WASHINGTON (AP) — The attorney for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in exchange for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, says the soldier’s case has been referred for trial by a general court-martial.
Attorney Eugene Fidell says the convening authority did not follow the advice of the preliminary hearing officer who had recommended that Bergdahl’s case be moved only to a special misdemeanor-level military court. Fidell said in a statement Monday that he had hoped the case would not go in this direction.
Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was held by the Taliban for nearly five years after he walked off his post in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009.
He was charged in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.
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From a Military perspective that’s what he did. He deserted. In the face of the enemy too. There’s a bunch of peripheral chatter about him having good reasons for doing so but that will not matter. None of that mitigates the charge. He walked and he will be convicted of that. And he’ll go to Leavenworth for a very long time.
This season of Serial tackles the Bergdahl case. I;m very much looking forward to listening to it.
Glad he is facing trial, and glad we retrieved him to do so. A concept lost on the Fright-Wingers™.
BS, he came home to a hero’s welcome by the Obama administration. It was disgraceful to claim the reason we trade to get him was due to commitment to “never leave a man behind”.
He wasn’t worth the lives lost or the money spent to retrieve him.
Take that somewhere else. No lives were lost as we now know and we don’t leave men…alive or dead to the enemy. You may not like it Jar Head but that’s the way it goes down. You don’t get left…no matter what.