A military judge ruled today that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl should serve no prison time for charges of misbehavior before the enemy and desertion, charges which could have brought him a sentence of from five years to life in prison — which is what Donald Trump advocated, along with the death penalty, execution by firing squad and being thrown from an airplane without a parachute. Here is what the moron in chief tweeted today on the subject:
Here are the basic facts facts from Axios:
- In June 2009, Bergdahl walked off of his outpost in Afghanistan. He said, and a military investigation confirmed, he was trying to reach forward operating base Sharana miles away, to blow the whistle on mismanagement in his unit.
- He was captured by the Taliban before he could get to Sharana, and held captive for five years, undergoing torture (chained to a bed for months on end, being locked in a cage). He later said he made at least a dozen escape attempts.
- A division chief for the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, Terrence Russell, said Bergdahl's experiences in captivity could be used for military survival training.
- President Obama swapped Bergdahl for five Guantanamo Bay detainees in 2014.
Now it goes without saying that Trump has no remote clue of the facts of this event. In the first place, Bergdahl has, by anybody’s standards, suffered enough. In the second place, he has been deemed a “gold mine” of intelligence information, helping the military better understand insurgents and how they imprison hostages. To any reasonable mind, which Trump is not, these are major factors to be taken into consideration. But here is what Trump has contributed:
In 2015, Trump tweeted that Bergdahl "should face the death penalty for desertion," and later during the 2016 election said he should be executed via firing squad, or thrown out of a plane without a parachute. Bergdahl's defense cited these comments as reasons why the trial is impossible -- Trump is the military's commander in chief, and the judge in this case report to Trump. However, Nance said on Monday he was "completely unaffected" by Trump's comments.
The injuries of the soldiers who searched for Bergdahl are also under consideration for his sentencing. Bergdahl's commanding officer, Capt. John Billings, described the psychological toll soldiers experienced during their mission. Now-retired Navy SEAL James Hatch, who cried on the stand recounting his perspective, was shot in the leg while looking for Bergdahl and has had 18 surgeries since, effectively ending his career. Army Master Sergeant Mark Allen is now in a wheelchair and unable to speak after he was shot in the head during an ambush while on the mission.
President Obama saved Bergdahl’s life by getting him swapped as soon as humanly possible. Now Donald Trump would have him thrown from an airplane without a parachute. It will be a truly great day for this nation when a functioning adult is once more in the Oval Office instead of a dysfunctional sociopathic child, with no concept whatsoever of the dimension of world issues such as this one — just a pair of thumbs with which to transmit his inane, childish perceptions as he continues to embarrass himself and the United States to the world.