Dishonorable discharge, no jail time:
Bowe Bergdahl received a dishonorable discharge from the US Army but will avoid prison time for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after abandoning his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, a military judge ruled Friday.
The judge also ruled that Bergdahl’s rank be reduced from sergeant to private. Additionally, he will be required to pay a $1,000 fine from his salary for the next 10 months.“Sgt. Bergdahl has looked forward to today for a long time,” Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s civilian attorney, said at a news conference after the sentence was announced.
“As everyone knows he was a captive of the Taliban for nearly five years, and three more years have elapsed while the legal process unfolded. He has lost nearly a decade of his life.”
The sentence is effective immediately, except for the dishonorable discharge, which Bergdahl is appealing, according to Fidell.
And, of course, Twitler played a role in the sentencing:
One of the mitigating factors in his sentencing were disparaging comments by President Trump as a candidate and while in office. Nance ruled Monday that while Bergdahl can get a fair trial despite the remarks, he would consider them in his sentencing.
As a candidate, Trump denounced Bergdahl and the Obama administration’s agreement to get him back from the Taliban. On Oct. 16, 2015, for example, Trump called him “a rotten traitor” and suggested he should be shot or dropped from an airplane.
“In the old days he’d get shot for treason,” the president told a crowd of supporters. “If I win, I might just have him floating right in the middle of that place and drop him, boom. Let ’em have him. … I mean, that’s cheaper than a bullet.”
More recently, Trump declined to comment on Bergdahl’s case, telling reporters, “I think people have heard my comments in the past.”
Even those comments were seen by Nance as “unlawful command influence,” writing in his ruling, “The plain meaning of the president’s words to any reasonable hearer could be that in spite of knowing that he should not comment on the pending sentencing in this case, he wanted to make sure that everyone remembered what he really thinks should happen to the accused.”
The most pressing issue for me regarding this is who in command is going to pay the price for allowing a guy who washed out of the Coast Guard into an Airborne unit with a waiver to enter the Army and then deployed him despite knowing that he should not be deployed. Because that’s a big damned problem, and also exposes a key flaw in the all volunteer Army- when you need to ramp up the number of soldiers quickly, quality control gets thrown out the damned window.
rikyrah
Got no problem with this sentence
TenguPhule
The Republican solution is to get a bigger window. On someone else’s dime.
low-tech cyclist
The idea has always been, though, that if the conflict is too big for the all-volunteer army, you bring back the draft, and the volunteer army becomes the core of a larger force.
And of course, when we were fighting unconventional ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, that’s what we really needed to do – or get out. But Shrubby didn’t want either of those options, of course, so he did every trick in the book to avoid that after he was already using the Reserves and the National Guard to the max – reducing the standards for recruits, minimizing the out-of-country parts of the deployment cycle, stationing our naval troops on land in Iraq, pulling soldiers from Europe, even trying to activate ex-soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve. And of course the Blackwater mercenaries.
We really didn’t have enough troops for the wars Dumbya had committed us to, but he wasn’t gonna let that stop him. So we got people like Bergdahl in places they shouldn’t have been in. Just another reminder of how terrible Bush Jr. really was.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Is this good enough for Dear Leader, or is he going to demand his execution?
Mnemosyne
IIRC, this wasn’t the first time Bergdahl had gone on walkabout — he’d done it before while he was on duty in the US. And they still thought it was a good idea to ship him overseas. Christ almighty.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
What do you think?
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
leeleeFL
I am relieved that the Judge was not goaded to imprison Bergdahl. The young man had no business in the Military. He responded as they should have forseen. More captivity would have been cruel and unusual.
Mike in DC
I think the sentence is fine.
Guachi
Trump would have cracked under years of captivity.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Hey! What about a meet up next weekend, the 11th or 12th? Can you make it then? I know you said you had something you needed to do this weekend, but if we were doing something this weekend I don’t think it’s been planned yet. We’re willing to go behind the Orange Curtain, or to Burbank again, or where ever the chosen place is. Brunch or lunch work really well for us so we’re not driving up the mountain in the dark, but we’re willing to meet whenever. I think Bill in Glendale is game too.
Adam L Silverman
Another contributing factor is that he’s an intelligence gold mine. And the folks that need to get the rest of the info for him were arguing for a light sentence so they can do so.
