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One man's villain can be the same man's hero five minutes later, especially if that man is a woman. Our friend and contributor Marion DS Dreyfus has somehow succeeded in knitting the above bipolar vision into a consistent argument.

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Think about it a minute. We flock to the "Mission Impossible" flicks, to James Bond actioners, eagerly glug down the research-and-fact-based novels of Tom Clancy.

Yet when we come across a potential real-live potential agent, we go all dumb and credulous.

What better cover could the military have devised than a maverick loose cannon who gets tossed from the Coast Guard (who gets ejected from the Coast Guard?!), joins an FOB base in Afghanistan, one of the hottest of the flashpoints in the flaming Middle East, and just…wanders away from his platoon one day, flaking out enough to take a supply of water, a map and some stuff to tide him over before he hooks up with, oh yeah, the Taliban his guys have hitherto been hunting and shedding from their rocky tents and frantic fanaticism?

This dingbat paradigm has been studying the local tongues, no easy task, Pashto and Dari, for a year and some. That's no accident. He cleverly set up the people back home by maligning the US, the country that has bred and reared him.

He's on record, even on Twitter, saying obnoxious things about the States. So far, so evil.
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Just to make things perfectly clear, he jettisons his military gear, after asking his commanding officer if that is the advisable tack to take if he decides to…leave for any reason. He considerately leaves a note pinned to his cot saying he's going bye-bye.

So this paragon of deviousness and maybe clueless wanderlust gets himself "found" by the very guys he has been seeking.

Now he's in their clutches, and to make it seem authentic, he lets these wild Afghan tribalists rough him up a while; he knows that, and is prepared for it. But time passes, and he's part of their crowd, does target practice and soccer with the gang. He's not really unhappy, though he knows his guys must have sent out search parties to get him back. He's gone native, beard and all.

Everything he's done for the past five or six years would convince the suspicious thugs in the Talib crew that here is a real deserter, a guy who hates the US, who ditched his platoon, who learned their language, who seems to have sought them out when he had the magic passport that would have clothed and fed him forever, so long as he is not IED'ed or friendly-fired to Allah somewhere.

What better way to implant, imbed a smart mole to send back intel and hang with the enemy?

Maybe his useful transmission was at an end; Susan Rice was pressing for, they tell us, two years or more to exfiltrate this guy. Certainly, the commander in chief has done less than nothing to rescue or bring back PTSD-sufferer Andrew T from his Mexican shackles for no reason other than a missed road turnoff and a few registered firearms in his vehicle. Nada, zip, zilcho.

It is also not unusual to infer that for obvious reasons, neither the intelligence community nor the unintelligence community (those in the White House at present) would be extremely reticent about sharing what this defector cum collaborator (possibly) was really doing out in the Afghan boonies with his unwashed non-platoon-mates.

Wouldn't it be well within the realm of likelihood that this entire incident was carefully scripted by the feckless Administration or some CIA honcho to get one pair of eyes and ears up in the ranks of the Taliban?

Even his military mates, ex-, bolstered the story unwittingly by reporting that he was flaky, had abruptly left them, had not been a part of the base command in any solid way. All incidentally supporting the cover ID of this guy who has been privy to the strategy, conversations, plans and mission movement of the baddest of the Afghan bad.

What about escape attempts? Sure. He made a few token efforts to escape, to solidify his persona as mindful or regretful US military. They were half-hearted attempts, and he knew he would be recaptured and brought back to the camp of ongoing info and intel.

So the irony is: This may have been the first time Susan Rice, BObama and his flunkies—eyes front, Jay Carney!—actually told the truth. We are so used to disbelieving anything uttered by anyone in the present regime that we automatically dismiss everything they say.

And how about that lengthy debriefing/rehab they're draping him with over in Germany? And the fact that he hasn't yet even made contact with his evidently loopy bearded second coming of ZZZTop pops?

There's more here than meets the eye, or the ink, of the fuddled media. And maybe the Talibs were close to blowing his cover, so they indeed might have been close to decapitating or scimitaring him?

