Did six soldiers lose their lives looking for Sgt. Bergdahl as the conservatives claim? Doesn't look like it.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Did the search for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl cost the lives of American soldiers? 

Since last weekend’s prisoner exchange in which Afghan insurgents turned over Sergeant Bergdahl after five years of captivity, a number of the men who served with him have called him a deserter. Some have gone further, blaming him for the deaths of six to eight soldiers. 

That second claim is hardening into a news media narrative. CNN has reported in scrolling headlines that six soldiers died looking for Sergeant Bergdahl after senior American military officials say he wandered off his base. The Daily Beast published an essay by a former member of Sergeant Bergdahl’s battalion, Nathan Bradley Bethea, who linked the search to the deaths of eight soldiers whom he named. “He has finally returned,” Mr. Bethea wrote. “Those men will never have the opportunity.”

However the Times examined the casualty reports and military logs from around that time, and things just don't add up.

Two soldiers died during the most intense period of the search after Sergeant Bergdahl’s June 30 disappearance. Both were inside an outpost that came under attack, not out patrolling and running checkpoints looking for him. The other six soldiers died in late August and early September.

It seems unlikely that any deaths that took place in late August or early September were from soldiers involved in an active search. Apparently the people making that claim are suggesting that the Taliban knew the soldiers were stretched thin and chose a vulnerable moment to strike, which seems to be more a matter of conjecture rather than the study of cold hard facts.

Let's face it the conservatives simply cannot allow the President to do ANYTHING good without attempting to turn it into something bad.

But what they are doing to this soldier, and to his family, may in fact may be a new low.

They even forced his home town to cancel his welcome home celebration. 

It seems in their overwhelming desire to undermine the Obama presidency there can be no innocent bystanders left uninjured, no line uncrossed, and no gutter in which they will not crawl, if there is any chance that by doing so they will injure the President.