We shoulda left him there.
"WASHINGTON – As the White House praised the return of soldier Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban, some Afghan war veterans answered with anger over how the young soldier fell into enemy hands in the first place and the price the U.S. has paid to get him back.
Rarely had the circumstances of Bergdahl's vanishing in June 2009 been publicly discussed during his captivity, apparently for fear of jeopardizing his safety while in Taliban control. But years of simmering anger by some vets may finally be bursting into the open now that he’s safely heading back stateside – and now that the Taliban has celebrated the return of five middle- to senior-level figures that had been held for years in Guantanamo Bay.
“I went to extreme personal sacrifice to see some of the guys that are walking get justice,” one special operations forces commander who was involved in chasing down high-value targets in Afghanistan told ABC News. “Should I or others involved be looking over our shoulders now?”
Nathan Bethea, a former soldier who says he served in Bergdahl’s unit, recently wrote that he and his colleagues had been forced to stay quiet about the truth of Bergdahl’s case.
"And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down," Bethea wrote in The Daily Beast Monday. “Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”
By his own account in a Taliban-released video in July 2009, Bergdahl said he was caught after lagging behind during a patrol -- which would have been the only instance of such a capture in the 13-year war. Bethea wrote there was no such patrol that night. The Taliban said he was drunk and wandered off base. The U.S. intercepted radio traffic in the area that indicated Bergdahl had been captured while relieving himself, according to documents obtained and released by WikiLeaks.
“We were attacking the post, he was sitting taking expletive[.] He had no gun with him,” said a “traffic report” apparently capturing a conversation between two members of the Taliban.
| 
