Replies to post #223480 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Bergdahl Was In Unit Known For Its Troubles

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ERIC SCHMITT JUNE 7, 2014


Bowe Bergdahl, left, in 2009. His former platoon mates gave sharply contradictory accounts
of how he viewed the war. Credit Sean Smith/The Guardian

[...]

His former platoon mates gave sharply contradictory accounts of how Sergeant Bergdahl viewed the war, and America’s proper role in it.

To many of those soldiers, Sergeant Bergdahl was viewed as standoffish or eccentric, smoking a pipe instead of spitting tobacco, as so many soldiers do, and reading voraciously when others napped or watched videos. But he was not isolated from his platoon mates, some said. And while he was, like other soldiers in the platoon, often disappointed or confused by their mission in Paktika, some of his peers also said that Sergeant Bergdahl seemed enthusiastic about fighting, particularly after the platoon was ambushed several weeks before his disappearance.

“He’d complain about not being able to go on the offensive, and being attacked and not being able to return fire,” said Gerald Sutton, who knew Sergeant Bergdahl from spending time together on their tiny outpost, Observation Post Mest Malak, near the village of Yahya Khel, about 50 miles west of the Pakistani border.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/us/us-soldier-bowe-bergdahl-case-highlights-a-unit-known-for-troubles.html?_r=0

much more .. thanks for the more context, in yours, for some of those bits Tapper and others are cherry-picking ..