He’s not getting any sympathy from me.
On June 30, 2009, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl went missing from the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, serving in a remote military outpost in Paktika Province on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. He was captured by the Taliban and imprisoned for 5 years — the only U.S. prisoner of war in the Afghan war.
The most transparent administration evah made a quiet deal with the Taliban for the release of Bergdahl. On May 31, 2014, without consulting Congress as required by Section 1028 of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, Obama released five prisoners from Gitmo — the U.S. detention camp for terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — in exchange for Bergdahl.
Bergdahl participated in a podscast yesterday and wants you to know that he “was in over his head.” Yahoo reports that Berdahl was in the second season of the “Serial” podcast, in which he discusses his experience, saying he realized he made a grave decision about 20 minutes after walking away from his remote outpost. But that didn’t stop him from turning around.
Bergdahl told the interviewer of the podcast, “I’m going, ‘Good grief, I’m in over my head. Suddenly, it really starts to sink in that I really did something bad. Or, not bad, but I really did something serious.”
He says he left his post because he wanted to create a crisis to alert high-level commanders to leadership problems within his unit. His plan was to trek 18 miles to Forward Operating Base Sharana to voice his concerns. But when he realized he might not be welcomed there, he decided to try to gather intelligence on Taliban insurgents so his commanders wouldn’t treat him as a deserter.
Bergdahl is obviously confused about the difference between Hollyweird and real life because in the interview he compared himself to the fictional rogue CIA agent in the Bourne book and move franchise. “I was trying to prove to myself. I was trying to prove to the world, to anybody who used to know me, that I was capable of being that person,” he said. “Like me doing what I did was me saying that I am, I don’t know, Jason Bourne.”
Here’s where he wants you to feel his “pain” about his captivity:
“How do I explain to a person that just standing in an empty dark room hurts? … I would wake up not even remembering what I was. You know how you get that feeling when that word is on the tip of your tongue? That happened to me, only it was like, “What am I?” I couldn’t see my hands, I couldn’t do anything. The only thing I could do was touch my face, but even that wasn’t registering right. To the point where you just want to scream. But I can’t scream, I can’t risk that, so it’s like you’re standing there screaming in your mind. In this room, in this blackened dirt room, it’s tiny. And just on the side of this flimsy wooden door that you could probably easily rip off the hinges is the entire world out there. It is everything that you’re missing, it is everybody, everyone is out there. That breath that you’re trying to breathe, that release that you’re trying to get — everything is beyond that door. And, I mean … I hate doors now.”
You know who can’t breath any more? The six soldiers who died trying to rescue Bergdahl’s sorry butt.
And, I mean…I hate Bergdahl now.
DCG