Clueless, meet clueless

Well Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is back in the arms of his loving family, al-hamdu lillah! (“Praise Allah”)

Or at least he will be when he’s released from a military hospital in Germany. That is if he hasn’t been arrested by then.

But that’s not likely after his parents were guests of President Obama in an eerie Rose Garden ceremony which saw his father Bob sporting a Taliban-like beard and spouting phrases in Arabic and Pashto.

This of course was red meat to those who think Bergdahl is a deserter at best, a traitor at worst.

The fact is, we don’t know. There are a lot of different stories floating around about how Bergdahl became a captive of the Taliban five years ago, and how he was treated while in captivity.

We know the Taliban got back five of their toughest, smartest leaders and we got… somebody who was never meant to be a soldier and a legacy of trouble that is going to haunt us for a long time to come.

The story that seems to be outlasting the others is that Bergdahl simply walked off his post, without his arms or his gear.

That looks like desertion but not defection. A defector would take his arms and as many more as he could carry as a gesture of good faith.

Specialist Jason Fry, a friend or friendly acquaintance of Bergdahl’s, said Bergdahl told him prior to deployment in Afghanistan, “If this deployment is lame, I’m just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan.”

So many images are going through my head.

Right now it’s that scene from “Private Benjamin” (1980) in which Goldie Hawn tells an officer, “I think I’m in the wrong Army, I joined the one with the condominiums.”

But back to the Rose Garden.

President Obama announced the swap, Bergdahl for the Gitmo Five. This was apparently against a law which requires notifying congress before any such swap.

You’d think this would be cause for great glee among people who like to pounce on every instance of Obama ignoring the law, and it has. But there are also conservatives pointing out the law is a possibly unconstitutional restraint of presidential power.

Obama has said a couple of things about it, some contradictory, but we’ll settle for Bergdahl’s deteriorating health and his stout defense that whatever the circumstances we get our boys back and deal with whatever they may or may not have done later.

Admirable, except it gets really weird. As little as we know for sure about Bergdahl, his capture and captivity, the administration seems even more clueless.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice said Bergdahl was captured while on patrol and “served with distinction and honor.”

No and no.

One thing for sure is that pretty much everyone who served with Bergdahl flat despises him. Many were made to sign non-disclosure agreements which some are now ignoring. And when was the last time you heard of soldiers who did not have high-level security clearances having to sign non-disclosure agreements?

Yet Obama’s Housing and Urban Development flack Brandon Friedman said they’re the psychopaths!

Some sources have it that as many as eight men died hunting for him. Some even say attacks on American soldiers were suspiciously well-prepared after Bergdahl walked off.

Well, maybe so maybe not. Afghanistan is a dangerous place and soldiers get killed there more often than we’d like. And perhaps Taliban leaders were smart enough to figure Bergdahl’s comrades would come looking for him and laid plans accordingly.

And maybe a flakey hippie-soldier who regards enlistment as conditional on his approval of the Army is an easy target for interrogation.

But what’s really weird is why the heck did Obama stage that group-hug in the Rose Garden?

Did nobody think to vet father Bob about what he was going to say? Did nobody anticipate this was going to blow up in Obama’s face?

And does anybody think it hasn’t occurred to the Taliban that all they need to do to get more of their guys back is snatch some more Americans?

Clueless, meet Clueless.