Just vile – “What if his platoon was long on psychos and short on leadership?”

That is not from a talking head pundit or other private sector apologist for the Obama Administration.  That was tweeted out by:

MeetBrandon Friedman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; he previously served as Director Online Communications at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is a veteran; he was as an infantry platoon leader and executive officer in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, completing combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2004.

Here’s the tweet:

Here's the thing about Bergdahl and the Jump-to-Conclusions mats: What if his platoon was long on psychopaths and short on leadership? (1/5)

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) June 5, 2014

From all reports, the White House decided to do this “Wag the Dog” of bringing back Bowe Bergdahl to get the VA Scandal off the stage.  I betcha there was a conversation like that going around in the West Wing;

Crap, why did Obama have to say the VA was going to be a big deal?

Easy – how many in the military trust us Progressives – throw them a bone.

But this keeps just getting bigger and bigger – and the sheeple don’t get it that they don’t get the Big Picture that we do!

Er, but its their Dad, their Brother, their Sister, their Mom that’s there at the VA.  Somebody died.

Hey, how many of them are gonna vote Dem anyways.  Oh, Oh, I got it!  Let’s bring back that guy, you know, that guy that did the walkabout to the Taliban!

GREAT idea – this will rival “GM is alive and Bin Laden is dead”!   We ended the war and brought back Bergdahl!  VA?  What VA?

…….

Crap, why did Obama have to stand next to the bearded blunder?…

Yup.  Once again, we see that Progressives have no idea how most of us out here in virtual fly-over country do appreciate our military – and we certainly do not appreciate it when folks we consider to be heroes are denigrated for paltry political purposes.  So the White House, by all accounts, has been shell-shocked that this went over like skunk at Granny’s B-day party on a boat in the middle of a lake.  Nor, as it seems, even with the former 101st officer nitwit Friedman, really understand the military outlook on this – Col. Ralph Peters (ret) said it well:

The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release — as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.

President Clinton summarizes what may well be the hole-in-the-head reason why the White House is reeling:

A lot of wonderful people love their country and hate the military.

So it seems, Obama and his minions thought that they’d throw a bone to the military (“look, we got one of your’s back for you – now love us”!) but never realized that:

1. The military really doesn’t trust him and have a mindset that he does hate them
2. The military realizes what these 5 Gitmo terror honchos will start doing again – and their Commander-in-Chief just let them walk which may well mean their buddies will start dying again (and Obama doesn’t care)
3. That bone was already rotten – and while Obama wants political loyalty, most of the military doesn’t work that way.

So, even though the reports that have been coming out (from those that were there, intelligence reports, some actual journalism) have started to all gel:

•  I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid…I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of U.S. soldier is just the lie of fools…I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting. (Big Peace)
•  He said he heard Afghans from a nearby village say: “There’s an American here looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban.” (NY Daily News)
• “Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war, and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him.”  (CNN)
• “He walked off,” Baggett told CNN. “He left his guard post. Nobody knows if he defected or he’s a traitor or he was kidnapped. What I do know is, he was there to protect us, and instead he decided to defer from America and go and do his own thing. I don’t know why he decided to do that, but we spent so much of our resources, and some of those resources were soldiers’ lives.” (CNN)
• should be court martialed as a deserter.  Mr. Full said. (NYT)
•  military teams monitoring radio communications intercepted radio chatter and telephonic communication which indicated that an American was searching for Taliban members who spoke English. ” (Mediate)
• To pull off the prisoner swap of five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House overrode an existing interagency process charged with debating the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners and dismissed long-standing Pentagon and intelligence community concerns based on Top Secret intelligence about the dangers of releasing the five men, sources familiar with the debate tell TIME. “This was out of the norm,” says one official familiar with the debate over the dangers of releasing the five Taliban officials. “There was never the conversation.” Obama’s move was an ultimate victory for those at the White House and the State Department who had previously argued the military should “suck it up and salute,” says the official familiar with the debate. (Time)
• Congress wasn’t told, breaking the NDAA clause that the President had to inform Congress if Gitmo terrorists were going to be let go (Redstate).  So Obama can’t trust Congress, even though they’ve been told about Bergdahl for a few years already without a whisper?
• but this interview makes clear that it is a very real possibility that Bergdahl not only deserted his post but was actively assisting the Taliban in their attacks on our troops immediately after he deserted. As his team leader Sgt. Buetow states, the accuracy of the attacks after Bergdahl disappeared could just be a coincidence, but on the other hand, it is also very suspicious (RedState)

…into a story that just sucks all the way around for National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s claim of “serving with honor and distinction”, the WH started to make claims of “Bergdahl’s getting swift boated“!  Well, that’s kinda hard to make stick – this is not about events that go back 45 years or so – this happened just 5 years ago.  But as I said here, for Progressives (and especially for Obama), politics is everything and is regarded as war by other means (and by any means that can be thrown).

Thus, let the demonization begin.  For nothing says “Civility from Sr. Government officials” like “they’re all psychopaths”.  Destroy the person destroys the message that can destroy the narrative – and the Narrative must be saved!  After all, THIS WAS ABOUT OBAMA’S MEANS TO A RESPONSIBLE END to the war.  To save the Narrative, the person must be destroyed.  And this Progressive Kool-aider, thinking that because he served as an officer (er, does this tweet mean that Obama get to redefine what a gentleman is, too?) in the 101st that he has special dispensation to whip out the political feces?  This has to have one wondering “gosh, what did he think of the troops under him“?  Heck, he’s got a bunch of employees under him now – do you wonder if they are wondering what he thinks about them?  Leadership, fer sure, dude!

Jim Geraghty (also the source of a lot of the above links) over at The Campaign Spot grabbed the first three (they are still there, plus two more):

So, if you can’t defend the actions of Bergdahl, just employ the tactics of personal destruction on folks whose only misfortune was to have served with Bergdahl.  No other reason – just make them so unattractive – just like Obama did to Romney and the Dems (and Establishment Rs have tried to do to the TEA Party).  Protect the President no matter the cost!  But I don’t think people are going to buy it.  We do appreciate our folks that serve – and being a double Blue Star Dad, if that was one of mine, I’d be looking for his office to tell him he’s out of bounds.  All he’s proven is that just because one is an officer by name and rank, you can still be a schmuck.

After all, if he’s willing to go this far to smear other veterans for mere political purposes, then he never was an officer in deed, was he?