"Clubbing SEALs" from NY POST:
Punch a terrorist -- head for the brig.
Welcome to America's thoroughly modern military.
The notion beggars the imagination, but three Navy SEALs who helped capture one of the most notorious terrorists in Iraq now face courts-martial -- because the terrorist acquired a bloody lip after the takedown.
Ahmed Hashim Abed organized the brutal 2004 attack on four US civilian contractors working as security guards in Fallujah. After murdering the guards, terrorists dragged their bodies through the city, burning and hanging two of them over the Euphrates Bridge.
AP
Nidal Malik Hasan
Fast forward to this past summer: Navy Petty Officers Matthew McCabe, Jonathan Keefe and Julio Huertas were part of a SEAL team that captured Abed.
Abed complained that he was punched on Sept. 1 during his initial detention. A fat, bloody lip was offered up as proof.
Imagine that.
Now McCabe is charged with assault, dereliction of duty and making a false statement; Keefe is charged with dereliction of duty and making a false statement; Huertas has the same charges as Keefe, plus one of impeding an investigation.
It's not hard to figure out what happened here: One SEAL slugged Abed -- no doubt for good reason -- and the other two wouldn't rat out their buddy to investigators who would've been better employed slugging Abed themselves.
And so the SEALs will be arraigned on Dec. 7 -- another reason for the date to live in infamy.
Ironically, if the three had treated Abed like Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq has routinely treated American soldiers it captures, his bloody, mutilated corpse would've turned up floating in a river.
(For the record, the number of US combat troops captured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been recovered alive is approximately zero.)
What is especially ironic, to say nothing of infuriating, about the SEALs' inquisition is that it underscores the utter lack of curiosity exhibited by the Pentagon in the matter of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army shrink and Islamist.
Hasan was allowed to remain in contact with troops despite a distressingly long record of incendiary public rhetoric -- and copious e-mail traffic with an associate of Osama bin Laden.
The FBI and Army were on to him, but lacked the courage to confront him.
The result: 13 Americans dead, and 29 wounded, at Fort Hood.
The truth, of course, is that falling afoul of the diversity police is a quick way to end an otherwise promising career -- and the Pentagon and FBI know it.
SEALs, on the other hand, are fair game. What a scandal.
Meanwhile, we wonder.
What happens the next time America needs SEALs -- and there aren't any?
Or, at least, there aren't any who meet traditional SEAL standards -- the warriors having been chased away by the pettifoggers.
Outlandish?
Don't bet money on it.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/clubbing_seals_HL7IoVVGqlZpvWCXQRWcDJ#ixzz0YBAvJKva
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