Pentagon IDs Soldier Held by Taliban

Idahoan, 23, Captured in Afghanistan, Was Revealed in Video Released by Insurgents

(AP)  Last updated 2:32 p.m. ET.

A soldier from Idaho who disappeared from his base in Afghanistan has been captured, the Pentagon confirmed Sunday, a day after he was seen in a Taliban video posted online.

The Defense Department released the name of Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, who was serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment. The private was last seen walking away from his base near the border with Pakistan in an area known to be a Taliban stronghold.

Even before his name became public, two U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Associated Press that the man in the 28-minute video was the captured soldier. The video, in which Bergdahl said he was "scared I won't be able to go home," provided the first public glimpse of the missing American.

The Pentagon statement said Bergdahl's whereabouts became unknown on July 1 and his status was changed July 3 to missing-captured.

It wasn't clear who initially captured Bergdahl, but the U.S. command in Afghanistan said he was being held by the Taliban and condemned the video as a violation of international law.

"I'm glad to see he appears unharmed, but again, this is a Taliban propaganda video," spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker said. "They are exploiting the soldier in violation of international law."

Bob Bergdahl, the soldier's father, told The Associated Press Saturday that the family was requesting that media respect their privacy.

"We hope and pray for our son's safe return to his comrades and then to our family, and we appreciate all the support and expressions of sympathy shown to us by our family members, our friends and others across the nation," Bob Bergdahl said in a statement issued through the Department of Defense. "Thank you, and please continue to keep Bowe in your thoughts and prayers."

On the video, which was posted on a Web site pointed out by the Taliban, Bergdahl says he's from Hailey, Idaho, a town of about 7,000 people that lies 160 miles east of Boise. The Pentagon identified his hometown as Ketchum, which is about half the size of Hailey and about 12 miles north. His family says he grew up in Blaine County, closer to Hailey.

Before enlisting, Bergdahl worked as a barista at a coffee shop in Hailey, Zaney's River Street Coffee House, where a sign on the counter encouraged patrons to keep Bergdahl in their thoughts and prayers.

"Join all of us at Zaney's holding light for our friend Bowe Bergdahl. Bowe has been captured in Afghanistan," the handwritten sign said.

A similar message posted July 8 on the coffee shop's Facebook page suggests many in the small town have known for some time that Bergdahl was in danger.

Friends and former co-workers at the coffee shop declined to speak on the record Sunday to an AP reporter, saying they were abiding by the Bergdahl family's wishes for privacy.

One of the directors of the Sun Valley Ballet School in Ketchum said Bergdahl performed with the group for four or five years up to about 2008.

"He's athletic," Jill Brennan said. "He just had a knack for it. He's a wonderful young man."

In the video, Bergdahl had his head shaved and was seen with the start of a beard. He was sitting and dressed in a nondescript, gray outfit. Early in the video one captor held the soldier's dog tag up to the camera. His name and ID number were clearly visible. He was shown eating at one point and sitting cross-legged.

He said the date was July 14 and that he was captured when he lagged behind on a patrol. It's clear the video was made no earlier than July 14 because Bergdahl repeated an exaggerated Taliban claim about a Ukrainian helicopter that was shot down that day.

He was interviewed in English by his captors. He was asked his views on the war, which he called extremely hard; his desire to learn more about Islam; and the morale of American soldiers, which he said was low.

Asked how he was doing, the soldier said: "Well I'm scared, scared I won't be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner."

He later choked up when discussing his family and his hope to marry his girlfriend.

"I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America. And I miss them every day when I'm gone," he said.

He was prompted by his interrogators to give a message to the American people.

"To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it's like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home," he said. "Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home. It is America and American people who have that power."

Bergdahl is a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

On July 2, the U.S. military said an American soldier had disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts and was believed to have been taken prisoner.

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

But Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in eastern Paktika province near the border with Pakistan from an American base. The region is known to be Taliban-infested.

Afghans in contact with the Taliban told the AP that the soldier was held by a Taliban group led by a commander called Maulvi Sangin, who operates in the area where the American went missing. They said the fighters initially planned to smuggle the soldier across the border into Pakistan but ruled that out because of U.S. missile strikes and Pakistani bombing attacks against militant targets in the area. Instead, they decided to move him north into Taliban-controlled areas of Ghazni province.

The Afghans spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of arrest or reprisal. It was impossible to independently confirm their information.

A brigade commander for the Afghan national army in southeastern Afghanistan, Gen. Asrar Ahmad Khan, said Afghan and coalition forces have been working together for 15 days searching for the missing soldier.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the militants holding the soldier have not yet set any conditions for his release.

[Joe_NY_15]

by hungry1968-16 July 19, 2009 8:16 PM EDT

Bush killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Most were innocent.

Most of the innocent, were women and children.
________________________

Ignorant winner of the month......Bush didn't do any of the fighting, it was America as a whole that killed anyone (democrats and republicans)....not Bush himself, idiot......all of our precision guided weapons just became not-so precise ??.....dropping on women and weddings......Talk about comedy...this moron is worthy of her/his own show.

wow, your anti-americanism knows no limit.

[cpqdk07191969]

Can we all agree to make this a new rule for ALL candidates for political office?

If they are in favor of free trade THEY DO NOT GET ELECTED!!!

It's that simple.

Can we do that?

[cpqdk07191969]

by ibsteve2u July 20, 2009 12:19 AM EDT
Frankly, to me there is little difference between George Sr., Clinton, and George Jr.

They are all "free traders" and, essentially, "trickle-down" believers.

All played a massive role in pounding the stake into America's industrial heart.

lolll...perhaps - just perhaps, mind you - Clinton didn't foresee (or, more likely, was so entranced with the idea of helping the poor of other nations and being their hero that he became intentionally myopic) the offshoring of the service economy he promised us, too.

But the Bush boyz...they knew free trade and trickle-down economics would destroy the America we had.

=====================

And now Obama, KNOWING ALL THAT, is CONTINUING THE FANATICAL PUSH FOR FREE TRADE!!!!

And LOL on you're Clinton was "entranced" but the Bushes knew. ROTFLMAO!

Obama is now the fourth president to support free trade and continue destroying the working class.

Obama nation!

[marciabond]

In order to get Bergdahl released asap a member of the joint chiefs, a senator or any high ranking official should agree to change places with him. They got us into this mess over there and it would only be fitting for one of them to do this.

[Joe_NY_15]

LOL.....did you forget that America irresponsibly elected a totally unqualified community organizer as President ??

There will be nothing but a lot of talking.

[blitzder]

by Solarrays247 July 19, 2009 11:19 AM EDT
".....America owes these courageous men and women a debt of gratitude, and I am honored to be the commander in chief of the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world.
George W. Bush"


Yeah right???? So the US while having state of the art massive humongous weaponry on hand could not, after 8 miserable bloody years finish the job in Afghanistan and get out. The world laughs at the so called superpower that still struggles with a country which has only has a few hills and caves and mules to fight.

I guess dropping bombs on wedding parties and funerals is all they can do. Killing civilians is all that the US is good for.

[Joe_NY_15]

Check out this moron.....You call the Hindu-Kush Mountain range, some of the most remote regions on the planet, and you call it "a few hills and caves and mules to fight"

Don't make us laugh Eurotrash....you don't have a clue

[paddyhayes]

If the Mighty Dubya had kept his eye on the ball, blown through the Taliban to get at al Qaeda, destroyed the latter and captured bin Laden rather than contracting the coup-de-grace to the local warlords who screwed the pooch in Tora Bora, we'd have been done and out of Afghanistan long ago.

But no. Bush's handlers distracted him by convincing him to play Napoleon in a country that was of no threat to us. As a result, the job that needed to be done in Afghanistan was left undone.

Now we are in the same situation as the Russians. Trying to hold territory.

We'd have been done and out of Afghanistan years ago if our mission had been clear: Get bin Laden. Get out.

I am given to uproarious laughter every time this situation is laid on Obama's lap by the drooling, no-tooth-having mouth-breathers who venerated Dubya.

[santos1466]

Its against international law, to put him on TV? Not all Americans, are like that Dick C. and that crap he pulled. This soldier has a caring family, something most Americans have gone away from. We should call it the me generation. God Bless him and his family, my prayers are with them and all the men and women of this great nation and are Allies.

[santos1466]

I hope we help them get there crap together over there. And get are soldiers home save. I hope thy treat this soldier better than we treated some of their people at the camp.

[debinok1]

Bring all of our soldiers home. Call it a draw. Give them ALL, every M.E. power that exists, ONE warning. Any attack against the US in any way shape or form we will turn your sea of sand into a sea of glass. Leave them to their infighting and their tribal BS and be done with them.

[ibsteve2u]

lolll...I do believe I said that in 2001...September, it was.

But, you see, the wrong President...the wrong cabinet, the wrong Administration...was in office.

You can't get oil boyz to act like men when there is oil involved...any serious disruption of oil flow - sufficient to force the U.S. off of foreign oil - would disrupt the flow of wealth to them at the time it happened and forever more.

And compared to THAT money, in their eyes 4200 dead Americans is nothing.

[debinok1]

I said the same thing around the same time. No soldiers, no deployments, just wipe em off the map and call it good.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Wow...and you are upset about torture...you are talking about exterminating entire nations...genocide...wow.

[mnbrant]

Hmm the 2 seconds of video I saw of this showing him eating. He was not threatened in the video. This is unlike any other prisoner video I have seen or heard of. They probably will let him go after he converts to Islam and agrees to not attack the Taliban again which he probably will given the circumstances. I would do that if captured and would encourge him to do the same.

[Yeah-Me]

And if asked to fight against/attack his own people... Then what?

[ibsteve2u]

by Yeah-Me July 19, 2009 11:34 PM EDT: "And if asked to fight against/attack his own people... Then what?"

A much better question is: "What would you do?"

[cpqdk07191969]

by pythoncharley July 19, 2009 8:14 PM EDT
remember the invasions of defenseless innocent countries
-----------------------

INNOCENT?????

Saddam's Iraq was NOT innocent.

Even Bill Clinton said so:

"Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq.

?The international community had little doubt then, and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again. "

Speech from the Oval Office by President William Clinton, explaining his attack on Iraq
reported by The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 16, 1998

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/clintontext121698.htm

Bill Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998.


George W. Bush was the THIRD president in a row to attack Iraq - a FACT that the America-hating Bush bashers want us to forget.

[ibsteve2u]

Frankly, to me there is little difference between George Sr., Clinton, and George Jr.

They are all "free traders" and, essentially, "trickle-down" believers.

All played a massive role in pounding the stake into America's industrial heart.

lolll...perhaps - just perhaps, mind you - Clinton didn't foresee (or, more likely, was so entranced with the idea of helping the poor of other nations and being their hero that he became intentionally myopic) the offshoring of the service economy he promised us, too.

But the Bush boyz...they knew free trade and trickle-down economics would destroy the America we had.

Anybody who could see the warping of America's inequality curve - knew exactly what they were doing to America, and there is no way in hell a President of the United States was not exposed to those numbers.

[ibsteve2u]

lolll....I don't know that I care about Afghanistan or Iraq at all, anymore.

I am watching my nation being transformed into something less than it has ever been under the onslaught of 30 year of Republicans policies that put the wealth of the individual - of select individuals - before the good of my country and her people...

Surely that is pain enough.

[cpqdk07191969]

News flash - it is now OBAMA'S WATCH.

OBAMA IS TO BLAME.

Obama is the one who just handed $30 billion of OUR money to GM while it was in bankruptcy. Handing our money to a big greedy company.

Spare me the BS about "saving jobs." Obama and the Democrats are put the interests of the ultra wealthy first.

They are stealing from the people and stuffing it into the pockets of the rich.

The Democrats have become what they always said they hate.

[ibsteve2u]

by cpqdk07191969 July 19, 2009 11:04 PM EDT: "News flash - it is now OBAMA'S WATCH. OBAMA IS TO BLAME."

The sad thing about you guys is you think that massive systems like economies can be redirected like a railroad switch, without the willing cooperation of all of America's corporations and wealthy.

We had that cooperation at the start of World War II; ain't nothing like fear of losing everything to put things into perspective.

As it stands, however, the United States is suffering from 30 years - that is 30 YEARS, not just the back wounds that the shrub inflicted - of Republican policies.

It will take years to climb out of the hole...and I find it to be doubtful that we ever will.

You see, our corporations and wealthy elite can make more money exploiting offshore labor and markets than they can here.

And being focused on wealth, they'll let America die.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Isn't it funny how our economy was at the strongest it has ever been just before the dems took over congress? You all keep forgetting that even in today's economy it is still better than when Jimmy Carter left office.

[cpqdk07191969]

You all keep forgetting that even in today's economy it is still better than when Jimmy Carter left office.
===================
Exactly right! They all want us to forget that the Dow reached its all time high of 14,000 on Bush's watch.

Then when the GOP lost their majority in Congress, it's been all downhill since then.

[ibsteve2u]

Ahhh, the righties...so brave in their armchairs; so willing to sacrifice our people from the safety of their desks.

So unwilling to understand that tactics - to include prisoner treatment - are a game of one-upmanship which too often involves escalation.

The inevitable response to torture among those whose level of civilization does not preclude the use of torture is "You torture ours, we will torture yours worse.".

That is the response of an animal - and that is what the right and their moral leader - Cheney - are: Animals. They did our military a grave injury when they not only allowed but encouraged torture.

But I waste the minutes of my life expecting moral behavior from the right.

Good luck and Godspeed, soldier...

[cpqdk07191969]

Ahhh, the righties...so brave in their armchairs; so willing to sacrifice our people from the safety of their desks.
-----------------

You mean like Bill Clinton, who launched several airstrikes from his desk (including the one against suspected WMD sites in Iraq), while he himself has ZERO military service.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Come on...How is waterboarding one-upmanship toward beheading?! Get your head out.

[ontheleft]

Don't know why he bothered to eat their food. I would refuse all food and tell them to torture or kill me now. He's a goner.

[rjdeb]

"The video is in violation of international law" I bet when the taliban hears that, they're going to run scared! Since when does anyone other than the US abide by international law. Show me what Bin Laden, al qaeda, and whoever else was involved in 9/11 did falls within international law.

[stevex47]

We can only hope they rise to a level above boosh and cheney and not do to him, what we did to them.


how dare boosh cheney limbaugh put our soldiers into this terrible postition.

[hungry1968-16]

by tautomer July 19, 2009 8:05 PM EDT
Obama has managed to kill about 40 bad Muslims in his 6 month in office. Bush was able to kill around 35,000 bad Muslims in the same amount of time.







Bush killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Most were innocent.

Most of the innocent, were women and children.

[Yeah-Me]

I have a feeling tautomer doesn't feel that way... going by his previous comment, I believe he sees no difference... terrorist, man, woman, or child... they're al the same to him.
========
by tautomer July 19, 2009 8:05 PM EDT
"So why aren;t we getting our money;s worth in dead Muslims?"

[Yeah-Me]

tautomer... You're an ass...

[erasmus111]

I agree.

[tautomer]

He must have been a Democrat to have been so stupid as to go wandering away form his base into a war zone. I'll bet this guy voted for Obama!

[sojaded]

My thoughts and prayers are with this soldier, his family, and friends. I urge people of all political affiliations to please support our military personnel, regardless of your views about our leadership, past or present. This young man and his family need our love, support, and prayers and/or thoughts for a speedy and harmless release. These men and women in uniform deserve our respect and support.And I DO mean for all that have served, are serving, or will serve. I thank you, and soldier, I personally am praying for you.

[Yeah-Me]

I would say yeah...

Just because we don't agree with the reasons for why our legislators commited to these wars, or even why we are still there, we should at least be supporting our troops who are there.

They are the ones who are putting their lives on the line for our governments causes. And its these men and women who may not be coming home in one piece. So yeah, we owe them that, as well as their families. Our repsect and support.