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2017/10/31/agents-bergdahl-debriefs-were-intelligence-gold-mine/
More at the link.
opiejeanne
@leeleeFL: Me too. He has already spent a considerable time in hell so I don’t think he needs more.
Barbara
He spent nearly five years in captivity at the mercy of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That should and probably did count as time served. I read a book called Ranger Games, and while I consider it somewhat problematic, it makes it very clear that when unsuitable people join the military they can really damage themselves and others.
NotMax
Will Dolt 45 be stupid enough to attempt to fire Col. Nance?
That the question is not totally absurd is a sign of the times.
StringOnAStick
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for that, Adam. The fact that the military considers him a goldmine of information on the Taliban and that he wanted to start passing on all he knew immediately after he returned to US custody should count for a lot. Thankfully, the judge took note of this and of how he was treated by the Taliban; most thankfully the judge ignored the Mango Moron’s demands. You just know the GOP is going to fund raise on this result for at least a few weeks, and FOX will provide an outrage assist, as usual.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Next weekend is good for me! The only thing I have scheduled right now is a NaNoWriMo meetup in Pasadena on Sunday from 3 to 6. Do we want to ask a front-pager to create a post for it?
StringOnAStick
Anyone else notice that Canada has sanctioned 52 human rights violators , 30 of which were Russians, under their new Magnitsky Act? Or that Canada is pushing other countries hard (well, as hard as is polite, eh?) to adopt their own Magnisky Acts? Go Canada!
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Yes, ,please. Should I ask Betty again?
Adam L Silverman
@StringOnAStick: The judge didn’t ignore the President’s demands. He accounted for them as undue command influence. This went a long way towards the sentence that was handed down. It’s the same reason the Feds will be challenged if they seek the death penalty against Saipov. That and the Federal death penalty statute has a proportionality clause written into it. Which is why McVeigh stated he was seeking to cause as many deaths as he did. This way unless someone, and someone here means a fellow “patriot”, killed over 300 plus people in an attack, they couldn’t be executed by the Feds because they hadn’t surpassed the threshold he set with his attack.
d58826
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I don’t know id this qualifies as command influence since he is the C-In-C but you have Der Fuhrer taking pot shots at the military justice system, call the Article 3 system a joke and demanding that DOJ investigate people that he doesn’t like.
OOOPS comment 20 answers the command influence question
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Also, how are you doing with the writing marathon? I like your premise.
I need to stop hanging around here and get busy today.
JMG
John, the last point in your post is very well taken, and also ominous, considering that the Trumpists are panting to have wars with Iran and North Korea, which would be very big wars indeed.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Or smear him on twitter?
All signs point to yes.
Adam L Silverman
WaterGirl
oh thank god. That’s what I blurted out when I read his sentence. He had no business being over there.
I can’t believe Trump said he should be dropped out of an airplane. Ugh. Or that Trump called Senator Elizabeth Warren Pocohontas in a tweet that I saw today – the president of the united states referring to a senator with a racial slur. What a fucking pig Trump is, totally unsuited not just for office, but for polite company. Ugh.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Trick or Treat, motherfucker!
CaseyL
Twitter is already alight with RWNJs posting photos of the people who died looking for him and echoing Mango Mugabe’s calls for “justice!”
I really wish there was a way to get rid of all of them. Where’s an asteroid when you really need it?
d58826
Well it looks like Hillary isn’t the only one to rig an election ‘
2/
or maybe she rigged both. You know the powers of the Clintons
Full thread at https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass/status/926514344485097496
Duane
Bergdahl’s sentence should cause a lot of hair to burn, including Trump’s. Good. Those people are downright sadistic.
Every single day, Trump says and/or does something that shows how unfit he is to be President.
And good for Bowe Bergdahl. Hopefully, he can have a happy life.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: Whatever you do, if you usually read Jim Wright (Stonekettle) I would advise against reading him today. He is telling everyone to just give up, lie down and die, because Democrats don’t have a plan, he doesn’t see a candidate for 2020, all is lost, and it’s our fault. All while stating he’s neither Democrat nor Republican and not noticing that the discord in the party he cites is from the Wilmer wing and Donna Brazile.
I told anyone buying that they should just dig a hole and hide in it, that meanwhile there are elections going on right now and WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO HELP? That seems to be getting a lot of ‘likes” but I just closed the page because I don’t need to read about how the DFA is right, Hillary is history’s greatest monster, and people saying “Bernie would have won”.
