US Official: Bergdahl Tells Military Officials He Was Tortured, Beaten and Held in Cage by Taliban
Source: Associated Press
@AP: US official: Bergdahl tells military officials he was tortured, beaten and held in a cage by Taliban captors: http://t.co/L6nQDbl7f7
BERGDAHL SAYS HE WAS TORTURED BY TALIBAN CAPTORS
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Jun. 8, 2014 4:34 AM EDT
PARIS (AP) A senior U.S. official says Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl (boh BURG'-dahl) tells military officials that he was tortured, beaten and held in a cage by his Taliban captors in Afghanistan after he tried to escape.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to discuss what Bergdahl is saying while being treated at a U.S. military medical facility in Germany.
The official says it is difficult to verify the accounts Bergdahl is providing about conditions of his captivity in the hands of the Taliban. He was released a week ago after nearly five years in captivity.
The New York Times reports Sunday that Bergdahl is not yet emotionally prepared to return to his family.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bergdahl-says-he-was-tortured-taliban-captors
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)every time Fox News shouts JUMP!
Conservatives need to think for themselves.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)But what they really want is a lynching of we-know-who
GReedDiamond
(5,313 posts)...they wouldn't be conservatives.
PeteSelman
(1,508 posts)Because he's a traitor, deserter and all that horseshit
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)davidpdx
(22,000 posts)With the kind of shit Fox makes up you never can tell.
I bet they'll accuse her of spending the last five years sympathetically crocheting fancy afghans allah the time -- TRAITOR!!! Real Americans make QUILTS, everybody knows that.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)hue
(4,949 posts)Downwinder
(12,869 posts)toby jo
(1,269 posts)Ash_F
(5,861 posts)drm604
(16,230 posts)All of the right-wing blogs will say he's lying. Maybe not directly, but they'll "demand proof" and "ask questions".
questionseverything
(9,654 posts)we have left the door open to this kind of treatment for our military
KoKo
(84,711 posts)and that is the other horror....
JI7
(89,249 posts)The biggest and only reason needed too oppose torture is that it's wrong.
rtracey
(2,062 posts)His problem is this.... the people who believe him now, already believe he was held and tortured. I believe he was. The people who are calling him a traitor and believe he and his father are jihadists, will simply come out and say he is lying about the torture to save face. NOONE who claims this soldier a traitor and liar will come out and say they were wrong. McCain, Graham, any of the right winged idiots in congress, none of the progressive fools, noone, so sorry Sgt Bergdahl, what you say now will just slide off their backs like water on ducks....
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)jwirr
(39,215 posts)BootinUp
(47,147 posts)riverwalker
(8,694 posts)What part don't they understand? There is no asterisk to that pledge. IMHO the former soldiers now stabbing him in the back and stomping on a broken man who is unable to defend himself, is the real betrayal.
?557
icymist
(15,888 posts)<....>
The unruly situation was captured by Sean Smith, a British documentary filmmaker with The Guardian who spent a month embedded with Bowe's unit. His footage shows a bunch of soldiers who no longer give a shit: breaking even the most basic rules of combat, like wearing baseball caps on patrol instead of helmets. In footage from a raid on a family compound, an old Afghan woman screams at the unit, "Look at these cruel people!" One soldier bitches about what he sees as the cowardice of the Afghan villagers he is supposed to be protecting: "They say like, the Taliban comes down and aggravated their town and harasses them... Why don't you kill those motherfuckers? All of you have AKs. If someone is going into my hometown, I know my town wouldn't stand for that shit. I'd be like, 'Fuck you, you're dead.'" Another soldier laments, "These people just want to be left alone." A third agrees: "They got dicked with by the Russians for 17 years, and now we're here."
During the middle of May, Bowe went out on one of his first major missions. He described it in a detailed e-mail to his family dated May 23rd, 2009. What started as an eight-hour mission, Bowe recounted, ended up taking five days.
While another unit was setting up a night ambush in the mountains, an MRAP the $1.5 million armored vehicle designed to protect soldiers from the roadside bombs being used by the Taliban got hit with an IED. Bowe's platoon was deployed to escort a tow truck to get it down off the mountain. But on the way to escort the truck, an MRAP in Bowe's own platoon was hit by an IED. The unit found itself stuck in the mountains for four days, guarding the wreckage while their commanders debated whether to fly in the parts needed to fix the vehicles. Some of the time, Bowe wrote his family, was spent near a village that "was not too friendly to Americans" because it had been attacked by the Taliban. "So the elders were telling us to leave," he reported, "because the taliban was there, and we couldn't leave because command finely decided that they would fly in the parts (one MRAP needing a new engine) and would rebuild the MRAPs up there."
Once the MRAPs were finally fixed, the unit started to leave the mountains, only to be hit by yet another IED the third of the mission and to come under a blistering attack from rocket-propelled grenades. "It was at the point that the guys where beginning to climb into the trucks that the first RPG hit about 30m away from them," Bowe recounted, "and then the RPKs and the AKs began to splatter bullets on us, and all around us, the gunners where only able to see a few of them, and so where firing blindly the rest of the time, up into the trees and rocks. The .50 went down on the first shot on the truck i was in, and i had to hand up my SAW for the gunner to use. I sat there and watched, there was nothing else I was allowed to do."
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607page=3#ixzz346XyhXdk
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TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)alfredo
(60,071 posts)How dare they.
Kingofalldems
(38,458 posts)Historic NY
(37,449 posts)Officials would not disclose if Sergeant Bergdahl has made any special requests. One thing, however, that does rub him wrong is when hospital staff call him sergeant, the result of two automatic promotions while a captive.
He says, Dont call me that, said one American official. I didnt go before the boards. I didnt earn it.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)hue
(4,949 posts)How self serving/selfish, evil, destructive to the fabric of the U.S. and our "freedom" can the RW'ers be???
Their treatment of Bergdahl is reprehensible, really horrible!! They must be called on this!!!
Bragi
(7,650 posts)ggreenwald: An unauthorized leak of classified info that will produce no investigation: b/c it's designed to help WH politically http://t.co/bcw2ae6lAY