Navy SEAL Found Not Guilty

The first of three Navy SEALs to face a courts martial, Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas, was cleared of all charges by a military jury early Thursday. The court martial began Wednesday for two of the three Navy SEALs accused of mistreating Abed, mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah in 2004.

"It's a big weight off my shoulders," Huertas told NBCChicago.com as he left the courtroom. Hertas said he plans to continue his military carreer and is going home to “kiss my wife.”

Defense lawyers in the Baghdad court martial of two Navy SEALS accused of mistreating Ahmed Hashim Abed presented evidence calling into question whether the Iraqi suffered any injuries, according to news reports from the trial.

Military medics who examined Abed after the encounter testified that it did not look as if he had been beaten. And defense lawyers showed jurors photos of Abed after the time he said he was beaten with a visible cut inside his lip, but no obvious signs of bruising or other injuries, according to the Associated Press.

Abed testified earlier that after he was captured from his home early last September, he was placed in a chair with his hands bound behind him and blindfolded. Abed said he was then struck from behind so hard that he fell to his knees, and then was struck again in the stomach, according to AP reports.

"It was very powerful. It was so hard I fell down again on my face because my hands were behind my back," he said, speaking Arabic through an interpreter, AP reported.

"Once I was down they put their foot in my shoulder; I started saying 'please, please' -- these were the only words that I knew."

One witness testified he saw Abed being abused. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Kevin DeMartino testified that he saw Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe punch the prisoner, and that Keefe and Huertas were in the holding room, CNN reported.

But most of the other witnesses failed to collaborate that testimony. Of the 11 witnesses who testified -- half of whom are special forces or intelligence officers -- only one said he saw evidence of an assault, AP reported.

As HUMAN EVENTS has reported, terrorists are trained to fake injury when in captivity. Chapter 18 of the Al Qaeda training manual, released by the U.S. Justice Department, said that members are directed to complain of torture and mistreatment.

Keefe and Huertas face charges of dereliction of duty by failing to safeguard Abed from abuse. Huertas is also facing a charge that he influenced the testimony of another sailor involved in the capture of Abed. A verdict is expected as early as Thursday.

HUMAN EVENTS along with several Republican Congressmen have stood in defense of Navy SEALS McCabe, Keefe, and Huertas garnering over 130,000 signatures in a petition to dismiss the charges.

“I’m confident that these men are innocent,” Scott Taylor, a former Navy SEAL and Republican congressional candidate in Virginia's 2nd District, said on “Fox and Friends.” “It sends a horrible message to our troops as well as our enemies that all they have to do is accuse folks of beating them and you’ll have three of our top warriors taken off the battle field.”

“SEALs are highly trained professional warriors, and they operate in very ambiguous situations and again you can’t have politics infused there at the battlefield level,” said Taylor.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe is the only SEAL charged with assault in the case. McCabe will testify on behalf of Keefe and Huertas in the Baghdad court martial. McCabe’s trail is May 3rd in Norfolk, Va.

Get the hell out of the military.

It's over. American society is so removed from reality, the people and politics so full of ideology, everything is politicized to the point that they will hang and eat their own for essentially nothing, imaginary issues based on contemporary good sounding ideas not rooted in much other than feelings. We have a “Commander of Chiefs” (As he called it on the campaign trail), worried about gay rights in the DoD, not whether we win wars, or those who fight them. He'd never say a word about our SEALS and their trail, but he did send a message loaded with niceties to Iran. The American soldier is led by people who have little understanding or regard for what they do. Much of the chain of command is no longer apolitical as use to be the case. Today the Wesley Clarks, the Shinseki’s are politically aligned and rewarded after they depart the DoD for having toed the party line while still in uniform. The senior brass knows exactly which way the wind is blowing, and they play along. Many politicians just pay lip service to the soldier because they know they can't bad mouth them as was the case years past. With cut's on FCS, missile defense, Zumwald......... the withdraw from Iraq, cuts on our nuclear arsenal....... and believe me they WILL cut on the soldier too (pay, retirement, medical, education, etc) the DoD is now in the slow but constant decline phase it has seen before: post WWII, Vietnam, Cold War. It's going to be a slow bleed for the DoD. Like under Clinton, a MSM which is generally unknowledgeable nor really favorable of defense but very much infatuated with a media savvy and pretty political family that appears on everything from the food network to late night comedy shows, they will not report the deacy of our armed forces in context of what it really is. What the political leadership will do as they cut-cut-cut and begin getting critisized is throw out some bone, throw out some token issue or action that "shows resolve and action" so that you have the appearance as if national security is being dealt with responsibly as a priority issue while in reality they devote all their time and effort to health care bills and carbon tax schemes. These tokens are just a show, a ruse that appeases the "masses." and when it's all said and done, in five years we'll be left with a DoD that once agian has fallen behind and is only marginally capable of dealing with the emerging threats.

Our current administration will spend their time doing photo ops with “green hornets.” They will make speeches about gay rights in the DoD.............. They will personally get involved when it comes to legally figuring out a way to shut down GITMO, how to bring foreign born terrorists to the US for a trail, but they won't move a finger regaurds SEALS being tried because they allegedly "roughed up" someone that killed, hacked up, and lit a fire American civilians in Iraq. You have to have your priorities.

This has a historical precedent. Anyone confused should read the story of Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers. Give it another five years and the DoD will once again be the hollowed out Styrofoam military it was at the end of Carters or Clinton's terms. When you have “Commander of Chiefs” that are confused about their job and what it is, bad things happen to the DoD.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.