Michael Hastings - America's Last Prisoner of War

[malaise]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607
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In June 2012, fearless Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings wrote the definitive first account of Bowe Bergdahl — the young American soldier who was captured by the Taliban and became the last American prisoner of war. Hastings, the journalist who brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal in these pages, died in a car accident one year later. Bergdahl was freed this weekend. Hastings' incredible story is available in full here:

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.

The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret

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!"

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Hastings died one year ago and now the RWs are killing Bergdahl and his family via M$Greedia.
I suspect Bergdahl knows way more than they want revealed and I still wonder about Hastings death.

By the way his new book will be released today - The Last Magazine
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/review-the-last-magazine-by-michael-hastings/2014/06/16/6a2bee36-f00b-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html
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The Magazine, you’ll not be surprised to learn, is a mid-Manhattan snake pit of literary ambition and fame-lust, where the international editor, an Indian intellectual-cum-socialite, vies with the managing editor, a bow-tied Southern historian, for the throne of editor in chief. The publisher has played up the parlor-game angle, and yes, some fun is to be had identifying Media Luminaries skewered here via roman à clef (Fareed Zakaria, Nick Denton, Lally Weymouth, et al.).

But what makes “The Last Magazine” of enduring value is the scope of its testament, how broadly, and yet with such telling details, it captures our times: the period defined by Sept. 11 and Iraq, the digital revolution already churning and burning everything in its path, forcing the great societal shift from paper to pixels, from journalism to “content,” with educated young people mindlessly careening from internship to trendy bar, unfazed by their own cynicism. After all, as the narrator reminds us, they have been raised — nourished — on Vietnam and Watergate, Mountain Dew and Internet porn, and have never for a second doubted that America is hopelessly dysfunctional at home and widely derided, if not hated, around the world.