Shooting at Ft Hood; 7 dead, 20+wounded

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Just making sure. Makes me wonder why people still go to Iraq, even though they object to it.
 
Here's another problem with Hasan seeking CO status:

He objected only to killing Muslims, not people in general.

"...However, requests by personnel for qualification as a conscientious
objector after entering military service will not be favorably considered when these requests are—

(4) Based on objection to a certain war.

(5)(c) Applicants may have sought release from the Army through several means simultaneously, or in rapid succession (medical or hardship discharge, and so forth). They may have some major commitments during the time their beliefs
were developing that are inconsistent with their claim. They may have applied for conscientious objector status shortly after becoming aware of the prospect of undesirable or hazardous duty or having been rejected for a special program."
 
excerpts from The Fort Hood Killer: Terrified ... or Terrorist?
"We have to be careful not to let our definition of terrorism become too broad," said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last year. "Particularly when we get to the individual lone wolf, then it really does become hard to distinguish between the person who killed the students at Virginia Tech and the person who might do the same thing simply because they read something on the Internet about bin Laden and that happened to appeal to their psychology." Once everything is terrorism, he warned, then nothing is. But while the motivations of the Virginia Tech gunman seemed perversely personal, Hasan had spent years telling anyone who would listen that the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan was immoral.
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Hasan was a walking contradiction: the counselor who himself needed counseling; the proud soldier who did not want to fight, at least not against fellow Muslims; the man who could not find a sufficiently modest and pious wife through his mosque's matchmaking machinery but who frequented the local strip club. A man supposedly so afraid of deployment that he launched a war of his own from which he clearly did not expect to return alive. "Everyone is asking why this happened," said Hasan's family in a formal statement, "and the answer is that we simply do not know."
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For eight years, Americans have waged a Global War on Terrorism even as they argued about what that meant. The massacre at Fort Hood was, depending on whom you believed, yet another horrific workplace shooting by a nutcase who suddenly snapped, or it was an intimate act of war, a plot that can't be foiled because it is hatched inside a fanatic's head and leaves no trail until it is left in blood.
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It might help if there were at least agreement on what constitutes terrorism; one government study found 109 different definitions. As far as the FBI is concerned, it counts as terrorism if you commit a crime that endangers another person or is violent with a broader intent to intimidate, influence or change policy or opinion. If Hasan shot people because of indigestion, worker conflict or plain insanity without a larger goal of intimidation or coercion, it was probably just a crime. If, on the other hand, his crime was motivated by more than madness — say, a desire to protest U.S. foreign policy — it was effectively terrorism.
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So what are we to make of the free agents who might have never sworn allegiance to a band of jihadist brothers or plotted a conspiracy of violence, just watched some YouTube videos or downloaded some sermons and came away with visions of carnage dancing in their heads? "We have to be careful not to let our definition of terrorism become too broad," said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last year. "Particularly when we get to the individual lone wolf, then it really does become hard to distinguish between the person who killed the students at Virginia Tech and the person who might do the same thing simply because they read something on the Internet about bin Laden and that happened to appeal to their psychology." Once everything is terrorism, he warned, then nothing is. But while the motivations of the Virginia Tech gunman seemed perversely personal, Hasan had spent years telling anyone who would listen that the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan was immoral.
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That diagnosis seemed like sentimental nonsense to people who noted how well Hasan matched the classic model of the lone, strange, crazy killer: the quiet and gentle man who formed few close human attachments but, reported the New York Times, used to chew up food and let his pet parakeet eat it from his mouth; when he rolled over during a nap and accidentally crushed it to death, he visited the bird's grave for months afterward.
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But Hasan may be the new terrorist template that fuses psychological damage with jihadist ideology. The most obvious and ominous evidence points to a now familiar pattern: alienated individuals who don't have to graduate from al-Qaeda training camps to embrace their mission and means. When an Army officer is reported to proudly call himself a Muslim first, an American second; when he appears at a public-health seminar with the PowerPoint presentation "Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam"; when he applauds the killing of a U.S. soldier by a Muslim convert at an Arkansas recruitment center; and when he is caught corresponding with a radical imam in Yemen who has called on all Muslims to kill American soldiers in Iraq, you wonder just how brightly the red lights had to flash before anyone was willing to stop and ask some questions.
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Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech with honors in biochemistry, then went to medical school, where, an uncle told the Los Angeles Times, he decided to major in psychiatry after he fainted while watching a baby being born.
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continue -

