Bowe Bergdahl pleads guilty to desertion

  Back in 2014 Barack Obama released 5 Taliban fighters in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl despite claims the Army Sargent was a deserter. It also came to light that the release of these Taliban fighters without notifying the Congress 30 days in advance was a violation of the law and the President was called out on this by, and apologized to, Diane Feinstein.

  Today Bowe Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Here is more:

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl told a military judge on Monday that he’s pleading guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

“I understand that leaving was against the law,” said Bergdahl, whose decision to walk off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009 prompted intense search and recovery missions, during which some of his comrades were seriously wounded.

“At the time, I had no intention of causing search and recovery operations,” Bergdahl said, but he added that now he does understand that his decision prompted efforts to find him.

Bergdahl, 31, is accused of endangering his comrades by abandoning his post without authorization. He told a general after his release from five years in enemy hands that he did it with the intention of reaching other commanders and drawing attention to what he saw as problems with his unit.

  He claims he did not understand at the time that his decision would cause people to go looking for him while he was missing but I find that incredibly hard to believe–he had to have known he would be searched for and he had to know it would be dangerous.

  It is possible he is telling the truth when he said he wanted to find other commanders so he could shed light on “problems with his unit” but even if true it does not excuse what he did.

  Part of his defense was apparently he could not get a fair trial because Donald Trump was mean to him during the 2016 campaign but that was rebuked by the judge:

The defense also was rebuffed in an effort to prove that Trump had unfairly swayed the case with his scathing criticism from the campaign trail. The judge ruled in February that the new president’s comments were “disturbing and disappointing” but did not constitute unlawful command influence by the soon-to-be commander in chief.

  With his claim of ignorance of the law off the table, and with his claim that Donald Trump “unfairly swayed the case” off the table, Bowe Bergdahl realized what the outcome was going to be so he basically threw himself of the mercy of the court hoping for the most lenient sentence possible.

  It should be noted here that back in 2015 CNN reported that at least one of the Taliban prisoners exchanged by Barack Obama in this deal has returned to the battlefield and is fighting  against the United States.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium