VA Scandal

Real Music - welcome to a2k!

Finally;

Does this mean General Shinseki didn't have the authority to fire VA executives?

Wow, and they're holding him 'responsible' for the mess? You tie any administrators hands with such idiocy, and you'll find incompetence protected.
Then blame the director who had no real power. Dumb and dumber.

WATCH: Fox’s Shepherd Smith contradicts network ‘yakety yak’ on
Fox’s Shepherd Smith contradicts network ‘yakety yak’ on Bergdahl
By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 18:33 EDT



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/04/watch-foxs-shepherd-smith-contradicts-network-yakety-yak-on-bergdahl/

Bergdahl
By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 18:33 EDT
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Shep Smith on Bergdahl case [YouTube]

Fox News host Shepherd Smith provided a counterpoint to his own network’s coverage of the release of American POW Bowe Bergdahl, in footage posted by Media Matters on Wednesday.

“If you desert or commit treason, you have to be proved to have done so,” Smith said on his show on Tuesday. “We can’t just decide because some people come on television and yakety yak, and we’ve got a report of this and a report of that and that’s what happened. As the Army said, as the Pentagon said, you bring them home. You bring them home first, and then you investigate.”

The video shows that while several of his colleagues were quick to label Bergdahl — who was released by the Taliban this past Saturday as part of an agreement with the U.S. — as a “deserter,” Smith called for a more thorough look into his five-year imprisonment.

If Bergdahl really did learn to speak the pashto language and became disillusioned with the U.S. war against Afghanistan, Smith said, he would not have been alone, arguing that he is still an American soldier “until otherwise proven so.”

“An investigation has to happen,” Smith said. “I’m kind of disgusted by all these people who want to pre-judge, one way or another, what happened here.”

Watch the contrast in the coverage of Bergdahl’s case, as posted by Media Matters, below.

KHOU 11 News
19 mins ·
The family of an 80-year old Navy vet with dementia is furious after he was discharged from the VA hospital in the middle of the night without anyone being notified. He was missing for more than 18-hours. Find out who finally got him home, tonight at 10!

Sort of the wrong thread, but, wonder how much longer that will last on Fox News?

That is very shameful. My mother was on 67 when she died on Alzheimer's luckily my dad hardly left her side, but I just couldn't imagine what we would have done had the same been done to her. Who did get him home?

Why are you mad at Foxnews for reporting first hand accounts of Bergdahl and his desertion.

When did I say I was mad? Went back and read my post, I messed up a lot this morning, must have been still sleepy, anyway, I should have said "wonder how long Shepherd Smith will last on Fox news?"

His family found him, after 18 hours of searching.

Well this just points out that Fox isn't the monolithic entity you believe it to be.

In any case, we can inspect every second of Bergdahl's five years captivity without getting a clue about if or why he deserted.

Smith is engaging in 'yakety yak.' The importance of why he learned to speak his captors' language or converted to Islam towards the end of his captivity is relevant only to whether or not he was a collaborator, not a deserter. I've not heard anyone on Fox declare Bergdahl a collaborator and I seriously doubt Smith has either.

The only person on Fox that I've heard reference "pashto" is O'Reilly and he doesn't say Bergdahl was a collaborator. In fact he's been as outright in saying he wasn't a collaborator as he has been in saying he was a deserter.

Maybe Smith personally dislikes O'Reilly. I wouldn't be surprised, he's very often a dislikeable guy, but referencing "all these people" makes for a 'yakety yak' argument. If they make you so sick Shepherd, name them.

In any case, Smith's comment is not a counter-point to the Fox coverage. There are voices on Fox who are making different arguments than O'Reilly and Hannity, and it's not just Smith. There is at least as much divergence of opinion expressed on Fox as there is on NBC, CBS, and ABC, and a lot more than MSNBC.

I'm tired of "all these people" who criticize Fox based on what they are told rather than what they have seen, and watching O'Reilly and Hannity is not watching Fox.

Good. That's very fortunate. Many of these elopements end much more sadly.

It was still about a vet (a fellow vet) so I posted it.

Remember they are civil servants and are very hard to fire no matter how incompetent they are. I had a friend who was a civilian working for the army with several civilians working under him. He had two who consistantly came in late and left early and did nothing while they were there and he couldent do a damn thing about them. They were still there taking up space when he retired.

it is not possible to fix this problem because the parties have proven that they are willing to politicize everything that they can, even the courts. Without strong protections there would be purges every time the White House changed party hands. Allowing this political warfare that takes place in Washington comes a huge costs to the nation. We the citizens have only ourselves to blame.

Must have been a nightmare. I hope the VA hospital where that took place gets reported.

Because your speculating on an alleged desertion is unseemly? How about waiting for charges at least? Fox has no standing to be indicting anyone.

How about this?

Soldier Attacking Bowe Bergdahl Left Army with ‘Other Than Honorable’ Discharge

Posted by: Bob Cull in Noteworthy News June 6, 2014

Joshua Korder, who once served in the same unit as Bowe Bergdahl — and who made the false claim in an interview on CNN that at least six good men had died searching for Bergdahl – is not the squeaky clean all-American soldier that he presented himself to be. It turns out that Korder has some skeletons in his own closet as well.

It turns out, Korder was recently discharged under “other than honorable” conditions.

There are many reasons that one might receive such a discharge and it’s not the same as a “dishonorable discharge” — which is reserved for the most serious violations of conduct and military law — however, it does indicate that the recipient was no longer welcome in the military and would not be accepted if he or she wished to re-enlist.

With this new information is more damning evidence against Korder, who has already been shown to be a liar when he made his false accusations that Bergdahl was responsible for the deaths of six soldiers who were looking for him.

The army has said that no patrol was sent out for the specific purpose of finding Bergdahl, but that the regular patrols that would have gone out (whether there was a missing man or not) were told to keep an eye out for him as they went about their duties. In other words, those soldiers died on routine patrols in an area that is known to be a hotbed of Taliban activity.

On Monday Korder told CNN’s”The Lead with Jake Tapper”:
“He is at best a deserter, and at worst a traitor…Any of us would have died for him while he was with us, and then for him to just leave us like that, it was a very big betrayal…I don’t think that I could have continued to go on without being able to share with you and … the people the true things that happened in this situation. Because if you guys aren’t made aware of it, it will just go on, and he’ll be a hero, and nobody will be able to know the truth.”

In an apparent attempt to make himself seem more selfless, Korder admitted that speaking to the press could cause him more problems with the Army since he and the other members of his unit had signed non-disclosure agreements vowing not to speak of Bergdahl’s disappearance.

that the army had them sign non disclosure statements on this matter should piss you the hell off.

We should probably reserve comments on the Bergdahl/Taliban Exchange to threads specifically dedicated to the topic. The Administration has done a very effective job of diverting public attention away from the VA Scandal, but its not appropriate that we do the same with a thread in this forum.

Why? Because statecraft was going on behind the scenes and loose lips could have gotten someone killed. In the service I was ordered to do all sorts of things that violated my rights. Probably because when I enlisted I signed a waiver of my Bill of Rights and put myself under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. What would any contribution to scuttlebutt have done to have made the situation better?