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Where do defamed SEALS go to get their reputations back?
Ray Donovan, who served as Ronald Reagan's labor secretary, was indicted on 10 counts of corruption in 1984. That was the beginning of a three-year ordeal, culminating in a nine-month trial that was largely superfluous. A good portion of the American media and public had already rendered a presumptive guilty verdict. A jury of 12 of Donovan's peers who actually heard the evidence against him thought otherwise. They unanimously acquitted him on all counts. Should this indictment have ever been brought?' Donovan asked after his exoneration. Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?' Three Navy SEALs who faced courts-martial for allegedly abusing a terrorist and covering up the incident should be asking these questions. Last week, a military jury delivered the same verdict for Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe that two previous juries had given Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas and Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe not guilty. The charges against the three elite SEALs stemmed from the apprehension of Ahmed Hashim Abed in a daring nighttime raid in Iraq last September. Abed is believed to have led the ambush of a convoy in Fallujah in 2004, during which insurgents pulled four American military contractors one a former SEAL from their vehicles, brutally beat them to death, mutilated their bodies and hung the corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River. McCabe was charged for if you have a delicate constitution, stop reading here striking Abed once in the midsection while he was in the SEALs' custody. Huertas and Keefe were charged with dereliction of duty for failing to prevent the alleged abuse and impeding the investigation into it. In the civilian world, these charges don't sound like much. In the world of the SEALs, they lead to dead-end careers. That was implicit in the offer from military brass scared stiff by the Obama administration's political correctness: acknowledge guilt and accept ruinous administrative punishment, or take your chances with a court-martial and end up in the brig. The SEALs, men of honor, chose to defend their names and try to continue serving the nation in the Special Operations Forces. The cases against McCabe, Huertas and Keefe were largely based on the assertions of one eyewitness who gave conflicting statements and Abed himself, who as an al-Qaida operative would have been trained to exploit the justice system and the media with claims of abuse. Numerous other witnesses contradicted those assertions. Should these indictments have ever been brought? I allowed these charges to go forward because I truly believe that the best process known for uncovering the truth, when the facts are contested, is that process which is found in our adversarial justice system,' read a statement from Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland, Commander of Special Operations for U.S. Central Command, after McCabe's acquittal. Cleveland is a decorated soldier. But those are the words of an officer who has been cowed into submission by civilian leaders intent on turning the war on terror into a legal briefing, who have given greater priority to Mirandizing terrorists than gleaning valuable intelligence from them, who believe Abu Ghraib is the rule rather than the exception and for whom the presumption of innocence prevails for those who want to destroy this nation while, as the late John Murtha infamously observed, those who gallantly defend it are assumed to be cold-blooded killers. McCabe, Huertas and Keefe have been acquitted. But instead of earning distinction for capturing a terrorist who butchered four Americans, they will forever be known as the three SEALs who faced courts-martial for beating a detainee and lying to cover it up. Which office do these brave men go to to get their reputations back? Posted by: ryuge 2010-05-16 |
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