Are our enemies using our values against us?

In September, three Navy Seals secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq – Ahmed Hashim Abed. Abed was the alleged mastermind of the vicious 2004 murder of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah. The guards, former military personnel, were in a convoy delivering food when they were ambushed and killed. Their bodies were mutilated, dragged through the streets, burned and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
And now, instead of giving these Navy Seals a medal for tracking down the man thought responsible, we’ve court-marshalled them. Why? Because Mr. Abed claims they gave him a bloody lip.

Navy lawyers offered Petty officers Matthew McCabe, Jonathan Keefe and Julio Huertas a minor punishment if they’d admit guilt. But they refused, preferring to face court marshall and a military tribunal for the chance to clear their names. A key witness against the Navy Seals? Mr. Abed himself – even though the Al Qaeda training manual orders him to claim his captors brutalized and tortured him, even if he has to lie.

Yet we’re bending over backwards to give self-confessed terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a civilian trial in New York City, rather than in a military tribunal set up to deal with terrorists. We’re giving the Sheikh full rights of an American citizen, and will end up throwing out much of the evidence gathered against him. We’ll let him exploit our justice system to his own ends and use his trial to as the world’s largest propaganda platform.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

It’s true that our military should live their values, and be held to a higher standard than the terrorists we’re at war with. No one wants another Abu Grahib.

But at the same time, we should never let our enemy use those values against us.