Category: Dumbass Bullshit

According to Military.com, lawyers have switched gears from him leaving his post to report his platoon’s leadership for malfeasance to wondering how the Army allowed him to enlist in the first place;

[Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s lead lawyer] said that “given the circumstances surrounding Sgt. Bergdahl’s entry-level separation from the U.S. Coast Guard, the Army’s subsequent decision to enlist him with a waiver was improvident.”

Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard in 2006 after only 26 days in basic training, reportedly because of his psychological state. In his letter, Fidell described Bergdahl as “naïve and at times unrealistic.”

Bergdahl joined the Army in 2008 at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In that same year, the Army War College reported that as many as one in five recruits was allowed to enlist with a waiver for health or other reasons, including arrest records.

The Washington Post last June, citing a senior Army official, reported that the Army was aware of Bergdahl’s previous administrative discharge from the Coast Guard when he joined.

Well, 2008 wasn’t “at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”. The surge in Iraq had ended…quite successfully, I might add. “Naïve and at times unrealistic” doesn’t disqualify recruits, unless there’s something new. I’m sure that it wouldn’t require a waiver, though. The lawyers are just grasping at straws now, and they look pretty funny doing it. Before he was Bergdah’s lawyer, Fidell was advocating that Bergdahl shouldn’t be punished at all, you know, despite the fact that US troops died looking for his criminal ass.

CNN is reporting that Bowe Bergdahl told Army investigators that he left his forward operating base unarmed, after he sent his personal possessions home, to report malfeasance in his unit;

Bergdahl was planning to report what he believed to be problems with “order and discipline” in his unit, a senior Defense official tells CNN. A second official says Bergdahl had “concerns about leadership issues at his base.”

This information is part of the report presented to General Mark Milley who this week decided to charge Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. This information outlines what could be a key part of Bergdahl’s defense, which the army is already aware of.

Both officials declined to be identified because of the legal proceedings against Berghahl, but both have direct knowledge of the information outlined in the report. “This was a kid who had leadership concerns on his mind,” the second official said. “He wasn’t fed up, he wasn’t planning to desert.”

What Bergdahl’s concerns were, and whether they are relevant to the case of desertion the Army is trying to make will be a matter for military authorities to decide. “I can’t tell you if his concerns were valid, but in his mind they were,” the official said.

Oh, well, sure, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If I was a stank ass hippie with no understanding what it’s like to be in a forward operating base in the middle of Indian country. The statement continues that it was never his intention to desert, but rather walk, using the wilderness skills from his childhood to make his way across the desert to a place somewhere out there that he could confront a general about leadership problems that the young PFC felt were confounding the mission of his unit.

Of course, anyone who has ever been a PFC in the Army knows how ridiculous that whole scenario sounds. There’s nothing about how far was the next base with a flag officer on it, but I’m sure it was more than an evening stroll away. He also knew that his actions, if indeed true, would send his unit out looking for him and put them in danger. His intent here is irrelevant, he left left his place of duty while involved in combat operations. Only a stank ass hippie lawyer would see this excuse as mitigating circumstances.

Geet Wilikers sends us a link to an article on Fox8 about this photo which has gone viral. It’s not about kids, though, it’s about their parents who encouraged them to do this;

Matthew Munson was visiting the memorial when some parents encouraged their children to climb on the memorial for a picture.

“There wasn’t a lot of people at this point,” Munson said. “Then a big group of people showed up just as the kids were treating the memorial more like a jungle gym and the parents were laughing. Then the veterans showed up, and they looked hurt more than angry. They were quiet.”

Munson continued, “That’s when I noticed a big group around the parents glaring at them, the pressure was intense and the kids blissfully ignorant. That’s when I snapped the picture. I tried getting a good shot of the crowd and the parents too but no luck. Kids jumped down and skittered off with their parents.

Yeah, the culture is broken when people don’t recognize how they should behave in public spaces. It’s completely corrupted when they encourage anti-social behavior in their children.

Someone dropped off a link on our Facebook page about this Steven B. Pancoast fellow who was chief investigator for the Oklahoma Veterans Affairs Department. Apparently, he claimed that he had years of experience with law enforcement, that turns out to be true, but from the other side of the gray bars;

Steven B. Pancoast Jr., 41, was never the state-certified law enforcement officer he pretended to be, authorities allege. His paperwork turned out to be faked.

