For SEALs' heroic acts, they face court-martial

Matthew McCabe, Julyo Huertas and Jonathan Keefe will not be having a merry Christmas or a happy New Year. The three men are members of the elite Navy SEALs. McCabe and Huertas will go before a court-martial next month. Keefe, who has yet to be arraigned, is expected to face military justice soon after.

Their crimes? Though the government has not made details of the case against the SEALs public, McCabe is charged with assaulting a terrorist detainee, which his attorney characterizes as a single punch to the stomach. Huertas and Keefe stand accused along with McCabe of trying to cover up the incident. If found guilty, they could end up behind bars, their careers at an end.

The detainee who alleges McCabe struck him is Ahmed Hashim Abed. You may not recognize his name, but you will probably remember his handiwork in Iraq.

Abed is believed to have led the ambush of a convoy in Fallujah in 2004. Insurgents pulled four Americans — including a former SEAL — working as private military contractors from their vehicles, beat them to death, burned and mutilated their bodies and hung the corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Since then, Abed has been considered a high-value target by the United States. On Sept. 10, a platoon from SEAL Team 10 finally captured him in a nighttime raid. At some point during the dangerous operation and an exchange of custody with Iraqi officials, the Terror of Fallujah claims he was treated indelicately.

Now, instead of receiving medals for risking their lives to apprehend the murderer of American citizens, these three brave commandos will go on trial. Does this make any sense?

Let's assume for the moment that Abed is telling the truth, that he is not simply following an al-Qaida training manual's well-known instructions for detainees to "insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them" and "complain of mistreatment." Abed isn't even claiming he was waterboarded. This is war, for heaven's sake, not a debutante ball.

The irony is that if the SEALs had killed Abed in the operation as SEAL snipers did when they shot three Somali pirates last spring, they'd be recognized as the heroes that they are. But because Abed is alive, he's able to exploit a foolhardy effort to turn the war against brutal terrorists into a white glove legal operation.