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Bowe Bergdahl, Once-Missing U.S. Soldier, Charged with Desertion [+videos]

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Photo Credit: EPA; AP; Reuters

Photo Credit: EPA; AP; Reuters

By Dan Lamothe. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who slipped away from his patrol base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held in captivity for five years, has been charged with desertion and misbehaving before the enemy, Army officials said Wednesday, setting the stage for emotionally charged court proceedings in coming months.

The charges were announced by the service at Fort Bragg, N.C., hours after the 28-year-old was handed a charge sheet, according to one of his attorneys. Bergdahl will next face a preliminary Article 32 hearing, which is frequently compared to a grand jury proceeding in civilian court.

If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison.

The Army’s decision comes after nearly 10 months of debate about whether Bergdahl should face charges and about the circumstances of his recovery. Critics — and an independent review by the Government Accountability Office — said President Obama broke the law in authorizing the release of five Taliban detainees held by the United States in exchange for Bergdahl without consulting Congress. Others have insisted that Washington had a responsibility to bring Bergdahl home by any means necessary.

Army officials declined Wednesday to elaborate on the decisions they made, citing the ongoing investigation. The charges were authorized by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command. (Read more from “Bowe Bergdahl, Once-Missing U.S. Soldier, Charged with Desertion [+video]” HERE)

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Susan Rice Flashback: Bergdahl Served ‘With Honor and Distinction’

By Ian Hanchett. National Security Advisor Susan Rice defended the prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on the June 1, 2014 brodcast of ABC’s “This Week” by saying Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction.”

Regarding the desertion allegations, she said Bergdahl, “served the United States with honor and distinction. And we’ll have the opportunity eventually to learn what has transpired in the past years.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Watch: Five Soldiers Came Together And Created A Beautiful Tribute To The Troops

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When soldiers come together and support one another, the result is beautiful. Three soldiers in the British Army collaborated with two U.S. Soldiers in order to beautifully perform a song dedicated to troops around the world. The song ‘Coming Home’ is a message of support to all service members who are representing their country with pride.

Watch the song below:

(Read more about the beautiful tribute HERE)

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Former U.S. Army Soldier Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Kill Federal Agent and Informant

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By BBC. A former US soldier who allegedly formed an international band of snipers as mercenaries has confessed to a murder plot in New York.

Joseph Hunter, nicknamed Rambo after the hero of the 1980s action films, pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill a federal agent and an informant.

The 49-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison.

He believed he had been working for drug traffickers who were actually working for the US anti-drugs agency.

He is accused of recruiting ex-military snipers with the aim of carrying out murders on behalf of drug organisations. (Read more about the soldier conspiring to kill the federal agent HERE)

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A Family Was Not Told Their Mother’s Death Was a Suicide Until They Saw News Report on Television

By Sheboygan Press Media. The family of a soldier from Kiel who died last year in Kosovo from a gunshot wound had not been informed by military investigators that they had concluded their daughter had committed suicide until they read about it in the Sheboygan Press on Wednesday.

Stars and Stripes newspaper reported Monday that Army Staff Sgt. Heidi Ruh died on May 9, 2014, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, citing the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Stars and Stripes is published by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Ruh’s parents, Catherine and Scott Ruh, who live in rural Newton, learned about it from friends and relatives who read a story that appeared in Wednesday’s Sheboygan Press and online at sheboyganpress.com.

News of the investigation’s conclusion was carried by many other media outlets.

A family relative, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Sheboygan Press Thursday that Ruh’s two sons, who were 8 and 11 when she died, saw the news that their mother had committed suicide while watching TV in Texas, where they live. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Parole for Soldier Convicted of Killing Al-Qaida Operative

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Photo Credit: WNDA U.S. soldier convicted of killing an al-Qaida operative in Iraq in a trial marked by the prosecution’s decision to withhold exculpatory evidence has been granted parole.

The announcement comes from Scott and Vicki Behenna, who established the Defend Michael website on behalf of their son, Michael Behenna.

