Tainted Saints

[Just when I think it's impossible to hate this man more...

The moral outrage surrounding this shooting is so completely hypocritical. Soldiers who were mostly destined for Afghanistan or Iraq where they had a very good chance of dying were instead killed before they left U.S. soil. And Ft. Hood has declared today a day of mourning for the shooting victims, when virtually every day soldiers are killed overseas without a day of public mourning.  It's only sad to die HERE, and not THERE...? Propoganda at it's best... - Ed.]

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will seek to move forward on an investigation surrounding the mass shooting Thursday at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the committee’s chairman, said today.

The chairman said the scope of the probe would address the motives of the alleged shooter Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan and whether signs of “Islamic extremism” were apparent, but missed or ignored. [more...]

….”The whole family is in a state of denial,” [Hasan's uncle] said Saturday. “We don’t believe he is capable of doing something like that. I was amazed and shocked, because it’s not him. He’s very quiet, gentle.

“Maybe it built up together — the harassment, too many patients, the workload, the tragedies his patients brought to him,” said the 65-year-old retired real estate broker. “Whatever it was, it must have been big pressure, something terrible he couldn’t handle.”

Hamad and another West Bank relative, Mohammed Munif Hasan, said they learned recently that Maj. Hasan had consulted a lawyer about securing a discharge from the Army. [more...]

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex.

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

“I know what that is like,” she said. “Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay” for his medical training.

An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. George Wright, said he could not confirm that Hasan (pronounced Hass-in) requested a discharge. [more...]

No sooner was the identity of the Fort Hood shooter released — a man with the Arab name Nadal Malik Hasan — than the wingnuts sprang into predictable action: Of course he was a jihadi embarking on a murderous terrorism spree!

Pam “Atlas Barks” Geller immediately proclaimed it “an obvious act terrorism” and ran big all all caps heads declaring: “IT’S THE JIHAD STUPID.” Elsewhere in the right blogosphere, people like the folks at HotAir jumped all over the “news” that Hasan was a convert to Islam.

Then Shepard Smith interviewed Hasan’s cousin, and we found out that this was all so much tripe:

– Hasan was American born and educated, but raised Muslim. He was not a convert.

– He had never previously been deployed to Iraq or anywhere overseas, for that matter. So much for the theories he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

– He was regularly abused by his colleagues in the military for being Muslim — called a “raghead” and other such terms — and had been seeking to get out of the military because the environment had become so hostile. [more...]

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Twelve people were killed and at least 31 were wounded when a soldier went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood U.S. Army base at Fort Hood Texas on Thursday, base commander Lieutenant-General Bob Cone said.

Cone told reporters at the base that the gunman was killed in the attack at the facility, the biggest military base in the world and a prime point of deployment for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said in an interview with Fox News that she was told by military officials the gunman was an officer who had been about to be deployed to Iraq.

Several broadcast networks named him as Major Malik Nadal Hasan and said he was about 40 years old, but this could not immediately be confirmed.

Two other soldiers were apprehended as suspects. [more...]