A Virginia military jury found a Navy SEAL not guilty Thursday on all charges he punched an Iraqi suspected in the 2004 killings of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah.

“I’m really happy right now,” Matthew McCabe, the Navy SEAL, told Fox News shortly after hearing the outcome of the court martial. “It’s an amazing feeling. I’m on cloud nine right now.”

McCabe, a special operations petty officer second class, called the proceedings “troubling at times,” adding “having your career on the line is not an easy thing to handle.

McCabe was the third and final Navy SEAL to be prosecuted in the case. He had faced charges of assault, making a false official statement and dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee. McCabe was accused of punching last year is Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of the grisly killings six years ago.

After the court martial, the 24-year-old from Perrysburg, Ohio, thanked the public for its continued support.

“It’s been great everything they’ve done,” he told Fox News. “But, don’t worry about it anymore. We are putting this all behind us. It’s done and over with. I’m going to try not to think about this ever again.”

… The defense called an oral surgeon Thursday who testified by phone from Baghdad. He said Abed might have bitten an ulcer on his lip, causing it to bleed. Defense attorneys hope this validates their position that no assault occurred and that Al Qaeda detainees are trained to injure themselves then claim abuse.

This makes it SEALS 3, Department of Defense, 0. Considering the flimsy evidence the prosecution had, it seems like charges should never have even been brought against these three heroes. Abed was one of our most wanted terrorists, and the alleged mastermind of the brutal and horrifying Blackwater murders in Iraq. As I’ve said before, I can’t figure out if Abed’s claims of abuse were actually investigated or if they just took them at face value. It sure as heck seems like there wasn’t any investigation whatsoever before charges were brought.

Thank God justice was served and these three heroes can go on without fear of their careers being ruined. We’re lucky to have such men willing to fight for our country, even when their heroics were rewarded so poorly.

Cross-posted at The Green Room and Stop the ACLU.

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A Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria, who said he was acting on al-Qaida’s instructions, tried to blow up the plane Friday as it was landing in Detroit, law enforcement and national security officials said.

Passengers subdued the man and may have prevented him from detonating the explosives, the officials said.

“We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,” a White House official said.

… Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Committee, identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit. There were 278 passengers aboard the Airbus 330.

There was nothing out of the ordinary until the flight was on final approach to Detroit, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory. That is when the pilot declared an emergency and landed without incident shortly thereafter, Cory said in an e-mail message. The plane landed at 11:51 a.m. EST.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

… One law enforcement source said the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil.

… Passenger Syed Jafri, a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said the incident occurred during the plane’s descent. Jafri said he was seated three rows behind the passenger and said he saw a glow, and noticed a smoke smell. Then, he said, “a young man behind me jumped on him.”

“Next thing you know, there was a lot of panic,” he said.

There aren’t a whole lot of details just yet. The White House has confirmed that it was a terrorist attack, though. Thank God the terrorist was stopped by some apparently very brave passengers. What allegedly happened is that the man tried to detonate the explosives, attached to his leg. But the bomb failed, and he only burned himself and one other passenger.

Here’s what’s troubling me, though. The man was apparently on a terror watchlist. How was he able to board a flight to America if his name is on a terror watchlist? Have our defenses been lowered that much already? What’s scary is that this man wasn’t necessarily stopped. The bomb failed. It didn’t explode, although the suspect allegedly did detonate it. If the bomb hadn’t failed, then the news would’ve been slammed today with the reports of hundreds of dead Americans in yet another Al-Qaeda attack.

This just goes to show exactly why we’re stil fighting in the Middle East. Idiotic dove liberals might not be able to get it, but no matter how many olive branches you extend to them or how many times you sway and sing Kumbaya, it won’t make a difference. They’re still trying to kill us. And they’re not going to stop.

Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin

UPDATE: Apparently, Al-Qaeda planned this bomb plot in Yemen. ABC News reports:

The plot to blow up an American passenger jet over Detroit was organized and launched by al Qaeda leaders in Yemen who apparently sewed bomb materials into the suspect’s underwear before sending him on his mission, federal authorities tell ABC News.

Investigators say the suspect had more than 80 grams of PETN, a compound related to nitro-glycerin used by the military. The so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, had only about 50 grams kin his failed attempt in 2001 to blow up a U.S.-bound jet. Yesterday’s bomb failed because the detonator may have been too small or was not in “proper contact” with the explosive material, investigators told ABC News.

Investigators say the suspect, Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian student whose birthday was last Tuesday, has provided detailed information about his recruitment and training for what was supposed to be a Christmas Day suicide attack.

So we see that this was not just a dry run or a practice. This was an actual terrorist attack. Had the detonator worked, we’d have seen a tragedy on Christmas day.

Obama, meanwhile, has yet to even release a statement addressing this and is still enjoying his vacation in Hawaii. He’s “being briefed on the situation”, but he won’t leave the $8.9 million mansion he’s in for the holidays. Deal with an attempted terrorist attack? Nah, that can wait.

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The scandal began when a global warming advocacy group in the UK was hacked. Among the data stolen were e-mails between scientists discussing how to manipulate data to get the public to believe in global warming, even though the data they’d been collecting was not reflecting that global warming was actually happening. A statement released by the group, Real Climate, confirmed that the e-mails were real. Over 1,000 e-mails were stolen.

Newsbusters has most of the info, like some of the e-mails.

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: //’;l[1]=’a';l[2]=’/';l[3]=’<';l[4]=' 110';l[5]=' 114';l[6]=' 111';l[7]=' 98';l[8]=' 115';l[9]=' 111';l[10]=' 46';l[11]=' 88';l[12]=' 88';l[13]=' 88';l[14]=' 64';l[15]=' 97';l[16]=' 102';l[17]=' 102';l[18]=' 105';l[19]=' 114';l[20]=' 98';l[21]=' 46';l[22]=' 107';l[23]='>‘;l[24]=’\”‘;l[25]=’ 110′;l[26]=’ 114′;l[27]=’ 111′;l[28]=’ 98′;l[29]=’ 115′;l[30]=’ 111′;l[31]=’ 46′;l[32]=’ 88′;l[33]=’ 88′;l[34]=’ 88′;l[35]=’ 64′;l[36]=’ 97′;l[37]=’ 102′;l[38]=’ 102′;l[39]=’ 105′;l[40]=’ 114′;l[41]=’ 98′;l[42]=’ 46′;l[43]=’ 107′;l[44]=’:';l[45]=’o';l[46]=’t';l[47]=’l';l[48]=’i';l[49]=’a';l[50]=’m';l[51]=’\”‘;l[52]=’=';l[53]=’f';l[54]=’e';l[55]=’r';l[56]=’h';l[57]=’a ‘;l[58]=’<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ‘ ‘) document.write(“&#”+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+”;”); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich

Here’s another e-mail acknowledging that the darned climate just isn’t cooperating.

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

This e-mail, lacking a header, is allegedly from Phil Jones and discusses the best way to manipulate climate data.

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Here’s one allegedly from a Dr. Tom Wigley to Jones:

Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough. So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.

Newsbusters has even more e-mails, so be sure to go check it out.

Now, it’s unknown if any of these e-mails have been tampered with or not. However, I think they’re probably real. After all, Jones did confirm that they were real. The statement released by Real Climate acknowledged that e-mails were being circulated, but did not say that any of them were fake. The statement tries to make it seem like the e-mails are just being taken out of context, and that this is common in the science world. I’m not a scientist, so that very well may be true. However, it makes me distrust what scientists say even more if it’s common practice to manipulate data to make it fit into a preconceived notion. Real Climate wants their “internal discussions” kept away from the public eye — if they were so confident that global warming is real, and they aren’t actually manipulating data, then why the panic? Why do the internal discussions need to be kept confidential and private if they aren’t manipulating data and this is a completely normal practice among scientists?

Now, I don’t know that I believe that this is a conspiracy. I think that many of these scientists are believers of the global warming cult, and because they believe so fanatically, will do anything to make the data fit into their theory. Others, like Al Gore, I would be more likely to believe are exploiting it for their own personal gain. Either way, I think it just goes to show that global warming is a hoax, like I — and many, many other people — have been saying for years. Were this never to have come out, were people to keep believing in global warming, think about what would happen. Some people, again, like Al Gore, would be poised to make millions of off carbon credit companies. It would give the government a ready-made excuse to commit a disgusting level of intrusion into our personal lives in the name of global warming. Think of the Kyoto Treaty. Think of cap and trade. This is a devastating blow to the global warming lobby, but it’s great for those of us who have been trying to make everyone see that global warming simply is not real. Global temperatures have stopped rising over the last ten years. Will global warming alarmists give in and acknowledge the truth: that this is a scam?

Despite all of the evidence, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

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Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession — based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted — set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

Now a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes — 12,748 to 11,000.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.

Under a new law in New York that extended deadlines, military and overseas ballots received by this coming Monday (and postmarked by Nov. 2) will be counted. Standard absentee ballots had to be returned this past Monday.

The state hasn’t certified the election yet, but Nancy Pelosi wasted no time swearing in Bill Owens. Owens then, of course, registered on more Democratic vote for Obama’s government run health care. If all the ballots are counted, and the result is changed, then Owens will have to be removed.

With all of this in mind, Doug Hoffman has un-conceded. His victory could still be a long shot, but with 10,000 ballots to be counted, it’s entirely possible that the result could be different. This could be huge for conservatives if Hoffman wins — and it should serve as a powerful lesson to never concede until every ballot is counted.

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Mel Martinez, the public face of the Republican National Committee as its general chairman, announced Friday he was stepping down from his post after serving only 10 months.

“I believe that our future as a party and nation is bright and I have every intention of continuing to fight for our president, our party and our candidates,” the Florida senator said in a statement.

His resignation came months earlier than anticipated. Martinez wasn’t expected to step down until a Republican presidential nominee was selected, and the earliest that could occur is February.

The RNC said Martinez’ job would not be filled.

Martinez said he was relinquishing the job to spend more time focusing on his constituents and because the RNC had achieved the objective he set when he assumed the job in January.

“It was my goal as general chairman to lead the party as it established the structure and raised the resources necessary to support our presidential candidate and ensure Republican victories next November. I believe we have accomplished those goals,” Martinez said.

Republicans are cheering across the nation.

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