Ugh.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: that’s fantastic.
Adam L Silverman
@d58826: This is being led by Burke and several other revanchists. And egged on by Bannon here in the US. There is an excellent Guardian article that lays out the whole thing. As with everything else religion, when the Deity and/or the Deity’s anointed leaders say what you already believe and do what you think they should do, then they are righteous and just and deserving of respect. When they don’t, you and your interpretation is right and they are heretics and apostates. Burke and his supporters keep this up and he’s going to be in a world of hurt.
opiejeanne
@Duane: We were driving through Northern California the day it was announced he was coming home, that he was safe, and there were signs of support for him and his family posted all along the freeway north of Sacramento to Yreka. I can’t remember but isn’t he from Northern California? ETA: No, he’s from Idaho.
The next time through there a few weeks later they were all gone and there were angry, hateful signs about him along that stretch, suggesting that bad things should be done to him. I have trouble imagining he will be able to lead a happy life without changing his name and moving someplace that votes heavily blue.
d58826
@opiejeanne:
Arn’t these the purity ponies telling people to sit out the Va election because the GOP candidate is better than the DINO democrat? Where is Susan Sarandon when you need her. Whatever good ideas Bernie may have and whatever faults the DNC/Clinton have, this is degenerating into a Bernie personality cult.
Duane
No military expert here, but it seems, objectively speaking, that Bergdahl is a hero.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
OT, but did anyone ever correct Samantha Bee about impeachment this past summer? That an impeachable offense is literally whatever Congress can decide it to be?
trollhattan
@Guachi:
Yup, he’d fold like one of his [supposedly not] cheap suits. The Stockholm Syndrome Trump:
“ISIS are very good people, let me tell you. The best. Really smart guys, they have really great ideas on how to make the world great. Big ideas, huge. And Allah, the greatest guy (praise be unto him and pass the ammunition) Allah is going to be great, believe you me! This caliphate thing is going to be the best!”
SgrAstar
@rikyrah: Completely agree. Bergdahl is a a sad figure who has suffered immensely and borne it with dignity and with sorrow for his behavior.
opiejeanne
@d58826: Bingo. They’re calling our guy Northam a racist because something something, oh, and he didn’t mention his black running mate on some of the flyers that were sent to the really conservative areas. Etc. So he’s another of history’s great monsters and Brazile’s book PROVES something something Hillary stole the nomination from Our Bernie, etc. so don’t vote for Northam.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Duane: I don’t consider him a hero, just potentially a mentally ill fool who had no business being deployed to Afghanistan given his history. His time served in captivity was punishment enough.
skerry
Does this sentence mean that Bergdahl is ineligible to receive medical care from the VA or the Army? It seems to me that he will need help – at least mental, if not physical due to his time as POW.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
I’m in.
FlipYrWhig
@d58826: The nice thing about the sainted Bernie Sanders, as compared to the wicked Ralph Northam, is that he’s such a reliable indicator of righteous correctness that he’d never make public statements that could be construed as unsympathetic towards or dismissive of the concerns of communities of color. :P
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: Yay! Sunday the 12th sound good for brunch maybe? Now where’s Bill in Glendale when you need him? Probably out taking photos somewhere. That would make four plus mr opiejeanne, which is a good start. Let’s get the rest of them on board and figure out the Where.
I just asked Betty Cracker to create a post for us so we can try again.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Do you mean the 17th or 18th? The 17th is out for me, will be occupied the entire day.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Weird area, State of Jefferson types and all. Had Bergdahl not been sprung during the Obama administration I suspect the reception would have played out differently even after the details came forth, but they’re intertwined in the minds of eternal Obama-haters.
I feel sorry for the guy; he’s clearly not somebody who should have been sent out and to Adam’s point, that’s a shared responsibility the brass evidently aren’t being held accountable for. As to further punishment I applaud the judge, who clearly can differentiate between justice and revenge.
FlipYrWhig
@opiejeanne: We don’t even have running mates here in Virginia. The top of the ticket is three separate offices campaigned for and won separately. And _every day_ I see the combined Northam, Fairfax, Herring signs.
Meanwhile the Republican lt. gov. candidate has signs that say that she believes in “teaching history, not erasing it.” But approving of Confederate monuments is pretty much the same thing as saying you want immigrants who commit crimes to be prosecuted, right? Aargh “the left” is a pack of nimrods lately.
gratuitous
I seem to recall that we went to war with the military we had, not the military we wished we had. What was it that said that? Think, think.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: Sunday the 12th. Next weekend, not 2 days from now. I think the 17th is a Friday.
