As details about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl continue to trickle out, Glenn invited former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell to the radio program this morning to offer his insight into the controversial release. Luttrell discussed his own time in captivity and the ethos of the soldiers he served with as he questioned the Obama Administration's motives.
To begin, Glenn asked Luttrell if he would have been okay with the United States negotiating the release of himself in exchange for five high-level Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
“No, sir. Matter of fact, that's what most people have been asking me and talking to me about. That thought never even crossed my mind when I was out there and when the Taliban had me,” Luttrell explained. "They didn't have me for five years like they had him, but the thing that I held onto was that my teammates would come get me or I was going to die out there – not turn over some of the guys that were responsible for some of the worst atrocities that we've seen so far. So that one caught me off guard. I really wasn't expecting that.”
Luttrell was in captivity for five days, and his life was constantly threatened. He was surprised to learn Bergdahl was able to surviving being held for five years.
“The part that kind of caught me off guard, too, was the fact that they held him. They don't let them do that,” he said. “I mean the whole deal behind me was they wanted to cut my head off, and they were doing everything they could to try to get to me to kill me… There weren’t any sweet good-byes when I got out of there. It was an all-out gunfight.”
While Luttrell admitted he was been relatively out of the loop on the onslaught of news stories devoted to Bergdahl and his release, he has spoken to some of his friends in the military and no one seems to be pleased with the way everything has transpired.
“I am kind of out of the loop out here… so I haven't been able to really get up to speed on what's been going down other than the fact that I talked to a couple of my buddies who were over there,” Luttrell said. “A couple of guys that got killed actually trying to get that joker out of there, and they're not happy. I mean they're pretty upset with the whole fact that this went down the way it did.”
Much like Michelle Malkin said earlier in the program, Luttrell believes the Bergdahl release was orchestrated to divert attention away from the VA scandal.
“Look, I don't ever talk bad about the president. You know that you're not gonna get me to say anything ill about the office,” Luttrell said. “But I will say this: Good job on the politicians shucking off that VA scandal by doing the whole Bergdahl thing... even if it did backfire and releasing those guys is a bad move.”
According to Luttrell, the VA “is an incredible black hole,” and the only way to fix the colossal bureaucratic mess is to “shut it down and rebuild.”
“Let me tell you something. There was a reason why they put popcorn machines and coffee shops in the front of the VA – in the lobby – and that's to mask the smell of death and feces and stuff like that,” Luttrell concluded. “There’s good doctors in there. There is. And there's people busting their butts and trying to… get these guys what they need. But it's not enough of 'em… I avoid that place like the plague.”
