandoning an American soldier to terrorists.” And reportedly those Taliban prisoners have been damaged by their twelve years in captivity (mostly in solitary) at the tender mercies of the CIA and U.S. military. One doesn’t recognize people he used to know (the former Taliban deputy chief of “intelligence”). Apparently they’re in pretty bad mental shape, and no doubt have physical and brain damage from their years of torture and abuse. So there should be no problem for Qatar to keep them on ice for the agreed-upon one year. It’ll take them longer than that to psychologically recover from their ordeal, if they ever do. [6]

So in a sense, the “war on terror” is a war of Sadists vs. Sadists. Gee, which side should we root for?

1] “Bergdahl’s Views Shifted After First Taste of War,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2014, p.1. You can’t read it online unless you pay. Rupert Murdoch instituted that policy after he bought the corporation that owns the WSJ, Dow Jones, from a family that sits on the top tier of the U.S. class system, the Bancrofts.

2] The New York Times, in the next to last paragraph of a story, referred to the two promotions as “automatic,” without explanation. If American POWs are automatically promoted, I never heard of it before. “As Soldier Heals, Details Emerge Of His Captivity,” NY Times, Sunday, June 8, 2014, pgs. 1 and 12.

3] I put “policemen” in quotes not because I believe they were imposters, but because what passes for “police” in Afghanistan does not meet a reasonable definition of the word. Which is increasingly the case in the U.S. too. “Corrupt gunmen” would be more accurate in the Afghan case. Come to think of it, in the U.S. case too, given their penchant for theft under the guise of “asset forfeiture,” and their increasing tendency to murder and repress.

4] The New York Times also reported that soldiers stationed with him in Afghanistan “said they were unaware that he had previously wandered off the base, as the internal Army review reported.” Maybe they were “unaware” because it didn’t happen, huh Times? But the Times leaves it at that, in one short, hidden paragraph, the 23^rd paragraph of a 30 paragraph story. Most of the time, the Times bends over backward to protect the U.S. government and its institutions. That’s why it’s so often tardy or entirely AWOL in reporting scandals, ignoring them until they are widely reported elsewhere and it has no choice but to weigh in, to manipulate people’s attitudes and soften the blow to the establishment power structure, as well as retain its own credibility as a newspaper.

Paragraph 22 consists of a single, false sentence: “Just how and why Sergeant Bergdahl disappeared remains a mystery to his fellow soldiers.”

If the Times had only said “some of his fellow soldiers,” that might arguably be true. There’s no “mystery” to those of his erstwhile colleagues who believe, rightly or wrongly, that he deserted. And this evident attempt to protect the Obama regime is undercut four paragraphs later in the same story by a quote of Bergdahl’s provided by a Gerald Sutton, who the Times identifies as someone “who knew Sergeant Bergdahl from spending time together on their tiny outpost.” This is the quote Sutton attributes to Bergdahl: “What would it look like if I got lost in the mountains? Do you think I could make it to China or India on foot?” To this Sutton adds “I genuinely thought he was just kidding.” A reasonable if possibly mistaken assumption. “Bergdahl Was In Unit Known For Its Troubles,” NY Times, Sunday, June 8, 2014, pgs. 1 and 12.

5] Besides describing the torture inflicted by the Taliban, The New York Times reported on its front page that Bergdahl objects to being addressed as “sergeant” in the military hospital in Germany where he is currently being held in isolation. He’s being held there in part to insulate him from the harsh attacks on Obama for exchanging five important Taliban prisoners for him, and from the charges of desertion that some of his former comrades and various media and political poohbahs are leveling at Bergdahl himself. The Times reports that he has received a letter from his sister but has not replied. His family is being kept away from him, with the excuse that his mental state prevents them from seeing him- a dubious rationale. He is said to be physically well enough to travel. Obviously he is being held virtually incommunicado in Germany for political reasons. He is only allowed to speak to staff assigned to “treat” (and sneakily interrogate) him. His family can’t even call him. Buried in the third to last paragraph of a seventeen paragraph story the Times casually drops this stunner: “At some point, he will speak by phone with his family, and be reunited with them.” At some point he will speak with! Check the disingenuous passive sense! He’s being held incommunicado. His next stop, we are told, will be another Army “medical facility” in Texas, where his family will be allowed to see him, supposedly. (The Times phrased it as Bergdahl will “be reunited with them.”) NY Times, “As Soldier Heals,” op cit.

6] Details on the former Taliban prisoners’ condition was reported by the BBC, and picked up by NPR, June 8.

Let’s let the very funny and incisive cartoonist Brian McFadden have the last word for today: