Bowe Bergdahl describes brutal treatment in Taliban hands

[mystery-ak]

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/bowe-bergdahl-desertion-taliban-torture-116410.html?hp=l2_4


Bowe Bergdahl describes brutal treatment in Taliban hands

By Nick Gass

3/26/15 7:07 AM EDT

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who is facing life in prison on charges of desertion and “misbehavior in the face of the enemy” has detailed for the first time the conditions of his five-year captivity in the hands of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a two-page statement shared by his attorney, Eugene Fidell, on Wednesday, Bergdahl outlined brutal conditions he endured as well as a dozen failed escape attempts and subsequent punishment.

“I was kept in constant isolation during the entire 5 years, with little to no understanding of anything that was happening beyond the door I was held behind. I was continuously shown Taliban videos,” he wrote, according to the full statement posted by The Washington Post. “Told I was going to be executed. Told I was never going back. Told I would leave the next day, and the next day I would be there for 30 years. Told I was going to die there. Told to kill myself. Told I would have my ears and nose cut off, as well as other parts of my body. I was told anything they could think of, weather [sic] it was through sign language, broken English or fluent English.”

After his first two failed escape attempts, Bergdahl wrote, his captors blindfolded him and he was “chained to a bed spread-eagle.” In his 12 attempts to escape, the Army sergeant wrote that he twice made it outside the buildings in which he was held.

He has been serving at an Army post in San Antonio since his return to the United States last year as part of a prisoner swap for five senior Taliban commanders who were being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

[alicewonders]

What did he expect to happen when he deserted our military in the middle of hostile territory?  I have no sympathy for him, our soldiers died trying to find him.  I think he should be executed myself - and can we do something with his father too?

[EC]

Full statement via PBS:

In the beginning of my captivity, after my first two escape attempts, for about three months I was chained to a bed spread-eagle and blindfolded. The blindfold was only taken off a few times a day to allow me to eat and use the latrine. It was not [until] after seeing I could barely walk from my body going through muscle atrophy, that they unchained one of my hands from above my head and chained it down by side, allowing me to sit up in the bed. Because of the constant heat and sweat my body where it was in contact with the bed would become sore and raw, burning from the sweat and pressure. My eyelids from the continuous pressure of the blindfold would become raw and being unable to wipe the sweat out of my eyes and because the blindfold wouldn’t allow the sweat to dry, my eyes were always burning and arching. Around my ankles where the chains were, I developed open wounds that looked like the STAPH infection I had had earlier that year. The infection also appeared on my forehead and side of head. It was also in the beginning of this that my body started a steady decline in constant internal sickness that would last through the final year. In the first three months they fed me elbow noodles or rice and very little of anything else, as well as two bottles of water a day. But because of the growing internal sickness it become more and more of a problem to east. During these months some of the things they did was beat the bottoms of my feet and parts of my body with a copper cable. After the first three months they moved me. Though they never fully chained me to a bed again, the first year I spent in chains on both hands an feet, and more often than not, even in the locked in the room, they had my feet chained to a solid unmovable object either outside or inside the room. At this point, because of sickness, weather, and little food and water, hunger, and worse, dehydration my body continued a steady decline. In the beginning of the winter I was wearing summer clothing and even though later towards the end of winter I was given an army PT windbreaker and a hat, because of the cold and the conditions of the room, my body was never able to worm up, adding to my sickness. The lowest point coming in the winter of the end of the first year. My body weight having dropped to the point that my ribs and joints protruded clearly, my skin losing all signs of fat and my muscles, from atrophy, reducing to thin tight cords or bumps that did barely to support me or keep my joints in place. After the first year they put me inside a cage. In there my hands were always handcuffed in front of me, being taken off only on the few times I would wash and change clothes, which came more often than in the first year when I would go 3 or 4 months without washing or changing clothes. In the cage my feet were usually chained to the cage at night, thought they stopped doing this towards the middle of the second year, because of the acute pain my feet and legs were in, it was here that the most severe problems began with my feet and legs and, roughly, for the next year and a half I would feel acute burning “cobwebs” and have continuous bad swelling in my feet and legs. When this past it was replaced with the freezing numbness that continues to the present, as both feet have neuropathy. It was also during this time that I had between 8 and 12 open wounds on each wrist under the hand shackles. Not healing I would have to push the puss out of them daily. Then they moved the cage to another room over the top of plumbing that they had built into the first floor. After this, since they no longer had to take me out of the cage, they took all the chains off me. From this point for more or less the conditions remained somewhat the sane. Until going into the final two years, where things got better and my body was able to heal and gain some weight, the internal sickness lessened to a more manageable state. I was kept in constant isolation during the entire 5 years, with little to no understanding of time, through periods of constant darkness, periods of constant light, and periods of completely random flickering of light, and absolutely no understanding of anything that was happening beyond the door I was held behind. Told I would leave the next day, and the next day told I would be there for 30 years. Told I was going to die there. Told to kill myself. Told I would have my ears and nose cut off, as well as other parts of my body. I was told anything they could think of, weather it was through sing language, broken English, or fluent English. My first escape attempt was within the first few hours of being captured. The Taliban stopped in a village. Pulling me off the back of the motorcycle and put me on my knees and threw a blanket over my head (even though I was also blindfolded), a few moments later one of the guys that had captured me pulled the blanket off and took the blind fold off. I saw that he had come back with a younger guy and had squatted down, the older one in front and the younger one to my right. From my peripheral vision I could see a few other young guys standing behind them. At this point the older guy had pulled out his cell phone and the younger one began asking a question, and after evading his questions he would hit me in the face. This was repeated but I evaded answering his question and after a while they put the blindfold back on and threw the blanket over my head. Some moments after that I believed had a chance to run for it and did. I was brought down towards the edge of the village by a large group on men, on the ground I felt many blows from fists, and one from the butt stalk of an AK that broke it off the weapon. After that in all my efforts to escape I had made it twice in escaping the buildings where I was held. The first being in the first week of being captured, and because of the populated area and time that I had managed to do it, I had only managed to get a short distance before being spotted, and because of the terrain I had no place to hide and no terrain to use to evade. This escape lasted approximately 10-15 minutes and after recapturing me and putting chains back on they took turns beating me with a length of thick rubber hose. Afterwards they added more chain to my hands and feet and seeing what I had been able to do they increased the guards and moved ne to a more heavily secured compound where I would spend roughly the next three months. The second one where I had made it out of the buildings was around the end of the first years. Lasting close 9 days without food and only putrid water to drink, my body failed on top of a short mountain close to evening and some moments after I came to in the dying grey light of the evening, I was found by a large Taliban searching group. After recapturing me again a few hit me and one tried to rip my beard and hair out, but from what I could sense they were more worried about getting me out that area as quickly as they could. This is the time that my body reached the worst point of condition and for approximately the next year and a half I would not recover from it, but instead have to deal with specific problems getting more severe. During the five years I unsuccessfully tied to escape approximately 12 times.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/life-captivity-hands-taliban/

Still a scumbag.

[rb224315]

Cry me a river, traitor.  In spite of your conscious, willful decision to join the other side, at least you came out of it alive.  It's not our problem that they didn't accept you with open arms and give you weapons to then turn against your former fellow American soldiers like you hoped and expected.

Today, several women are widowed and their children without their birth fathers as a direct result of your actions.  You may as well have killed those men yourself.  I have no sympathy for you.

[alicewonders]

Full statement via PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/life-captivity-hands-taliban/

Still a scumbag.

Yep.

[Bigun]

Full statement via PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/life-captivity-hands-taliban/

Still a scumbag.

Who put him in that situation? He has no one to blame but himself and he got several other people killed in trying to rectify his own irresponsible actions for which he should HANG IMHO!

[olde north church]

Why wasn't he given a Daniel Pearl shave?

[Bigun]

Why wasn't he given a Daniel Pearl shave?

Personally I think there is a LOT more to this story that has not yet come to light! Perhaps never will.

[Puss-N-Boots]

Setting the stage for "time served".

[Luis Gonzalez]

Cry me a river, traitor.  In spite of your conscious, willful decision to join the other side, at least you came out of it alive.  It's not our problem that they didn't accept you with open arms and give you weapons to then turn against your former fellow American soldiers like you hoped and expected.

Today, several women are widowed and their children without their birth fathers as a direct result of your actions.  You may as well have killed those men yourself.  I have no sympathy for you.

Yep.

[olde north church]

Personally I think there is a LOT more to this story that has not yet come to light! Perhaps never will.

I'm not an "Occam's Razor" kind of fellow but it would apply, yet ironically didn't.

[PzLdr]

F*CK 'IM!

[DCPatriot]

Weird feelings over this. 

In my entire professional life spanning more than 50 years, learning empathy has become as natural to me, as breathing.

Personally, I look at the over four thousand KIA in Iraq.  While President Bush was winding down, coming from the POV that a stable Iraq with free elections and a thriving economy would serve as a model.  Therefore, the loss of a child or friend or husband, while emotionally painful, a positive legacy 'exists' to reminds you theirs was a 'good death'.

Now, lets' look at Afghanistan.  NO foreign invader has been able to pacify Afghanistan.  E.V.E.R..

So I look at Bergdahl with a little different POV...as to his possible motive. 

He didn't kill any of this fellow soldiers firsthand like the psycho at Fort Hood.  He left his belongings in a very neat stack.

My vision of a paratrooper is one, that you'd never want to face down in a bar.  Or, for that matter, across the line of scrimmage.

"Meekness", immediately comes to mind whenever they show you his picture.

I give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't want to be one of those almost 10,000 'forgotten' KIA statistic, asked to die for a cause that is complete bullshit.  I get it.

That said, he dishonored the uniform and the soldier fighting next to him.  I hope he gets sentenced to life in prison.

Obama would probably pardon him in one of the digital salutes we'll be seeing from him as he's boarding Marine 1.

[EC]

Look, if he came straight out with it and said "I cracked" I'd have some sympathy for him. Not much sympathy, but some. It happens to the best, and he is definitely not the best.

As it is - none at all and I do wish politics hadn't got in the way of the correct charges which should have been brought. Desertion in the face of the enemy and aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war.

[Bigun]

Look, if he came straight out with it and said "I cracked" I'd have some sympathy for him. Not much sympathy, but some. It happens to the best, and he is definitely not the best.

As it is - none at all and I do wish politics hadn't got in the way of the correct charges which should have been brought. Desertion in the face of the enemy and aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war.