"He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab," the former imam Faizul Khan told the New York Times, "and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things." It was after his parents died that Hasan became more conspicuously devout. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he completed his psychiatric training, he was reportedly reprimanded for trying to convert patients to Islam, while castigating those with drug and alcohol issues for their "unholy" behavior. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unfolded, he asserted the right of Muslim Americans to conscientiously object to fighting; his relatives claimed he offered to repay the cost of his medical education in exchange for release from his obligations.
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The first alarms began to sound while he was still in training. "He was very vocal about being a Muslim first and holding Shari'a law above the Constitution," says an officer who attended the Pentagon's medical school with Hasan but would speak only off the record because his commanders ordered him not to discuss the case. "When fellow students asked, 'How can you be an officer and not hold to the Constitution?,' he'd get visibly upset — sweaty and nervous — and had no good answers." This officer was so disturbed when Hasan gave a talk asserting that the U.S. was waging a "war on Islam" that he challenged the lieutenant colonel running the course. "I raised my hand and asked, 'Why are you letting this go on? This has nothing to do with environmental health,' " which was the actual focus of the course. " 'I'm just going to let him go,' " replied the lieutenant colonel, who had even approved the topic in advance.

"It was a systemic problem," the officer says. "The same thing was happening at Walter Reed." The vital question for the military and our own security is whether political correctness — or the desire to protect diversity — prevented the Army from recognizing and dealing with a problem in its midst, a problem in plain sight. According to a co-worker, Hasan would not even allow his photo to be taken with female colleagues. "People are afraid to come forward and challenge somebody's ideology," explains Hasan's classmate, "because they're afraid of getting an equal-opportunity complaint that can end careers." NPR reported that top officials at Walter Reed held meetings in the spring of 2008 in which they debated whether Hasan was "psychotic." "Put it this way," an official told NPR. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."
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Congress is bound to ask, How was it possible that even as his performance was poor, his personnel file was being reviewed and his communications with a radical cleric were being analyzed, Hasan was promoted from captain to major last May and dispatched in July to Fort Hood, the largest active Army base in the U.S.? One explanation is a desperate need for mental-health professionals. With its 50,000 soldiers and 150,000 family members and civilian personnel, Fort Hood has the highest toll of military suicides; post traumatic-stress-disorder cases quadrupled from 2005 to 2007.
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But others are convinced that his religion protected him from stronger action by the Army. "He'd have to murder the general's wife and daughter on the parade ground at high noon in order to get a serious reprimand," says Ralph Peters, an outspoken retired Army lieutenant colonel who now writes military books and a newspaper column. While stressing "there shouldn't be witch hunts" against Muslims in uniform, Peters insists that "this guy got a pass because he was a Muslim, despite the Army's claim that everybody's green and we're all the same." A top Pentagon official admits there may be some truth to the charge. "We're wondering why some of these strange encounters didn't trigger something more formal," he says. "I think people were overly sensitive about Muslims in the military, and that led to a reluctance to say, 'This guy is nuts.' The Army is going to have to review their procedures to make sure someone can raise issues like this."
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The Miranda rights inform the suspect of his Fifth Amendment right not to make any self-incriminating statements.

His attorney told him not to talk. He does have an attorney, doesn't he?
 
sallylou said:
The Miranda rights inform the suspect of his Fifth Amendment right not to make any self-incriminating statements.
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Right. But he didn't "plead" the Fifth in the commonly used way as a court response. Apparently Jiro meant that Hasan heeded the Miranda warning.

His attorney told him not to talk. He does have an attorney, doesn't he?
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Yes, he has an appointed military attorney, and a private civilian attorney.
 
I didn't say he "pleaded." I said he "took." Once he refused to talk, authorities have to stop questioning him without his attorney present. It's a completely different context.

Why are you quibbling over words? Lay people don't know that the word "prosecute" is used in civil trials in certain contexts. It's just terminology in different contexts.
 
updates from CNN

Attorney: Court hearing for Fort Hood suspect to be held in hospital
Attorney: Court hearing for Fort Hood suspect to be held in hospital - CNN.com

Killeen, Texas (CNN) -- Prosecutors have requested a pretrial confinement hearing for accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan in his hospital room on Saturday, Hasan's attorney said on Friday.

