{"id":49843,"date":"2014-06-05T09:33:57","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T13:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=49843"},"modified":"2014-06-05T12:33:37","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T16:33:37","slug":"beeker-on-bergdahl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=49843","title":{"rendered":"Beeker on Bergdahl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=49846\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-49846\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/beeker-brandon-300x296.jpg\" alt=\"beeker brandon\" width=\"300\" height=\"296\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-49846\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/beeker-brandon-300x296.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/beeker-brandon.jpg 329w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>So, Brandon Friedman, affectionately known here on these pages as &#8220;Beeker&#8221;, an infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Vice Chairman of VoteVets as well as the administrator of their blog VetsVoice which TAH effectively killed. Friedman followed Tammy Duckworth to the Department of Veterans Affairs as their chief of new media propaganda, the Director of Online Communications. He left the VA when things started getting too hot at that department and now he is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, you know to cover for the failures at that agency.<\/p>\n<p>Friedman is cutthroat. He&#8217;ll throw anyone under the bus who doesn&#8217;t toe the party line. I have intimate knowledge of that. He&#8217;s even stooped to using TAH for some of his attempts to cut the wings off of his political opponents. But, I&#8217;m saving the specifics of that particular story for a time when I need it. Brandon knows what I&#8217;m talking about.<\/p>\n<p>But now, he&#8217;s casting aspersions on Bergdahl&#8217;s leaders and his unit to salvage the White House&#8217;s image in that discussion. Throwing an entire unit under the bus to make the President and this administration, along with Bowe Bergdahl look good.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Admin (HUD) official: Bergdahl&#39;s unit could have been &quot;long on psychopaths&quot; <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/t2bO7tRRuX\">pic.twitter.com\/t2bO7tRRuX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Aaron Blake (@AaronBlakeWP) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AaronBlakeWP\/statuses\/474527705539821568\">June 5, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Of course Friedman says that he&#8217;s &#8220;not a fan of speculation&#8221; just before he begins to speculate. There&#8217;s no evidence that there were failures of leadership in Bergdahl&#8217;s unit, so Friedman makes them up out of whole cloth. I guess, in a courtroom they&#8217;d call that &#8220;sowing seeds for reasonable doubt&#8221; &#8211; the last refuge of a defense attorney who is in over his head. But, you know, a commissioned officer in the United States Army shouldn&#8217;t be screwing over his brother officers in that manner.<\/p>\n<p>And even if there was a leadership problem in the unit, that doesn&#8217;t mitigate deserting your unit and being the subject of millions of dollars spent on finding you and trading five high value prisoners for you.<\/p>\n<p>The White House has even stooped to calling what Bergdahl&#8217;s former platoon mates have done in the media as &#8220;Swiftboating&#8221; him, according to an NBC White House correspondent, says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/Big-Journalism\/2014\/06\/04\/chuck-todd-white-house-accusing-vets-of-swiftboating-bergdahl\">Breitbart<\/a>. Of course, it&#8217;s misuse of the term &#8211; swiftboating means to call out a member of the military on his lies, like the Swiftboat Vets for Truth did to John Kerry. So, in that sense, yes they did swiftboat Bergdahl, but, of course, the White House means to disparage a number of veterans of the Afghanistan War to save the fairy tale that they&#8217;re trying to shove down our throats.<\/p>\n<p>So, see, we&#8217;re all heroes and worthy of praise unless we turn on the party line &#8211; then we&#8217;re all shit. Well, Brandon Friedman, you&#8217;re shit for turning your back on your brother officers for your <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thirty_Pieces_of_Silver\">thirty pieces of silver<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to our countless friends who sent us links to Friedman&#8217;s Twitter account.<\/p>\n<p>This is from Patrick;<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=49852\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-49852\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/bergdahl-video-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"bergdahl video\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-49852\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/bergdahl-video-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/bergdahl-video-444x333.jpg 444w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/bergdahl-video-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/bergdahl-video.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, Brandon Friedman, affectionately known here on these pages as &#8220;Beeker&#8221;, an infantry platoon leader in &hellip; <a title=\"Beeker on Bergdahl\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=49843\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Beeker on Bergdahl<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}