The parents said they had been notified that their son will be released from Ft. Leavenworth on March 14. He will have served five years of a 15-year sentence for the death of al-Qaida operative Ali Mansur in Iraq in 2008.

“With tears of joy in our eyes we are happy to tell all of you that Michael is coming home! … It has been, to say the least, quite a ride,” the parents said a statement posted online Wednesday.

“Michael signed up for the Army in order to serve his country and honor the innocent people killed on 9/11. As a lieutenant he led his men in the ‘Mad Dog’ 5th Platoon into combat in Iraq and with them bravely faced a determined and ruthless insurgency. Then his story took a bizarre turn when he was charged and later convicted of killing a known al-Qaida cell leader who was directly involved in an IED attack that killed two of his soldiers, Steven Christofferson and Adam Kohlhaas,” they wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Soldier’s Christmas

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Photo Credit: Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections

Photo Credit: Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections

T’was the night Before Christmas, he lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house made of plaster and stone,
I had come down the chimney with presents to give
And to see just who in this home did live,

I looked all about, a strange site did I see,
No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree,
No stockings by the mantle, Just boots filled with sand,
On the wall hung pictures of far distance lands.

With Medals and badges, Awards of all kinds,
A sober thought came through my mind.
For this house was different, it was dark and dreary,
I had found the home of a soldier once I could see clearly
I heard stories about them, I had to see more
So I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.

The solider lay sleeping, silent, alone,
Curled up in this, His one bedroom home.
The face was so gentle, the room in such disorder
Not how I pictured a United States Solider.

Was this the War Hero of whom I’d just read?
Curled up on a poncho, the floor for a bed?
His head was clean shaven, his weathered face tan,
I soon understood this was more than a man.
I realized the families that I saw this night
Owed they’re lives to these soldiers who were willing to fight.

Read more from this story HERE.

Soldier Saved on Battlefield by Rosary – Just Like his Great-Grandfather

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Photo Credit: EASTNEWS

Photo Credit: EASTNEWS

Guardsman Glenn Hockton, 19, asked for a rosary to take with him before being deployed to Afghanistan on a seven-month tour of duty with the Coldstream Guards in Helmand Province.

He bent down to pick the rosary up when it fell from his neck and then realised he was on a landmine.

Guardsman Hockton had to remain standing where he was for 45 minutes while his colleagues successfully attempted to rescue him.

His great-grandfather Joseph Sunny Truman also credited a rosary with saving his life when he survived a bomb blast after he was captured while serving with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in the Second World War.

Guardsman Hockton’s mother Sheri Jones, from Tye Green, Essex, said she was physically sick when her son rang to tell her of his ordeal.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bradley Manning Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy but Guilty of Espionage Violations (+video)

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By Chelsea J. Carter, Ashley Fantz and Larry Shaughnessy. A military judge acquitted Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Tuesday of aiding the enemy, but convicted him of violations of the Espionage Act for turning over a trove of classified data to the website WikiLeaks, in a case where the soldier has been portrayed variously as a traitor and as a whistle-blower.

The verdict by the judge, Col. Denise Lind, dismissed the prosecution’s argument that Manning released documents — in the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history — that he knew would end up in the hands of al Qaeda. The verdict also found Manning not guilty of unauthorized possession of information relating to national defense.

If he had been found guilty of aiding the enemy, he would have faced life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Manning still faces the prospect of years, if not decades, behind bars. He was found guilty on 20 counts. The sentencing phase of the court-martial begins Wednesday, and Manning faces up to a maximum 136 years in prison.

Among the charges, Manning was found guilty of the theft of more than 700 U.S. Southern Command records, the possession of records pertaining to Afghanistan; the theft of State Department cables and the possession of classified Army documents.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Bradley Manning verdict: cleared of ‘aiding the enemy’ but guilty of other charges

By Ed Pilkington. Bradley Manning, the source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of secret disclosures, faces a possible maximum sentence of 136 years in military jail after he was convicted on Tuesday of most charges on which he stood trial.

Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over the court martial of the US soldier, delivered her verdict in curt and pointed language. “Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,” she repeated over and over, as the reality of a prolonged prison sentence for Manning – on top of the three years he has already spent in detention – dawned.

