Friday, June 6, 2014

#Berghazi - Flip-Flopping Wingnuts Continue to Trash Bergdahl

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The Bowe Bergdahl story is fast become the new #Benghazi - call it #Berghazi if you will - another case of too much angry hooplah and not enough facts. As the wingnuts cry for firing squads and impeachments, they are also ironically scrubbing their social media to erase the fact that just a while back they were praying to Jesus and beseeching Obama for his release. This is another case in which Obama can't win - if he had left the guy to rot with the Taliban, the GOP would be screaming about "weak, do-nothing, anti-military, heartless Obama." Since he got Bergdahl released, he is "making deals with terrorists" and "saving a traitor."

But the bottom line is that our Armed Forces don't leave anyone behind. That is not going to change. President Obama said he isn't going to apologize to the critics, and he shouldn't. And why would the GOP or anyone else want a military that didn't rescue their own soldiers? Who would volunteer for such an army?

Previous Related Posts:
Bergdahl Swap Causes GOP Brain Meltdown

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Liberal radio host/producer Matt Binder of Majority Report went on a mission last week to dig up as much Right Wing hypocrisy and flip-flopping as he could find. And boy howdy, he hit the jackpot! He re-tweeted some of the schizo timelines, which read like verbal whiplash. I love the first example from Charlie Daniels!














Next: Let's take a short break from the crazy stuff and move to someone trying to be the voice of reason on Fox News. Thank you, Sheppard Smith! And why are you still wasting your life on Fox?

If you desert or commit treason, you have to be proved to have done so. We can't just decide because some people come on television and yakety yak, and we've got a report of this and a report of that and that's what happened. As the Army said, as the Pentagon said, you bring them home. You bring them home first, and then you investigate.
~ Sheppard Smith, Fox News



Now, back to the crazy: Fox's Geraldo Rivera agrees with Shep Smith, but their colleague Kimberly Guilfoyle had a better idea - Bergdahl should have been shot by the men who were looking for him. No muss, no fuss. I thought she was a lawyer? What about Due Process?

Geraldo: . . . One of the things (the soldiers) take great security in is a absolute maxim that if anything happens to them, they’re going to be brought home, that we will not leave them behind. I don’t care who Bergdahl is, we don’t leave him behind. If you violate or waver from that hard principal, then the military forces will be stripped of what is absolutely the thing that makes them most secure. They know their colleagues won't leve them behind.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: Yeah, but it seems to me he’s pretty lucky that he was brought home the way he was. Because if those special forces had found him and encountered him — and they were looking for him — he would have come home either in a body bag or come home and gone straight to jail. But now what we see is his family at the White House, he's being celebrated as a hero, we have Susan Rice saying he served with honor and distinction. They have to walk that back because obviously, Geraldo, the evidence is quite alarming and striking to the contrary.

Geraldo: I don't care! I don't care! Makes no difference to me.



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Morning Joe Scarborough went on a tirade against Bowe Bergdahl's father that even shocked the right-leaning Chuck Todd. And crazy Joe is in epic form, touting himself as the perfect father. Wanna bet?

Scarborough: I keep holding up this image where Barack Obama has his arm around a man who is reaching out to pro-Taliban forces, talking about killing Americans.

Todd: Joe, Joe, don’t criticize the parents. Don’t criticize the parents in here, that are missing a child? Their son is missing for five years. You know what? It is not logical. You cannot handle it. You put yourself in his shoes –”

Scarborough: I have a 26-year-old son, and if my son is out on the wire and he is out there with fellow troops and he is writes me up and says he hates America and he’s thinking about deserting and he’s thinking about leaving his post, I can tell you as a father of that 26-year-old or 23-year-old son, I’d say, ‘Joey, you stay the hell right there,’ I would call his commander, I would say ‘Get my son. He is not well. Get him to a military base in Germany.’ I would not say ‘Follow your conscience, son.’ I would not reach out to the voice of jihad.

Todd: I’m not backseat driving how someone parents.

Scarborough: That is not backseat driving. I am a father. Any good father would not tell their son to follow their conscience and leave men and women on the line.

Todd: So he’s a bad father?

