Guest post by Kristinn Taylor

An Obama administration official floated the idea Wednesday that Bowe Bergdahl was justified in deserting his platoon in Afghanistan and joining the Taliban over disagreements with the platoon’s “psychopath” leadership.

Here’s the thing about Bergdahl and the Jump-to-Conclusions mats: What if his platoon was long on psychopaths and short on leadership? (1/5) — Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) June 5, 2014

Brandon Friedman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the Department of Housing and Urban Development posted a series of tweets Wednesday evening.

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Friedman speculated that Bergdahl deserted over bad leadership of his platoon and that is why his fellow soldiers were smearing him.



Here are his tweets defending deserter Bergdahl:

Here’s the thing about Bergdahl and the Jump-to-Conclusions mats: What if his platoon was long on psychopaths and short on leadership? (1/5)

What if he grew disillusioned with what he saw, didn’t trust his leadership, and walked off? Legal? No. Worthy of sympathy? Maybe. (2/5)

If that were the case, the soldiers in his platoon would have all the more reason to smear him publicly now. (3/5)

Given other examples, it’s not out of the realm of possibility–and more reason to withhold judgment until after an investigation. (4/5)

I’m not a fan of such speculation, but this story could not be more unbalanced–with so many premature calls of “traitor.” (5/5)

Friedman’s Wikipedia page says he is a decorated war veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and a veteran of the Democratic Party front group VoteVets. He joined the Obama administration in 2009 at the Veterans Administration. Left in 2012 and rejoined the administration at HUD in 2014