The one ray of light in an otherwise bleak outcome for Manning was that he was found not guilty of the single most serious charge against him – that he knowingly “aided the enemy”, in practice al-Qaida, by disclosing information to the WikiLeaks website that in turn made it accessible to all users including enemy groups.

Lind’s decision to avoid setting a precedent by applying the swingeing “aiding the enemy” charge to an official leaker will invoke a sigh of relief from news organisations and civil liberties groups who had feared a guilty verdict would send a chill across public interest journalism.

The judge also found Manning not guilty of having leaked an encrypted copy of a video of a US air strike in the Farah province of Aghanistan in which many civilians died. Manning’s defence team had argued vociferously that he was not the source of this video, though the soldier did admit to the later disclosure of an unencrypted version of the video and related documents. Read more from this story HERE.

Bradley Manning Trial: Defense Counsel Ask How Passing Info to Journalist is “Aiding and Abetting the Enemy”?

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Photo Credit: APThe defence team representing Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked reams of state secrets to WikiLeaks, has made one last attempt to persuade the judge presiding over his court martial to dismiss the most serious charge against him: that he “aided the enemy”.

Manning’s civilian lawyer David Coombs said that to convict the army private of such a severe offence would set an “extremely bad precedent”. It would place US society on a “very slippery slope, of basically punishing people for getting information out to the press.”

Addressing the judge in a military court in Fort Meade, Coombs said that “no case has ever been prosecuted under this type of theory: that an individual, by the nature of giving information to a journalistic organisation, would then be subject to” a charge of “aiding the enemy”. Conviction of such an office would bring “a hammer down on any whistleblower or anybody who wants to put information out”.

The lawyer’s comments were recorded by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is employing court stenographers during the Manning trial as a way of overcoming the high level of official secrecy that surrounds the case.

The “aiding the enemy” charge has become the seminal battle in Manning’s prosecution, with the US government, in its determination to come down hard on official leakers, ranged against advocates of freedom of information. Under the terms of the charge, Manning is accused of having given valuable intelligence to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and its affiliate groups simply by dint of having leaked documents that were then posted by WikiLeaks on the internet.

Read more from this story HERE.

Russell Brand: Blame Madness, Not Islam, for Woolwich Attack

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Nutty British star Russell Brand took to the pages of The Sun today to pretend that there is no relationship between radical Islam and the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Islamists in Woolwich. Brand tweeted within hours of the murder, “That bloke is a nut. A nut who happens to be Muslim. Blaming Muslims for this is like blaming Hitler’s moustache for the Holocaust.”

Actually, Russell, it isn’t. Blaming Islamism for what happened to Lee Rigby is sort of like blaming Nazism for the Holocaust. In other words, it’s accurate. But Brand believes that only the insane take murderous action. “In spite of his dispassionate intoning the subject is not rational,” licensed psychiatrist Brand wrote in The Sun. “Of course he’s not rational, he’s just murdered a stranger in the street, he says, because of a book. In my view that man’s severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity – in this case the Koran.”

Brand actually compared the Islamist murderers to John Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman, who said he was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye. Neither book, said Brand, could be linked with murder. “I’ve read that book and I’ve read some of the Koran, and nothing in either of them has compelled me to do violence,” wrote Brand.

Except, of course, that there isn’t an entire movement of would-be murderers and murder-sympathizers who claim their authority from Salinger. There are millions of such would-be murderers and murder supporters around the globe who claim authority from the Koran.

Read more from this story HERE.

French Police Search for Man Who Stabbed Soldier

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Photo Credit: APFrench anti-terrorism investigators were searching Sunday for a man who stabbed a soldier in the throat in the commercial district of La Defense outside Paris.

The 23-year-old soldier, Cedric Cordier, was in uniform patrolling the busy underground corridors where shops and crowded public transport lines converge beneath the famous Arch of La Defense.

Saturday’s stabbing came days after a British soldier was hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight in a suspected terrorist attack that has raised fears of potential copycat strikes. However, there was no immediate confirmation of any link between the two attacks.

Read more from this story HERE.