The picture painted by right wing media and former squad members of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is that of a man who willingly fled his post to join the other side.
If that’s the case, why would he try to escape from his captors?
During an interview with The Daily Beast conducted in 2011, members of the Taliban say that Bergdahl once tried to escape by jumping out of a window.
One night in late August or early September, 25-year-old Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, jumped from a first-floor window of the mud-brick house in Pakistan in which he had been imprisoned and headed into the nearby underbrush and forested mountains, according to three reliable militant sources who got the story from fighters who were present during the prisoner’s attempted escape. They spoke exclusively to the Daily Beast. [...]
Mullah Sangin and his brother Mullah Balal, who had been put in charge of the prisoner, organized a search as soon as the escape was discovered. Nevertheless, the sources say, Bergdahl successfully avoided capture for three days and two nights. The searchers finally found him, weak, exhausted, and nearly naked—he had spent three days without food or water—hiding in a shallow trench he had dug with his own hands and covered with leaves.
According to the militiamen interviewed by The Daily Beast in 2011, Bergdahl put up a fight when they found him after multiple days of searching and it took more than the two of them to subdue him. They also took extensive measures to evade the prying eyes of U.S. intelligence.
The doesn’t sound like the man his former squad mates and Fox News have described in recent days.
Perhaps Bergdahl’s squad mates should face the same level of scrutiny that he is facing.