I told you last week about the petition to free the Navy SEALs who’ve been hauled up for courts martial after an infamous jihadi in Iraq (the same one who masterminded the ambush of Blackwater contractors whose bodies were burned and hung on a bridge in Fallujah) accused them of punching him in the stomach during a raid earlier this fall.

There is now a legal defense fund for the trio.

Go here.

Cliff May rallies support for the SEALs:

In his remarks accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama said, “And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight.”

I agree. Our troops should uphold the highest standards. Notwithstanding such rare but extravagantly publicized lapses as Abu Ghraib, they do exhibit a degree of self-restraint that no other military, now or in the past, can match.

But the notion that international law provides strict legal protections for terrorists is a new and dubious innovation, cooked up by trans-national lawyers seeking power for themselves and their organizations, along with unprecedented limitations on American sovereignty.

The Geneva Conventions are treaties that bind signatories in order to render conflicts among those signatories less brutal. The Geneva Conventions were never designed to protect those who have not signed them and who routinely violate them.

…A terrorist in American custody should be aware that he is in the presence of principled professionals. But he should not believe that he is untouchable or that he is entitled to the rights enjoyed by an American citizen under the U.S. Constitution, a document he would gladly trample underfoot.

He should know that the troops who detain him are not like him: They won’t chop off his head on videotape while chanting praise for a divinity pleased by the carnage. But he also should know that if he asks for a fat lip, he might just get a fat lip.