As expected, Ft. Sam Houston Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl pleaded guilty today in a military court at Ft. Bragg North Carolina to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
As is common under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the terms of the plea bargain were not revealed, because Bergdahl will still stand for what is called a 'pre sentence trial' next week. After Col. Jeffrey Nance, the presiding officer of the court martial, determines Bergdahl's guilt or innocence and pronounces sentence, Bergdahl will be sentenced to the lesser of the two, Nance's sentence, and the plea agreement, if any, he reached with prosecutors.
Bergdahl, during an interview by a British filmmaker broadcast on ABC's 'Good Morning America,' said he decided to plead guilty, because Nance refused to throw out claims by President Trump, who said repeatedly on the campaign trail that Bergdahl is a 'no good traitor' who should be shot.
"We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs," Bergdahl said. "They got what they wanted. The people who are to the point of saying 'just shoot him!,' you can never convince those people to change their minds."
But observers agree that the most damaging decision for Bergdahl was Nance's ruling that three soldiers, two Army guardsmen and a Green Beret, could testify that they were wounded searching for Bergdahl after he abandoned his post at a forward operating base in Afghanistan in 2009.
Section three of Article 99 of the UCMJ, Misbehavior Before the Enemy, makes it a crime 'through disobedience, neglect, or intentional misconduct endanger the safety of any such command, unit, place or military property,' which is something Bergdahl clearly did when he abandoned his post.
Article 99 carries the possibility of the death penalty, but the specifications leveled against Bergdahl carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.