ThinkProgress: Damn that Ralph Peters! (UPDATED)

...leave the conclusion jumping to us...

While Zandar blames Obama's slipping poll numbers on on healthcare on the Republicans (way to take your orders from The One Master!), let's shift focus on another story where it sounds like the media is making an apparent deserter a national hero. Army Private Bowe Bergdahl is the military member who was captured by the Tahl-ee-bahn a few weeks ago. The Taliban has released a video of Bergdahl calling on the US to withdraw from Afghanistan or he'll meet his maker. According to "Wordsmith," at Flopping Aces, it is against international law to use captured military members for humiliating propaganda purposes.

Despite that, there are questions surrounding the circumstances which led to Bergdahl's capture. First off, under no circumstances should the Taliban, or any other terrorist organization, be justified in murdering US soldiers, or anyone else for that matter. My prayers are with Private Bergdahl and his family and I also pray that the DoD make any attempt to rescue him, by whatever means necessary...hopefully, successful. Unlike in the case of Nick Berg, where the media and liberals blamed his murder on BushCo, Bergdahl's capture isn't the fault of Obamessiah and his cronies. Terrorists have NO compassion for human life, and we shouldn't delude ourselves by thinking the opposite. With that said, Michelle Malkin noted some details about Bergdahl's story which were deleted in later wire reports.

The first account given to the AP was that Bergdahl walked off his base with three Afghan civilians without body armor or weapons. A later account said that the Taliban captured a drunken soldier, which if I recall correctly, the Afghani theatre is dry, so therefore alcohol wouldn't be available on post. A third account, coming from Bergdahl, was that he was lagging behind his patrol when he was captured. This is also problematic for me, since being an Air Force veteran, and I'm sure is the case with the other three military branches, it is drilled into us that we do not leave our buddies behind. It's HIGHLY unlikely that Bergdahl's patrol left him behind and he was captured by the Taliban. The first account, as Michelle noted, is desertion and is punishable by death...despite what "legal expert" Jonathan Turley says.

I'm not ruling out the possibility that Bergdahl was left behind by his patrol, but the first account seems the most plausible, and if true, Bergdahl should be punished according to Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Leaving that all aside, the pants-wetting now coming from liberals in regards to what Ralph Peters said on FNC's America's News HQ is absurd. Peters did not say anything totally off base, but I am willing to allow a court-martial to make that determination, even though execution wouldn't be a likely punishment.

Have a great day...

UPDATE 1420, 20072009: This is the first update I've done since blogging on Blogger, so I'll explain the numbers above. The first is the time I started typing the update and the second set is the date (DD/MM/YYYY).

I read the blog post from Jawa about Bowe Bergdahl, and I want to make clear that I am not declaring Bergdahl to be a deserter, but going AWOL does seem to be a more plausible reason for his capture. I don't want to make this about Bergdahl, but about his captors. I wanted to speak out against any attempts by the media and the military absolutists on the Left to make Bergdahl some sort of hero.