Hasan's civilian attorney, retired Army Col. John Galligan, said Hasan's commanders have already placed him in what is considered pretrial confinement. Saturday's hearing is to determine whether that is appropriate.

The Fort Hood Staff Judge Advocate Office confirmed late Friday that a pretrial review of Hasan's confinement was scheduled for Saturday at the Army base. No other details, including the exact time and location, were included.

Galligan said he will argue that the pretrial proceedings are being conducted hastily and without enough consideration of Hasan's medical condition. However, there is no decision pending on removing Hasan from the hospital, Galligan said, adding that no one has told him when Hasan will be discharged and where he might be taken when he is released.

Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, is accused of killing 13 people and injuring several others in the November 5 shooting at the Fort Hood Army Post near Killeen. He has not pleaded to the charges.

Saturday's hearing is to take place in Hasan's heavily guarded room in the intensive care unit at the Army hospital. Galligan said he would be in attendance, and he expected a government representative and a magistrate to be there as well.

Galligan said his client, who is paralyzed from the waist down, has had coherent conversations with him and understands who Galligan is and the next steps in the legal process. The attorney last met with Hasan on Thursday and said that after an hour, Hasan clearly was fatigued and couldn't continue.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. John Carter, whose congressional district includes Fort Hood, has met with victims and commanders at the post. He said victims are telling him that when the shooting started, many of them thought it was some kind of "paintball" drill.

Carter said that, according to the witnesses, Hasan had a laser-sight on a gun that he pointed at the shooting victims.

"Everybody is convinced he was targeting soldiers and not targeting civilians, because some of the civilians said he looked them in the eye, shook his head and passed over them," Carter said.

Asked about Carter's comments, Hasan's attorney said he was saddened by them and called them inflammatory, premature and prejudicial.

Galligan said he has received a military personnel file pertaining to Hasan, but said it has only basic details on where his client went to school and where he received additional training. He said he has not received any classified documents yet, and has not seen the e-mails that investigators said show Hasan corresponding with a radical Muslim cleric.

Galligan said the Army has not responded to his request that his own security clearance be reinstated.
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Where's the Congressional investigation? How come Obama is avoiding this?
 
kokonut said:
Where's the Congressional investigation? How come Obama is avoiding this?
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Let the law enforcement and military finish their investigations first without interference and contamination... then there can be Congressional investigation.
 
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced on Thursday the formation of military task forces to examine the Pentagon's procedures for identifying service members who may pose a threat. That seems like a useful step, but it does not eliminate the need for a congressional probe. Unlike the Pentagon, Congress has the authority to call on officials from across the executive branch and demand a broad range of documents. It is better positioned to determine whether failures to share information across agencies and departments led law enforcement, military and intelligence officials to miss or downplay warning signs that Mr. Hasan apparently exhibited. A congressional probe would also possess added legitimacy because it would be independent of the executive branch
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washingtonpost.com
 
kokonut said:
washingtonpost.com
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sure Congress has authority to call on officials but let's not forget what happened during GWB Administration. Several White House officials including Dick Cheney did not bother showing up at court until at a very later date.
 
kokonut said:
Where's the Congressional investigation? How come Obama is avoiding this?
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Who says he is avoiding this? He had a speech about the fort hood shooting last week...don't you even have CNN? :roll:

and why did they say they "assumed" he shot 13 people...there WERE witnesses! They saw him standing up on the table shouting in muslim language "God is great!" then pull out his guns equipped with the laser sighting pointing at the people who he KNOWS he is pointing at, yet, he don't give a shit and starting firing away. This is stupid! There were survivors who witnessed that and know it is the same man who used the guns wasting away innocents especially the pregnant woman who had nothing to do with him being deployed to Iraqi or whatever...they say it's him who wasted away 13 lives, I say hes guilty as charged...why do some ppl bother having to protect such a freak like him?
 
Please respect the Constitution. Hasan is an American therefore he has his rights. We must follow the legal procedures.

Only time will tell if he's a lone terrorist or a part of the larger terrorist act or just a pathetic loner.
 
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