Scarborough: Yes!Yes, he is! Oh my god, Chuck.

















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Lindsey Graham wants to IMPEACH!!!! Because Obama is Black, or Something.

From the Washington Examiner
I don't mind opening a new jail up – I just don't want to empty this one,” he told the Washington Examiner on his way to a closed-door administration briefing on the Bergdahl matter. “It seems to me that they don't have a desire to continue to hold these guys under the law of war. I'm all for moving the jail to another location as long as you don't let everybody go."
. . . "It's going to be impossible for them to flow prisoners out of Gitmo now without a huge backlash," he said. "There will be people on our side calling for his impeachment if he did that."
Graham didn't use the word impeachment during his brief interview with the Washington Examiner. Instead he seemed content to throw up road blocks to any new detainee transfers and wait out the Obama presidency.
“You can keep clamping down restrictions and wait until he leaves,” Graham said when asked what he could do to stop the president from releasing more prisoners.











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Soldier Elliot Ackerman explains why there is so much anti-Bergdahl sentiment from other soldiers: He was a "Jonah" - a bad-luck charm, and a scapegoat for every death. In other words, the soldiers projected all their frustration about the war onto him. The "idol of discontent."

Elliot Ackerman via New Republic, writing about his own experience in Afghanistan
At night my colleagues and I would climb on our bunkered roof, a tumbler of scotch or a cigar in hand, and watch the drone strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in South Waziristan. During those days, Bergdahl’s case loomed ever-present. The irony that an iconic figure in a war that had largely been deserted by the American people was probably a deserter himself was never lost on us. It seemed just our luck.

Among sailors, a crew member who brings bad luck is known as a Jonah. It’s a long-held superstition, deriving from the Book of Jonah. Then the sailors said to each other, ‘Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.’ They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. And like the hapless crew that sailed Jonah to Tarshish, we found ourselves in a storm fighting in Afghanistan. With Bergdahl’s disappearance always in the background, imaginations ran wild. Why did the Taliban in Paktika execute attacks with such unusual precision and lethality? Some hypothesized that Bergdahl had informed them of our tactics. Why did Afghan civilians refuse civil aid that they so obviously needed? Others believed rumors that Bergdahl had participated in a propaganda campaign against us. None of this could be substantiated, but over there Bergdahl became the idol of discontent for so many. He was the Jonah.

Other soldiers have not been as circumspect or self-aware:

Former Army Sgt. Josh Korder to CNN's Jake Tapper
He is at best a deserter, and at worst a traitor. Any of us would have died for him while he was with us, and then for him to just leave us like that, it was a very big betrayal.
. . . As soon as he is able and as soon as he is fit, I do believe that he needs to be questioned, and basically tried if necessary.
. . . I don't think that I could have continued to go on without being able to share with you and ... the people the true things that happened in this situation. Because if you guys aren't made aware of it, it will just go on, and he'll be a hero, and nobody will be able to know the truth.

The only problem is, there are questions about Korder's own service. Is he a reliable source, or just an attention-seeker with a chip on his shoulder?

Josh Korder, a former Army sergeant from Minnesota who served with Bowe Bergdahl, signed a non-disclosure agreement, and admits he may be in violation of that by speaking out. He also left the service with an “other than honorable” discharge.
~ Via Freakout Nation

What does "Less Than Honorable" mean?

From About.com
Examples of factors that may be considered include the use of force or violence to produce serious bodily injury or death, abuse of a special position of trust, disregard by a superior of customary superior-subordinate relationships, acts or omissions that endanger the security of the United States or the health and welfare of other members of the Military Services, and deliberate acts or omissions that seriously endanger the health and safety of other persons.
. . . (1) Desertion; (2) escape prior to trial by general court-martial; (3) conscientious objector who refuses to perform military duties, wear the uniform, or comply with lawful orders of competent military authorities; (4) willful or persistent misconduct; (5) offense(s) involving moral turpitude; (6) mutiny or spying; or (7) homosexual acts involving aggravating circumstances.

And it turns out, he is less than honorable in civilian life too, since he has started the "Josh Korder Fund" to raise money to pay his back child-support. Wow - Is anyone surprised?






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