WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT BOWE BERGDAHL?

April 7, 2015

IMAGE SOURCE: controversialtimes.com (Bergdahl’s parents with President Obama)

By Anita Stewart for Challenging the Rhetoric and Wise Women Media

In one of the most politicized stories in any war time theatre involving prisoners of war, prisoner exchanges and releases, the story of Bowe Bergdahl haunted us in the spring of 2014 when his release and the subsequent prisoner exchange of Taliban members became corporate media’s story “du jour.”

Bergdahl left his unit at a remote Afghanistan outpost in June 2009 and then was captured by the Taliban aligned Haqqani network where he remained a prisoner of war for almost five years. Bergdahl was finally released on May 31, 2014 in exchange for five Taliban prisoners that were incarcerated at Guantanamo.

It was a big story then and it’s back on the corporate media radar now due to the publication and release of The Army Report which had remained in limbo on a General’s desk since October 2014. It was finally released to corporate media this past March. Now Bergdahl is being charged with Desertion and Misbehavior Before the Enemy, the latter considered a catch-all regulation that can be applied to just about any transgression, however minor.

Bergdahl faces life in prison if convicted.

Some Media And Fellow Troops Say He Is A Deserter

IMAGE SOURCE: kttc.com

Stories have been published in The Daily Beast and USA Today by troops deployed in units that were near Bergdahl’s. These articles claim Bergdahl deserted his unit. Wikipedia has printed the text of an email exchange between Bergdahl and his father that was sent before Bergdahl left — which if true, is evidence that Bergdahl deserted his unit, but he did so as a ‘conscientious objector.’ His thoughts expressed in the email revealed sympathy for the Afghani people.

Politicizing

Congress however, had never been informed of any email exchange or notes while discussing the terms of Bergdahl’s release and the Taliban prisoner releases and exchange.

The politicizing continued on both sides of the aisle with the House Armed Services Committee conducting a hearing on the prisoner swap. President Obama defended the prisoner swap and made Bergdahl a hero in a speech delivered at the White House while he was accompanied by Bergdahl’s parents.

But Wasn’t Bergdahl A Whistleblower?

He had already spoken to his team leader about the repercussions of going off base while in possession of army equipment such as night vision goggles or his weapon. His team leader told him he would be in trouble and action would be taken against him if that happened. So Bergdahl left almost all of his army equipment behind. Only his compass, a thermos and a knife went missing.

Bergdahl’s attorney, Eugene Fidell said Bergdahl left his unit to report irregularities to the Commander. We do not know the details of those irregularities Bergdahl was allegedly going to report on. They have not been released to the public.

Perhaps he had witnessed war crimes or wrongdoings? If they weren’t wrongdoings, why are they being kept secret? Is Bergdahl facing recrimination from his unit’s chain of command for attempting to tell the truth to the commanding officer in the area?

Myth And Truth

One of the biggest myths in this story is that a search detail deployed to look for Bergdahl after he went missing and that troops were killed during that detail and the others that followed.

According to Fidell, there is no evidence that this ever occurred. Casualties noted from this time period appear to be caused by routine military operations in the area and not as a result of specific searches for Bergdahl.

Opinions on details of what happened differ depending on the news network reporting it. One’s own political party also seems to come to play in an opinion. This was presented as a partisan story from the beginning and even Bergdahl’s family members have been targets of the hype created by corporate media and their fans. Now the pundits have taken over and the narrative is being controlled regardless of what the truth may be.

Is Bergdahl a would-be whistleblower? Or, is he a conscientious objector? Did he truly desert his unit? Or is this a concerted effort to bury public knowledge of more potential war crimes? Will we ever know?

THE DISAPPEARED: DO THESE BODY COUNTS EQUAL GENOCIDE?

April 8, 2015

IMAGE SOURCE: ysamarsinsights.wordpress.com

By Anita Stewart for Challenging the Rhetoric and Wise Women Media

“We don’t do body counts,” said General Tommy Franks in 2003, in the early days of Gulf War II, you know, “Shock and Awe.”

What followed that bold statement were countless reports and news stories from corporate and independent media on just how the counts were conducted, but no one knew for sure how this huge endeavor was being carried out.

Franks’ statement was the catalyst for the creation of the website [that is still live] IraqBodyCount.net. The data on the site is full of stats and is rather macabre, but if people reviewed it and saw the casualties for themselves perhaps this data would change the public opinion about wars and occupations? 

Democracy Now had one of the first reports on the General’s statement and the website that was one of the first sites about the Iraq War itself; one that you to share the casualty data by inserting a widget box onto other pages, blogs and websites. It was quite brilliant.

IMAGE SOURCE: hrw.org

 The Body Count Report 

Not reported by corporate media and sadly forgotten or under-reported by alternative/independent media, “The Body Count Report: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the “War on Terror” is 101 pages that was released in March of 2015 and included information from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It should have made international news and front pages everywhere.

Data was collected by the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), thePhysicians for Global Survival (PGS) and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and included stats from September 11th, 2001 up until the end of 2013. The report is linked here for download as a PDF file.

Omission Of The Facts Means They Don’t Exist

Officially ignored are casualties, injured or killed, involving enemy combatants and civilians…” wrote Doctor Hans-C. Von Sponeck in his preface to the Body Count Report.

Von Sponeck is a former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.

“…This, of course, comes as no surprise. It is not an oversight but a deliberate omission. The U.S. authorities have kept no known records of such deaths. This would have destroyed the arguments that freeing Iraq by military force from a dictatorship, removing al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and eliminating safe havens for terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas has prevented terrorism from reaching the US homeland, improved global security and advanced human rights, all at ‘defendable costs.’”

IMAGE SOURCE: cursor.org

The Report Doesn’t Exist If YOU Can’t Find It

Independent researcher and American, David Peterson — co-author of ‘The Politics of Genocide,’ noted the following a week ago:

 “I just ran a Factiva database search (on MediaLens) for mentions of the (Body Count) report. As best I can tell, within the universe of wire services and newspapers archived by the Factiva database, only four different English-language media have reported the existence of this document, and in these cases, two reports were picked up by twomedia.”

The Real Numbers [Add Up]

Per the report around a million casualties would be considered a conservative estimate. More than two million would be more realistic. Not counted would be numbers of casualties submitted from other Middle East countries and some of those displaced and living in refugee camps. The UN and NGO’s also have provided some of the data.

The real numbers are not provided to the general public because “collateral damage” is not considered technically as bad as a ‘casualty.’ The pogroms, endless wars and occupations must continue in order for corporations to profit. How much are you depositing today?