Instead, he is an ex-convict who spent almost three years in a New Jersey prison in the 1990s before moving to Oklahoma, they say.

Friday night, a Canadian County judge authorized a search of Pancoast’s home in Mustang and signed a warrant for his arrest.

Pancoast is accused in the arrest warrant of impersonating a police officer, perjury and illegal possession of a firearm after a felony conviction. He turned himself in Saturday morning and was released after posting bail.

The discovery, of course, has influenced some local high-profile cases. And, you know, if you’re going to pretend to be a police officer, you might as well pretend to be a military officer, too;

Pancoast described himself in at least one search warrant affidavit as a former New York City police officer for two years and a former U.S. Army military police officer for six years. However, in a resume he sent to the Veterans Affairs Department in 2010, he wrote only that he “observed with the New York City Police Department.” He made no reference to the Army in the resume.

Well, I guess he’s probably going to get some more experience in law enforcement that he can add to his resume.

In Indianapolis, a 14-year-old girl was arrested for beating another teen and a 5-year-old with her brass knuckles. Of course, everyone automatically blames PTSD for no real reason, but it’s everyone’s excuse for everything these days;

Shawn Taylor, the suspect’s mother, said her daughter needs counseling – not jail time. She says her daughter has been diagnosed with PTSD, though when we asked, she could not point to a single traumatic incident in the girl’s life.

We spoke with Taylor outside the courthouse Thursday. She said, “So long as she’s on the road to recovery, that’s all that matters.”

Well, it seems to work so well for the phonies to claim PTSD for their bad behavior, I guess all criminals have a case of the disorder these days. I’m surprised the whole country isn’t terrorized by the millions of legitimate PTS cases. But of course, legitimate PTS doesn’t make folks beat 5-year-olds, either. For some reason it’s the first thing out of people’s mouth these days.

For the record, I’m not saying that the teen couldn’t have PTSD, what I’m saying is that the disorder doesn’t cause the type of behavior that caused her to be arrested. By the way, she was already facing similar charges for another similar incident.

13 WTHR Indianapolis

Thanks to Claymore for the link.

Reuters reports that Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the government to release even more photos of what a few soldiers did in Abu Ghraib more than ten years ago because the American Civil Liberties Union says that it will “help the public better understand the implications of some of the Bush administration’s policies.” Whatever that means;

Hellerstein ruled last August that the government had failed to show why releasing the photographs would endanger American soldiers and workers abroad, but gave the government a chance to submit more evidence. In Friday’s order, however, he said additional evidence had failed to change his decision.

The photographs would be released in redacted form to conceal the identities of any individuals, according to court documents.

So, basically, the judge has decided that he’d give ISIS more recruiting tools, make more US troops targets because a small group of part-time soldiers wanted to entertain themselves and film it for the world to see. There was nothing from the Defense Department or the White House that encouraged this behavior. In fact, some the guilty parties had already been charged by the time the media got word of the antics of a few out-of-control Reservists.

But that’s cool, now those guys still deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq can pay for the mistakes of Lynndie England and Charles Graner.

Fox News reports that now in US custody is a former Air Force airplane mechanic who was fired from his job fixing airplanes as a private citizen who decided that ISIS would be a better, more reliable employer;

Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, of Asbury Park, N.J., was arrested Jan. 16, before he could carry out his plan to join the black-clad jihadist army, authorities said. He was indicted on two counts of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a news release.

[…]

Pugh was an Air Force avionics instrument system specialist who received training in the installation and maintenance of aircraft engine, navigation and weapons systems, prosecutors said. After leaving the Air Force, Pugh worked for companies in the United States and Middle East and had lived abroad for over a year before his arrest.

Prosecutors say he tried to join ISIS after he was fired from a job as an airplane mechanic somewhere in the Middle East, traveling from Egypt to Turkey in a bid to cross into Syria to join ISIS. Turkish authorities nabbed Pugh at the border Jan. 10 and sent him back to Egypt, prosecutors said.

ISIS really missed out – I’m sure they would have use for an airplane mechanic. I’m not sure he thought this all the way through. Life with ISIS probably isn’t much like the military life that he’d be accustomed to as an avionics mechanic. If he was able to keep his noggin attached to his shoulders.