A report published Wednesday in the Washington Post revealed that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was discharged from the United States Coast Guard for in 2006, two years before he enlisted in the Army.
The report included Bergdahl’s discharge, as well as some of the soldier’s disquieting journal entries and correspondences written before his 2009 disappearance in Afghanistan.
“I’m worried,” Bergdahl wrote in a journal entry prior to his deployment. “The closer 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.”
According to the Post, Bergdahl left the Coast Guard with an “uncharacterized discharge” a mere 26 days after he began basic training in 2006. There was no reason given for the discharge, and it’s unclear how he managed to gain acceptance to the Army in 2008. Friends told the Post that the discharge was due to psychological reasons.
An unnamed senior Army official told the Post the Army was indeed aware of Bergdahl’s discharge, but he could not confirm whether the soldier received a waiver to enlist. Bergdahl would have needed such a waiver to enlist following his discharge.
Bergdahl’s friend, Kim Harrison, provided the Post with his writings because she said she had grown unsettled with the nefarious characterizations of Bergdahl, who’s been accused by his former platoon mates of desertion.
Harrison, who used her former married name in the story because she is concerned for her safety, said she received a box filled with Bergdahl’s journal, his Apple laptop, a copy of the Ayn Rand novel “Atlas Shrugged,” military records and other items several days after he reportedly wandered off his base.
Harrison said Bergdahl is “the perfect example of a person who should not have gone” off to war.
Bergdahl has been scrutinized relentlessly by conservatives and Fox News personalities ever since his release.
Several former members of Bergdahl’s unit have used Fox to broadcast their desertion accusations and one of the channel’s hosts, Kimberly Guilfoyle, said last week that the POW might well have “come home either in a body bag or come home and gone straight to jail” had he been located by his fellow soldiers during his captivity.
During his testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel denounced critics of Bergdahl and his family. Hagel said that Bergdahl’s conduct will be “judged on the facts — not political hearsay, posturing, charges or innuendo.”
There is growing evidence that predeployment screenings were not as rigorous during the surge–they needed bodies and boots on the ground. Also growing evidence that the high rate of suicide among returning service members is in part related to their poor mental health going into the military. If this is indeed true about Bergdahl then the GOP is going to find itself tied in a few Gordian knots. They bleat about mental illness rather than gun control, but then attack someone with purported mental illness.
He read “Atlas Shrugged,” can we blame Ayn Rand?
This is all very interesting, but where is the follow-up reporting on the Tea Party terrorists, who actually killed two police officers? How many other Tea Party terrorists are out there? Where did they get their guns? Who are their sympathizers? What kind of support network–ideological, practical–did they have? What do we do to combat this ongoing and actual threat?
Put yourself back at your own boot camps and you’ll recall one, two or three guys who mysteriously disappeared. Word would leak out that they were discharged for some vague “medical reason”.
I recall a kid that had narcolepsy. He would fall into a deep sleep at the drop of a hat and could not be awaken.
Another had an allergy to wool. Had to be hospitalized for a horrendous asthma attack.
I recall a cousin’s kid who came home from basic with his feet in bandages. Some kind of allergy.
Usually no disgrace involved.
I’ll have no more comments on this until the dust has settled and the Army sorts things out. Damned story is being blown way out of proportion to other events in our lives plus when his parents get death threats it’s a sign to dial it back one hell of a lot.