Forensicwx
Final Roll Call 4153. STLCO 10-42 10/13 @ 1519
Well, considering I kept this man's pic on my phone as a background for two years, as the only POW of OIF and OEF, with a heavy heart, I give you this story. The fact that we traded detainees in order to save him? His platoon members were right....
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/us/army-bowe-bergdahl-desertion-charges.html
In the 5 years he was held captive by the Haqqani insurgent network, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl recalls that he tried to escape 12 times. The first time was just a few hours after he was captured in Afghanistan in 2009.
He was quickly recaptured and beaten. But another attempt, a year later, lasted close to nine days.
“Without food and only putrid water to drink, my body failed on top of a short mountain close to evening,” Sergeant Bergdahl wrote in a page-and-a-half, single-spaced narrative provided by his lawyer to The New York Times, the first public description of the sergeant’s captivity in his own words.
“Some moments after I came to in the dying gray light of the evening, I was found by a large Taliban searching group,” he wrote. They hit him, tried to tear out his beard and hair, and returned him to his captors.
On Wednesday, the Army announced that it was charging Sergeant Bergdahl with misbehavior before the enemy and desertion, raising the possibility that he could be imprisoned again, this time for life.
In announcing the charges against Sergeant Bergdahl, the military reignited the political firestorm that took place last summer after the sergeant was released in a swap for five Taliban detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
For President Obama, it reopens the contentious political question of whether the United States should have agreed to the exchange. Administration officials have steadfastly maintained that even if Sergeant Berdahl did voluntarily walk off his remote base in Afghanistan, it was the duty of the United States to take all appropriate steps to free him.
The president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, was harshly criticized when she said last summer that Sergeant Bergdahl had served “with honor and distinction” at the same time that his former platoon members were appearing on television accusing him of deliberately leaving the base, an act that they said put in danger the lives of the American military members who searched for him.
Sergeant Bergdahl is charged with misbehavior before the enemy, which carries a maximum sentence of up to life in prison, and with desertion, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. He could also face a dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank and forfeiture of the pay he was owed while in captivity if he is tried and convicted, Army officials said during a news conference in Fort Bragg, N.C.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/us/army-bowe-bergdahl-desertion-charges.html