It wasn’t our white flag, but we may as well have been waving it.
A Taliban video released Wednesday shows the handover of POW Bowe Bergdahl — marking the moment when President Obama traded five bloodthirsty terrorists for a US soldier widely suspected of desertion.
The 17-minute propaganda piece shows a dazed-looking Bergdahl slumped in the back seat of a silver and red pickup truck, surrounded by heavily armed insurgents as they wait for US forces to arrive Saturday.
The Islamic fighters raise their fists in victory and chant, “Long live the holy warriors of Afghanistan! Long live the great holy warrior and the leader of the believers, Mullah Mohammed Omar!” when American aircraft appear overhead.
Army Sgt. Bergdahl, 28, gaunt and shorn of all hair on his head including his eyebrows, blinks repeatedly and rubs his eyes.
One militant prompts laughter from his cronies as he tells the captive: “Don’t come back to Afghanistan. Next time we catch you, you won’t leave here alive.”
The video then shows two aircraft circling around the handoff area in Khost province, near the Pakistan border, for about three minutes before a Black Hawk helicopter swoops down and lands.
In a tightly choreographed maneuver, three men get out of the chopper as two Taliban fighters — one grasping a stick with a white cloth attached, the other holding Bergdahl’s hand — walk the POW over.
The groups exchange handshakes, with one American special operator keeping a firm grip on what looks like a grenade in his right hand.
Another American runs his hand over Bergdahl’s back, escorting him to the chopper. The special-ops man grabs a bag Bergdahl was carrying and drops it to the ground, leaving it behind. He then frisks Bergdahl before they climb aboard the chopper.
The entire handoff takes place in one minute.
According to a UPI translation, one of the insurgents said of the Americans: “When they landed, I was expecting to have words with them, but the soldiers were in a hurry and were so nervous. We shook hands with only a few of them before they fled.
“They were in such a hurry they didn’t even let us shake hands with Bergdahl [to say goodbye]. It was very strange.”
As the chopper flies away, the audio cuts to a Taliban victory song and the misspelled words “Don’ come back to afghanistan” flash as a title on the screen.
The video then shows the hero’s welcome that greeted the freed Guantanamo Bay detainees — whom President Obama acknowledged on Tuesday could “absolutely” take up arms against America again — when they arrived in Qatar, where they and their families are supposed to spend the next year.
Meanwhile, Rob Williams, the US national intelligence officer for South Asia, warned the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that four of the freed thugs are expected to resume activities with the Taliban, The Associated Press reported.
In Bergdahl’s hometown of Hailey, Idaho, on Wednesday the owner of Zaney’s River Street coffee shop — where he worked as a barista — called the video “very hard to watch.”
On Tuesday, President Obama defended the unprecedented prisoner swap that freed Bergdahl after nearly five years in captivity, saying “We were concerned about Sgt. Bergdahl’s health.”
Obama also said: “The United States has always had a pretty sacred rule, and that is we don’t leave our men or women in uniform behind.”
Soldiers who served with Bergdahl have accused him of deserting his eastern Afghanistan outpost in 2009, and the military said Tuesday it would investigate his disappearance.
Full video below: