He left his helmet behind. Where did he get this one?
~~~~~~~~~~
June 16, 2014
Fox/AP
Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant who spent five years as a captive in Afghanistan before being traded for five high-profile Taliban leaders, is coming back to the United States early Friday morning, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Bergdahl, who was undergoing unspecified treatment at a U.S. facility in Landstuhl, Germany, since he was turned over to the U.S. on May 31, was en route to the United States via a U.S. military aircraft Thursday afternoon, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement.
He will continue the “reintegration” process at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. It is not known how long he will remain there or if and when he will be questioned about the circumstances behind his apparently voluntary departure from an Army base in Afghanistan in 2009.
“As (Defense) Secretary (Chuck) Hagel has made clear, our first priority is making sure that Sgt. Bergdahl continues to get the care and support he needs,” Kirby said.
Word of his pending arrival came a day after Hagel underwent tough questioning on Capitol Hill from members of the House Armed Services Committee. Among other queries, lawmakers wanted to know why Bergdahl was still in Germany.
“You’re trying to tell me that he’s being held at Landstuhl, Germany, because of his medical condition?” asked an incredulous Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla.
“Congressman, I hope you’re not implying anything other than that,” Hagel responded.
Defense officials have said that Bergdahl’s case will undergo a full investigation. It is not known whether his mental state is currently an issue, but a journal he kept as well as Facebook posts written in the weeks leading up to his disappearance, have revealed a portrait of a young man frustrated with authority and attempting to deal with mental instability.
He criticized unnamed military commanders and government leaders and mused about whether it was the place of the artist, the soldier or the general to stop violence and “change the minds of fools.”
In his personal writings, he seemed to focus his frustrations on himself and his personal struggles.
Bergdahl’s Facebook page was found by The Associated Press Wednesday, and it was suspended by Facebook for a violation of its terms a short time later. Bergdahl opened the page under the name “Wandering Monk.” His last post was made May 22, 2009, a few weeks before he was taken prisoner.
Bergdahl, the only U.S. soldier held captive in Afghanistan, was released in exchange for five detainees from a detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The circumstances surrounding the prisoner swap and Bergdahl’s capture in 2009 have raised a national debate, with Bergdahl’s supporters and friends joyous at his rescue, and some members of Congress — and some of his own platoon members — calling him a deserter.
Mary Robinson, a Facebook friend of Bergdahl, worked with him in a massage center and tea house near his home when Bergdahl was in high school. Robinson said she didn’t know why Bergdahl chose the Wandering Monk moniker.
“He was really, really grounded. He was curious. He wasn’t one who was partying as some kids do,” Robinson said while verifying it was Bergdahl’s Facebook page. “He was going over there with all the good intentions of serving his country.”
In his May 22 post, Bergdahl described what was supposed to be an eight-hour mission in the mountains of Afghanistan. The mission instead took five days after vehicles in the convoy became disabled from roadside bombs. The group had to camp outside a small mountain town, Bergdahl wrote in the frequently misspelled posting.
When the convoy finally started back to the base, they traveled along a creek bed in a long, deep valley lined with trees and boulders. Again, one of the vehicles hit an improvised explosive device, according to Bergdahl’s post, and as the soldiers tried to hook the vehicle to a tow strap, they began taking fire from people hidden on the hillside.
Enemy combatants “begain [sic] to splatter bullets on us, and all around us, the gunners where [sic] only able to see a few of them, and so where [sic] firing blindly the rest of the time, up into the trees and rocks,” Bergdahl wrote.
When a machine gun mounted on the truck carrying Bergdahl quit working, he had to hand over his own weapon to the gunner.
“I sat there and watched, there was nothing else i was allowed to do,” he wrote.
No one was killed in the encounter, but Bergdahl was frustrated by the danger and the situation.
“Because command where [sic] too stupid to make up there [sic] minds of what to do, we where [sic] left to sit out in the middle of no where [sic] with no sopport [sic] to come till late mourning [sic] the next day. … But Afghanistan mountains are really beautiful!” he wrote.
About two and a half weeks after his last Facebook post, Bergdahl sent a partially coded email to Kim Harrison, a longtime friend, suggesting he had concerns about his privacy and so couldn’t share his plans.
Harrison shared that email and other personal writings of Bergdahl with the Washington Post because she said she’s concerned about the way he’s being portrayed, as a calculating deserter.
Two weeks after the coded email, Bergdahl vanished from his base. A box containing his journal, laptop computer and other items arrived at Harrison’s home several days after that.
The writings she found were more disturbing than the ones Bergdahl put on Facebook.
“It’s about my concern for Bowe and others and that’s why I talked,” she told the AP. “I’m not talking anymore.”
Bergdahl’s journal appeared to detail his struggle to maintain his mental stability during basic training and his deployment to Afghanistan.
“I’m worried,” he wrote in an entry before deployment. “The lcoser [sic] I get to ship day, the calmer the voices are. I’m reverting. I’m getting colder. My feelings are being flushed with the frozen logic and the training, all the unfeeling cold judgment of the darkness.”
Later, he wrote, “I will not lose this mind, this world I have deep inside. I will not lose this passion of beauty.”
The writings weren’t the first time Bergdahl’s friends were worried about his emotional health, Harrison told the Post. In 2006, he left the U.S. Coast Guard after 26 days in basic training in an “uncharacterized discharge,” according to Coast Guard records, the Post reported. Harrison said it was for psychological reasons.
But when he joined the Army in 2008, the military was dealing with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and was regularly issuing waivers that allowed people with criminal records, health conditions and other problems to enlist. The military declined to say whether Bergdahl was given such a waiver.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/06/12/bergdahl-writings-reveal-frustration-mental-instability/
“…circumstances behind his apparently voluntary departure from an Army base in Afghanistan in 2009….”. Question: What happened to the word “desertion”? A rose by any other name…
Note: One of his friends from his hometown believed that Bowe should have joined the peace corp rather than the army. From what I can gather from his persona – would’ve been a much better fit.
PFC Joey Cox with his best friend (laying on the tire) SSG Mike Murprhey. They had been out for 10 days looking for Bergdahl [over 60 days - 24x7 total]. Source
Bottomline: the real issue is not Bergdahl’s being free from captivity rather more about releasing the Obama5 terrorists, killers and drug lords. Theyre known to have murdered thousands of Shi’ites in 2001 and they will kill again. The other uproar was about Obama and his regime raising him to the level of hero – like he did something great. He deserted his post at a time of war leaving his fellow soldiers behind, his fellow soldiers hunted for him for months. Soldiers were killed and wounded because of his desertion. He must be brought to justice.
***One of the five let go in this deal was involved in Michael Spann’s death in Mazar-I-Sharif in 2001 but the Obama regime doesn’t get bogged down with details.