Suzanne
I think this sentence is entirely appropriate.
I read that he has been offered a job as a caretaker at an animal shelter. I hope that brings him some peace.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: Yes, very strange. Now that CA is legalizing pot and working out the details, maybe they really could support themselves in some fashion without the cities to keep them in kibble and pave their roads.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: “Have you seen the lives these heretics live? They’re disasters!“
Amir Khalid
@skerry:
I think the US military’s rule is that any discharge that isn’t honourable means no veteran’s benefits.
As a non-American observer, it has struck me too that the US Army fucked up by enlisting a clearly unsuitable person. And this isn’t even the first high-profile instance with difficult consequences; Chelsea Manning comes to mind, and I’m sure there are others. Is there any talk in the military of enforcing recruitment standards, so that this doesn’t happen again?
Duane
@opiejeanne: I can’t understand why people wouldn’t be glad we rescued an American soldier. Good job, President Obama.
If you claim to support our troops, and protest Bergdahl’s rescue, you’re a sadistic hypocrite.
Well maybe I do understand the assholes.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Yes. I heard an interview with a former judge advocate general who said that Trump’s stupid and very inappropriate, and very intemperate public comments were definitely a problem and he said he was sure the judge had to consider them carefully in decision on sentencing.
I think that a court martial decision can be appealed, both in military justice system, and sometimes in civilian courts. I don’t know the details. Would be interesting to read about how appeals would work in this case, if someone knows or has a link.
Edit: to be fair this guy said that the case was very unusual, and command interference was a problem going back to Obama, but not in the same way that Trump’s statements were. Anyway, he said the case was almost unique. Obama’s command interference was different and less sinister and more inadvertent, than Trump’s.
Edit2: My characterization of Trump’s comments, just implied by the interviewee
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: On Sunday, like two days from now? Will the 12th work for you?
(I’d like to go with you, but we only have the one car and I shouldn’t crash your group)
Humdog
@skerry: He loses all benefits. I get the dishonorable discharge but I really think, since they deployed him in the first place, the military should be responsible for mental health help. He may not be very welcome at veterans hospitals, tho.
TenguPhule
@Amir Khalid:
We still don’t have enough people as it is for all the positions that need filling.
opiejeanne
@FlipYrWhig: You’re very sarcastic. come sit by me.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Nope. They need bodies. Badly. Especially the Army.
Major Major Major Major
@Duane:
Your next sentence is a hint.
Ruckus
@skerry:
One has to have a general discharge or higher to enroll in the VA. So yes a dishonorable discharge would prevent him from getting help. His life probably will not be a great one, he has issues, he has a checkered past, he isn’t rich so he will have to work, etc, etc.
I think that the army has culpability here. They knew his military record and sent him to a place he was totally unprepared/equipped for. And they got a predictable result. And he still helped them, and apparently quite a lot, as was shown in the report. He was tortured as a POW. If the report is correct he seems to have been a better POW than the senator from AZ. He deserves a general discharge.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
You are right the 17th is Friday and is open for me, if not anyone else, but the 18th, Saturday is taken.
ETA I went from memory, I don’t have that many fingers………
Doug R
@opiejeanne: Yup. Five years in captivity in Taliban custody sounds like time served.
geg6
@Amir Khalid:
I have no idea about the regular military recruiting, but I can attest that the recruiters for the reserves and National Guard are the most unethical people on earth. I have several students here on my campus who have been lied to about the educational benefits they will receive under the Post-9/11 GI Bill. They are being told that they will receive the same benefits as the regular military who served at least 36 months active duty get. And that’s not even close to reality. And when I tell them what the real deal is, I get yelled at. How any of that is my fault, I can’t fathom. But the recruiters are lying sacks of shit.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
(Sorry, I started talking movies in the other thread.) Yes, I think Betty is the best person to ask right now.
Barbara
@FlipYrWhig: That’s the joke. The entity that did the Northam/Herring only card was a union that did not include Fairfax specifically because of a position he took on the controversial power line. I thought it was stupid of them to do that, but it affected something like a few thousand cards, out of, literally millions of brochures and pamphlets and stickers that include the names and pictures of all three.
skerry
@Ruckus: This is what I thought. I agree that a general discharge seems more appropriate in his case. Is there an appeal/review process that might reconsider the sentence? I feel strongly that we owe him medical care.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
17th and 18th I will be in SF — that’s a totally different meet up.
