Jean-Claude Trichet tells us the world faced a second Lehman crash in the days and hours before EU leaders launched their 720bn (£612bn) defence fund. If the European Central Bank's president is correct, we are in trouble. The EU-IMF package is already unraveling. What will the West do for its next trick?
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?
#1
Which office do these brave men go to to get their reputations back?
Step One: Walk into any businessmen's restaurant in Houston or Dallas.
Steo Two: Announce loudly that you are one of the SEALs who got prosecuted for being too mean to a terrorist
Step Three: Don't forget to duck when the job offers come at you like they were shot out of a friggin' cannon.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/16/2010 12:29 Comments ||
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#2
Nope, nope nope, They are sure to be back at their team in Damneck getting caught up with the boys and families. As for the folks that pushed and allowed the trial to go on??? The witch hunt will quietly remove them all from service...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
05/16/2010 12:31 Comments ||
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#3
...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.
#4
Sadly enough, the typical SEAL has the career life expectancy of a fruit fly, no matter what happens, peace or war.
This is why one tour with elite forces is very good for the promotion track, but two or three, tops, usually means the end of it. They peak at age 30 and it is downhill from there, at least as far as the personnel command is concerned.
That is why in wartime, their time is so valuable. Everybody else is just doing their job, but every moment elite forces are not on mission, they are being wasted.
These three, while acquitted, are back to the regular Navy, where office politics will probably matter more than their respectable reputations.
#5
I guess I don't get that. It takes some substantial effort and time to train a SEAL, and I just assumed they'd do several tours in the elite force. The Navy would want to get maximum return on its investment, after all. I don't get why a single tour is best.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/16/2010 15:26 Comments ||
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#6
me neither - I'd think 30-36 or so would be optimal physical skillz/smarts/decision-making time
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2010 15:29 Comments ||
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#7
Nope, nope, nope to all of you. Me -- I'll take 49 Pan's opinion.
#8
Difference between this case and Donovan's sad situation is that nobody thought these guys were guilty.
Some of the lefties claimed it, but they knew better.
No reputation problem here.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
05/16/2010 20:29 Comments ||
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#9
To Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland:
Resign and regain some honor, or be seen as the gutless BITCH that you have become.
#1
[T]he C.I.A. was too risk averse, too reliant on Pakistans spy service and seldom able to provide the military with timely information to protect American troops. Some officials say they believe that the C.I.A. is trying to scuttle the operation to protect its own turf, and that the spy agency has been embarrassed because the contractors are outperforming C.I.A. operatives.
Just doing the job the CIA will not do. /sarcasm
Anyone else now agree with me in my opinion over the last decade that the CIA is broken to the point where it must be demolished, most of the political managers fired, and the parts given to other agencies?
#5
No arguement OS. The issue I see and why they can never get away from contractors is they rotate their people ev ery three years,and recently they have sent guys back to lang schooland then into a different region, thus losing all contacts and relationships. It can take years to build the contacts and trust required to pull the high value missions off. The place needs an overhaul, sort of a "Goldwater act" for the clandestine services.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
05/16/2010 13:08 Comments ||
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If the number of Nobel laureates is any measure--Islam, 20% of the world's population, has produced 6, while the Jewish community, a tiny minority of 0.2%, has produced 165--intellectual curiosity is not a highly rated virtue in the Koran; "Islam" is a Syriac word meaning submission, which is the surrender of the mind to faith, i.e., the abdication of free conscience and independent thought to the teachings of the Prophet. Most so-called "educated" jihadists, those who see themselves as symbolic emissaries of Islam and are fully convinced of the rectitude of their cause, suffer from a cognitive disorder Thomas Aquinas called "invincible ignorance." The best (or worst) you can say of graduates of the madrasahs is that their knowledge of history and world affairs is roughly equivalent to that of an average American fourth-grader. In no other culture, society, or religion is the pursuit of knowledge viewed with such virulent contempt and ignorance of the world considered evidence of virtue.
So when we speak of "educated" jihadists we are referring to training and expertise in a specialized technical field or in one of the professions, like medicine. Practically all university-educated jihadists are engineers and technologists. In terms of general education, however, middle-class, university-educated jihadists like Mohammed Atta, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Jordanian double agent Mulal al-Balawi aren't much better off than ordinary graduates of the illiberal and benighted madrasah, i.e. they reason with the intellectual sophistication of superstitious children.
Yum. One doesn't waste an insult like that on just anyone.
Exposure to Western science and technology does not erase years of obscurantist religious indoctrination and conditioning. Like their fellow supplicants, they have been taught from early childhood to believe that the West, and Israel and America in particular, are their mortal enemies; and that Western Enlightenment values, and the temptations of Western popular culture, constitute a diabolical conspiracy to defile and undermine their religion.
Posted by: ed ||
05/16/2010 00:05 ||
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#1
Surely this down to the education system in countries like Saudi,Iran,Pakistan etc which must be reformed!
Posted by: Paul D ||
05/16/2010 4:43 Comments ||
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#2
Dont reform them. Leave them like they are.
The STUPID dont have survival skills and they get flushed soon enough.
"Good" Moslems= DUhhh. The average Jihadist couldnt funcion if he didnt buy his technology from us. And they will find it hard to conquer the world on the back of a camel.Right across the board Islamic Culture is garbage and junk. They havent had a good idea in 700 years. Leave 'em alone...dont even hand them a flashlight.
#3
Exposure to Western science and technology does not erase years of obscurantist religious indoctrination and conditioning.
It's worse than that. Exposure to Western science causes them to be filled with hatred. Any muslim scientist and engineer has to spend his time using the scientific method, even when the results contradict the Koran. The mental anguish drives them crazy.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
05/16/2010 11:41 Comments ||
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#4
The STUPID dont have survival skills and they get flushed soon enough.
But they're having babies at the ratio of 12:1 over the 'intellectual world'.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/16/2010 11:55 Comments ||
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#11
Thanks, Crazy Fool. I knew somebody here would know what I didn't. ;-)
As for the birth rate thingy, according to the CIA World Factbook, the highest fertility rate per woman of childbearing age, by country, has Somalia as the highest for Muslim countries at 6.52 children born/woman, Afghanistan at 5.60, Gaza Strip at 5.03, Saudi Arabia at 3.83, Pakistan at 3.43, the West Bank at 3.22, Egypt at 3.05, Iran at 1.71.
By comparison, Israel is reproducing at 2.75 offspring per woman of childbearing years, all of humanity is at 2.56, and the United States is at 2.05.
So for all the Arabs trumpet the masculinity of their menfolk by talking of nine children per, that hasn't been so for the generality for quite some time.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
