Bergdahl's comrades -- He's a deserter

From The Daily Beast via Instapundit.

For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl. Now we can talk about what really happened.

It was June 30, 2009, and I was in the city of Sharana, the capitol of Paktika province in Afghanistan. As I stepped out of a decrepit office building into a perfect sunny day, a member of my team started talking into his radio. “Say that again,” he said. “There’s an American soldier missing?”

There was. His name was Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, the only prisoner of war in the Afghan theater of operations. His release from Taliban custody on May 31 marks the end of a nearly five-year-old story for the soldiers of his unit, the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. I served in the same battalion in Afghanistan and participated in the attempts to retrieve him throughout the summer of 2009. After we redeployed, every member of my brigade combat team received an order that we were not allowed to discuss what happened to Bergdahl for fear of endangering him. He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth.

And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.

This is looking more and more like a debacle.

From The Hill:

Soldiers who served with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan are claiming he is a deserter who walked off his base in June 2009, but the Pentagon says it still doesn’t know exactly what happened.
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“The truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down,” he said.

Soldiers were then forced to remain silent about Bergdahl’s disappearance and the search for him, Bethea added, which led to some soldiers losing their lives.

"I was pissed off then and I am even more so now with everything going on," Former Sgt. Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl's platoon, told CNN. “"Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him."
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At least six U.S. soldiers died hunting for Bergdahl, CNN reports.

Can't wait to see how this one settles out. The Dear Leader may have landed on a second hand grenade in a month.