I mean next weekend, the 11th or 12th.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
And Trump knows his “complete and total disgraces.”
Humane, wise sentence by the judge, Col. Nance. Bergdahl should never have been recruited into the Army. I’d not realized he washed out after 26 days in the Coast Guard. That should have told the Army … something.
The Atlantic magazine, (actually, a brief story from their partner, The Wire):
Bergdahl Was Discharged from the Coast Guard for Psychological Reasons Before He Joined the Army
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
A general discharge gets benefits.
The US military has the jobs assigned to them by the president to accomplish. The limitations are financial, political, legal and possible. But military leaders don’t like the word impossible, they follow orders and expect those below them to follow orders. So if a war is started without the financial needs met, they will do the best possible. If staffing is not sufficient, they will do the best possible. They will argue that either or both, financial or staffing needs are met but at the end of the day they will do as ordered. And either or both of those not being met may screw up the desired results. (Both being met may not bring the desired results, but not meeting one or the other often gets worse than nothing.) But they are doing as ordered, that’s the way it works.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Given that Bergdahl has apparently been very helpful in giving the Army an inside view of his experiences, I wonder if his lawyers would be able to quietly petition later for a general discharge so he can get the VA help he’s going to need.
Gelfling 545
Signed up to do GOTV calling Monday and Tuesday. The big item is getting our rwnj county Sheriff out of office. His jail came close to being shut down by the state for his failures in compliance and it’s hard to tell which side of the bars the criminals are on. Lawsuits by the bushel. Currently he is bring sued for reporting prisoner suicide attempts (there are a lot) as inmate “disturbances” to avoid state scrutiny. We’ve got a good candidate -former special agent in charge at the local FBI office. Still, Trump did too well in this county though Hilary did win it.
Roger Moore
@opiejeanne:
I’m in.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Open either day or night. Sat the 11th or Sun 12th. I keep forgetting that today is the 3rd. Time flies when one is just wasting it.
burnspbesq
@Adam L Silverman:
Burke and Dolan need to be assigned to small-town parishes in the middle of nowhere in far Upstate New York or northern New England, so they can get reacquainted with what the priesthood is supposed to about while freezing their asses off. The East Coast equivalent of the end of True Confessions.
schrodingers_cat
@FlipYrWhig: Saint of the Green Mountains, hallowed be his name, has a checkered voting regarding immigration. He has co-sponsored bills with his friend Chucky G against skilled immigration more than once.
Mike in NC
Bone Spurs should have STFU.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: We will be in Seattle by then. We need to leave on the 13th, so the 12th is the last date possible for us. mr opiejeanne has an appointment on the 15th that he’s been waiting on for 3 months. Dermatology.
opiejeanne
@Roger Moore: Yay! That makes 5+ my husband if we can get Ruckus to consult a calendar.
ETA: I see he did and is on track with us.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Sunday 9 days from now. ?
clay
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): It’s a consistent pattern:
a) Trump says something stupid. (“They should drop him out of a plane.”)
b) There are consequences to the stupid thing Trump says. (Bergdahl’s sentence gets lessened.)
c) Trump doesn’t acknowledge his role in the outcome, but complains mightily about it.
Classic Trump. I bet he would keep touching a hot stove, while complaining that the kitchen was rigged against him.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’d bet an appeal on his sentence is/would be far easier to get than having it changed later. And it won’t be an easy get.
And @Humdog: has a good point. Not all his fellow vets at the VA will appreciate him. There are a number of conservative vets around, and a lot of them take their service time as sacred. You’d think that after decades they’d just wanna live and let live. Many lifers take their service time as having earned them something, even someone like me, who only served one
termenlistment riles up some of them. But my take is, he is one of us, yes most don’t walk off their post, but the army knew that about him and sent him in anyway. Yes men died and were wounded looking for him, that’s their job. The army has culpability here. They should man the fuck up and ask for a general discharge for him so he can get help.ETA I remember as a elderly teenager being told that a bad discharge or criminal record for draft evasion would be horrible on your record. But I’d never been asked about either of those until 2012 when looking for work. To be hired at many places I had to pass a criminal background check, which I had to pay for at some places. So first time in over 40 yrs.