Even, mirabile dictu, the once and future truth with reference to this other Bo-zo.

Hey. It's not even that far-fetched.

But wait!

Maybe, then, he really did "serve with honor and distinction," putting himself at risk every day, should they have woken up and busted his cover. There's another way this could have gone:

Another scenario, one virtually no one has yet presented but us, is that Bo became a waiter in Taliban-land, and served lamb chops and sorghum, or whatever other feculent stuff they ate there, managing to add a dash of elegance to their yurts and berm-buried hovels and wind-tossed animal-skin shelters. Every restaurant wants serving people with a dash of the exotic, no? And here they have an expensive piece of real estate, a costly avant-guard waiter who can deliver the baaaah'd goods and cattle-hock slop soup with a touch of the snootiness and hauteur preferred by upscale customers.

A good waiter, hey, in the mountains of Afghanistan? Not ever to be sneezed at. He was worth his weight in peppercorns and turmeric.

No wonder they kept him around.

And again, Susan Asian Carbohydrate now has to be re-evaluated.

Turns out she was right. He DID serve with distinction. He never spilled a drop. Never upchucked at table with the comestibles he had to set down on the dinner rock of mealtime. Never turned his nose up and sniffily recommended the diners go elsewhere, should the bill of fare not please their poufy palates--Pakistan Palace, only 1,000 kilometers away, for the Boeuf Bourguignon.

Why wouldn't this scenario make more sense, given our massive immersion in spycraft, spy video, Google Earth, and all the paraphernalia of derring-do by Daniel Craig et al., than the present 100% across-the-board mockery and derision of the man captive five years with the mountain men of Afghanistan?

Back in the States, he can now show ethnic cafes and fanatic food foray farms how to serve up their real-slow food fare with panache and riveting authenticity, whisking his arm-towelette with the flourish of the very best.

marion d s dreyfus - June 20©14

Ohhhh, I thought I heard Rice say "serviced with distinction." The goat disguise made sense then ... not so much now.

I wonder what is on the menu...

Fermented grape juice- no pork
Leninade- no pork
I cannot believe it's not pork butter spread- no pork
Spam- no pork
Canned tuna- no pork
Canned cream of mushroom- no pork
Canned bacon and beans- no pork
Vegeburgers- no pork
Ratatouille- no pork
Rats on the Kabob- no pork
Manwich- no pork
Pork- no pork
Flame American- no pork
Evergreen pine needles- no pork

Sorry no Hebrew national hotdogs since it comes from the infidels.

Am I missing anything?

Comrades,

I might be convinced that Birddog is really a mole - but for one minor detail. The Taliban are our moles in the Middle East! But leaving that aside, don't forget the push for a higher minimum wage - Birddog may actually be a double mole sent by the waiter's union.

Hammer and Loupe wrote:I wonder what is on the menu...

Fermented grape juice- no pork
Leninade- no pork
I cannot believe it's not pork butter spread- no pork
Spam- no pork
Canned tuna- no pork
Canned cream of mushroom- no pork
Canned bacon and beans- no pork
Vegeburgers- no pork
Ratatouille- no pork
Rats on the Kabob- no pork
Manwich- no pork
Pork- no pork
Flame American- no pork
Evergreen pine needles- no pork

Sorry no Hebrew national hotdogs since it comes from the infidels.

Am I missing anything?

Hmmm... all you can eat Falafel-no pork?

The main problem with the Mole Theory is that it would not be playing fair to the Taliban. His Obamaness has been adamant about playing fair, observing the social niceties with folks like the Talibs and ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is imperative to the administration to establish good relations with these inheritors of the Caliphate and to avoid hurting their feelings. He's not going to risk getting crossed off their Ramadan Card list by doing something so gauche as inserting a mole in their midst.

Anyer Marx wrote:Ohhhh, I thought I heard Rice say "serviced with distinction." The goat disguise made sense then ... not so much now.

bergdah-goat.jpg

Bring out the gimp?