Redshift
@d58826:
Well, technically, only in effect, not in so many words. They’re not outright saying the GOP candidate is better, just that making one boneheaded mistake means Northam isn’t pure enough for them any more, and worse, deciding it’s a good idea to use their megaphone to amplify the boneheaded mistake less than a week before election day.
It’s particularly obnoxious because they weren’t campaigning for Northam anyway. I searched my emails from them and they’ve never mentioned Northam once. Their statement says they’re dropping him from their phonebanking scripts, which I suppose they could have been doing, but they haven’t done anything at the same level as how they’re shitting on him now.
They pretty much went full Wilmerite last year, joining in the “evil DNC” chorus (wonder how many of the people they were declaring evil were DFA members who’d gotten their start there with Dean as chair?) I bitched them out about that, and got no response. It was obvious the leadership looked at the Wilmerites and said “hey, they look like our people ten years ago, so all we have to do to pull in a new generation is abandon our purpose and replace it with purity obsession and conspiracy theories that have never won anything!”
I was a founding member, and I should have followed my instincts and dropped them last year. The whole point of the organization was to get people active and involved, and train candidates and staff so they could win and thereby drag party and government in a progressive direction. They’ve abandoned all to become yet another “better to lose than to win with the wrong sort” group.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: Chaplains to leper colonies. Perhaps they’ll learn something from sharing a similar experience to St. Damien of Molokai.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So Trump, a guy whose excuse when ask to serve was “bone spurs” called a guy who volunteered a disgrace. Exactly why is no one calling him on this horseshit?
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
Consult a calendar? Press an icon on the computer screen, are you insane?
Yes I finally did what a normal human would have done a while back and looked at a calendar. Life is so inconvenient to the put upon.
DHD
@StringOnAStick: Interesting, I had not heard of that, despite being in Canada! It isn’t at all surprising – and probably the fact that it is a totally uncontroversial thing is why it got almost no coverage. But perhaps it was more newsworthy in English, I don’t know.
Agent Orange and the Republicans’ recent admiration of and/or collusion with Putin almost certainly make life very difficult for right-wing politicians up here, because the most right-leaning parts of Canada are precisely the places which are heavily populated by the Ukrainian diaspora.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
First he wouldn’t listen, second he wouldn’t understand, third everything he says is shit of one kind or another and is constantly stinking up the place…….
John Carter
As I posted elsewhere:
An easy thing to forget.
Those on the right who are condemning this decision would do well to remember some of the accusations of a one-time P.O.W. in North Vietnam for 6 years.
Until you’ve been a “guest” at something like the Hanoi Hilton, your criticisms of Bergdal’s situation are invalid.
Cacti
Robert E. Lee fanboys call Bergdahl a traitor without the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness.
America has jumped the shark.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift: Years from now, scholars will hypothesize that back in the 21st century in America there was briefly a political leader who came out of Vermont, and whose followers were clamorous and perpetually aggrieved, and that while records have become spotty, his name may have been something like “Sandean.”
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
I agree that Bergdahl’s sentence is fair. Perhaps his appeal of the dishonorable discharge will succeed, I think he deserves medical care.
I agree that enlistment standards not being followed is responsible for many of the terrible events and acts during war. He should never have been sent into combat, or even close to combat. He was never fit for combat.
Cacti is on point too:
“Robert E. Lee fanboys call Bergdahl a traitor without the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness.” Lee swore his last oath to the constitution of the United States just 5 years before he violated that oath to join the CSA – when he was made Lt Col of a cavalry unit.
Pretty sad all around. I hope he can find peace somehow. Now I’m gonna read the rest of the thread…
Amaranthine RBG
Is it normal for judges in such proceedings to just pronounce the sentence and then leave the bench without any explanation of the factors that led to the decision?
Duane
@John Carter: 100% correct. Cacti as well.
President Bone Spurs and his supporters should drown in a pool of STFU.
low-tech cyclist
@Guachi:
FTFY.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know the details, but yes, there is such a process that can be carried out.
Also, this is too vague to be really useful, but my understanding is that some PTSD treatment programs, even some affiliated with the VA, aren’t strict about the rules for discharge as the rest of the VA services are. I hope he has a good advocate who can help him navigate the system.
RobNYNY
BB should be sentenced to having bone spurs.
Some Dude
“President BS”. An all-around accurate description in my book.