Soldier opens fire at Fort Hood

[Ranger]

I think it was reported that many of the people Madoff ripped off were also Jewish so that explains the lack of backlash.

[Rockmjd23]

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy

Yeah my rational brain knows it makes no sense, but man it's just that kneejerk reaction. I wish it were otherwise, but it's there.
...
It's almost like no matter how much social progress you make to overturn preconceptions and negative stereotypes, it just takes one large, blatant incident to throw all that work out the window.

That must be how your negative stereotype of cops came about.

[General Zod]

Originally Posted by pedagogue

I'm not sure that would help. Psych evals can be used for many things, but they can't be used to predict who is going to go on a shooting rampage. If you are talking about fitness for duty type evaluations....they have them, but they are before the person starts boot camp, and administrative flags/reports would be needed for the person to be evaluated again once they are in.

So when you join and go through meps they do a psych evaluation on you and determine if you are going to need medication or regular sessions. For example if you entered and you were on a mind altering drug (a legal one) that has a CHANCE (even if extremely rare) they can still allow you in on a waiver but you are required to attend regular psych exams. I know this because my room-mate in Tech school was an ex gang member who was given the choice of 10 years in prison or 6 years serving in the military. So because he was in under those conditions he had regularly scheduled evaluations. I just think we could put people like this under the same schedule. It wasn't very evasive - basically just asking how things are going (training, friends, etc..) and getting a pulse on the person.

Sure it won't weed out all of them but I'm sure it will weed out some of them.

[pedagogue]

How many people do you think will get evaluated under thosIn the conditions.....and how frequently? In theory it'd be great, but I'm not sure that'd be realistic.

[arminius]

Originally Posted by X

I understand the benefits, but it seems there might be a way for muslims (not recent converts) who appear disgruntled or express a real problem with being deployed to the Middle East to get sent somewhere else.

This guy also had a problem with his deployment:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1122736.ece

I'm sorry but this is wrong. I do not care what other affiliations you have, you are a soldier of the United States military. You do not get to pick and choose the enemies you are willing to fight against. Those Americans of Japanese, German and Italian descent had no problem fighting against the enemies of the USA no matter who they were. I think he was a strange sad little man who could not cut it. So he went the easy route. To be a hero in Islam you just need to murder some people. That he could do.

[The Cow]

Originally Posted by arminius

Those Americans of Japanese, German and Italian descent had no problem fighting against the enemies of the USA no matter who they were.

Do you really believe that to be true of everyone?

[kenbuzz]

More great PR for the Religion of Peace....

Linky: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199501.php

BBC: Ft Hood mosque member defends shootings: "they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them."

[Hokeyboy]

Originally Posted by kenbuzz

More great PR for the Religion of Peace....

Linky: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199501.php

Wowie. Even now we have savages defending savages. Unbelievable.

This shocked me even more:

After evening prayers he would often buy a fish dinner for Reasoner and sometimes the iman at the Golden Corral, a chain buffet restaurant.

[wm lopez]

I don't know if you guys heard but he shouted "Ala is great" as he shot.

[kenbuzz]

Originally Posted by wm lopez

I don't know if you guys heard but he shouted "Ala is great" as he shot.

Dude, just go back 1 page to post #146 from yesterday.

[kenbuzz]

Not wanting to miss the opportunity to exploit this tragedy, some in the Muslim community are using this situation as an excuse for fund-raising.

Linky: http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/...covery-of.html

As the Zionist media continue to portray Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan as a villain, it is vitally important, now more than ever, that we take a unified stand against Arab/Islamic defamation. To that end, please consider giving, as generously as you are able, to these outstanding American-Arab/Islamic-interest organizations:

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): (link removed)

CAIR's co-founder, Omar Ahmad, speaking in the Bay Area in 1993:

"Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ... Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

Link: http://www.anti-cair-net.org/AhmadStateScanned.pdf

Ahmad in Chicago, 1999, praising suicide bombers to youth attending a convention:

"Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide," ... "They kill themselves for Islam."

Link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-085118-1135r/

[grundle]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...errorists.html

Fort Hood shooting: Texas army killer linked to September 11 terrorists

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.

By Philip Sherwell and Alex Spillius

Published: 8:17PM GMT 07 Nov 2009

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.

As investigators look at Hasan's motives and mindset, his attendance at the mosque could be an important piece of the jigsaw. Al-Awlaki moved to Dar al-Hijrah as imam in January, 2001, from the west coast, and three months later the September 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour began attending his services. A third hijacker attended his services in California.

Hasan was praying at Dar al-Hijrah at about the same time, and the FBI will now want to investigate whether he met the two terrorists.

Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, as an "al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11 hijackers... who targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen".

Last night Hasan remained in a coma under guard at a military hospital in San Antonio, Texas, and was said to be in a "stable" condition. Born in America to a Palestinian family, Hasan, 39, was an army psychiatrist who had chosen to sign up for the US military against his parents' wishes.

But he turned into an angry critic of the wars America was waging in Iraq and Afghanistan and had tried in vain to negotiate his discharge.

He counselled soldiers returning from the front line and told relatives that he was horrified at the prospect of a deployment to Afghanistan later this year – his first time in a combat zone.

Whether due to his personal convictions, his stress over his deployment or other reasons, Hasan is alleged to have snapped and gone on a murderous rampage with a powerful semi-automatic handgun after shouting "Allahu Akhbar" ("God is great"), according to survivors. He had earlier given away copies of the Koran to neighbours.

Investigators at this stage have no indication that he planned the attacks with anyone else. But they are trawling through his phone records, paperwork and computers he used before the attack during an apparently sleepless night.

Five of the 13 victims were fellow mental health professionals from three units of the army's Combat Stress Control Detachment, it was disclosed yesterday.

It is understood that Hasan had been due to be deployed with members of those units in coming months. Whether he deliberately singled out other combat stress counsellors is another key question.

What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks.

"I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday's attack," said Dr Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another student had warned military officials that Hasan was a "ticking time bomb" after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers.

Kamran Pasha, the author of Mother of the Believers, a new novel relating the story of Islam from the perspective of Aisha, Prophet Mohammed's wife, was told of the al-Awlaki connection from a Muslim friend who is also an officer at Fort Hood. Using the name Richard, the recent convert to Islam described how he frequently prayed with Hasan at the town mosque after Hasan was deployed to Fort Hood in July. They last worshipped together at predawn prayers on the day of the massacre when Hasan "appeared relaxed and not in any way troubled or nervous".

But Richard had previously argued with Hasan when he said that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.

"I asked Richard whether he believed that Hasan was motivated by religious radicalism in his murderous actions," Mr Pasha said.

"Richard, with great sadness, said that he believed this was true. He also believed that psychological factors from Hasan's job as an army psychiatrist added to his pathos. The news that he would be deployed overseas, to a war that he rejected, may have pushed him over the edge.

"But Richard does not excuse Hasan. As a Muslim, he finds Hasan's religious perspectives to be fundamentally misguided. And as a soldier, he finds Hasan's actions cowardly and evil."

Fellow Muslims in the US armed forces have also been quick to denounce Hasan's actions and insist that they were the product of a lone individual rather than of Islamic teachings. Osman Danquah, the co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence.

But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent.

"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'. I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."

He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.

Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday's massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.

At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors". He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there," said his cousin, Nader Hasan.

Yet away from his strident attacks on US foreign policy, he came across as subdued and reclusive – not hostile or threatening. Soldiers he counselled at the Walter Reed hospital in Washington praised him, while at Fort Hood, Kimberly Kesling, the deputy commander of clinical services, remarked: "Up to this point, I would consider him an asset."

Relatives said that the death of Hasan's parents, in 1998 and 2001, turned him more devout. "After he lost his parents he tried to replace their love by reading a lot of books, including the Koran," his uncle Rafiq Hamad said.

"He didn't have a girlfriend, he didn't dance, he didn't go to bars."

His failed search for a wife seemed to haunt Hasan. At the Muslim Community Centre in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, he signed up for an Islamic matchmaking service, specifying that he wanted a bride who wore the hijab and prayed five times a day.

Adnan Haider, a retired professor of statistics, recalled how at their first meeting last year, a casual introduction after Friday prayers, Hasan immediately asked the academic if he knew "a nice Muslim girl" he could marry.

"It was a strange thing to ask someone you have met two seconds before. It was clear to me he was under pressure, you could just see it in his face," said Prof Haider, 74, who used to work at Georgetown University in Washington. "You could see he was lonely and didn't have friends.

"He is working with psychiatric people and I ask why the people around him didn't spot that something was wrong? When I heard what had happened I actually wasn't that surprised."

Indeed, many of the characteristics attributed to Hasan by acquaintances – withdrawn, unassuming, brooding, socially awkward and never known to have had a girlfriend – have also applied to other mass murderers.

Hasan was born and brought up in Virginia to parents who ran restaurants after emigrating to America from the West Bank. He graduated from Virginia Tech university – coincidentally, the scene of the worst mass shooting in US history in 2007 – with a degree in biochemistry and then joined the army, which trained him as a psychiatrist.

Relatives said that he was subjected to increasingly ugly taunts about his religion and ethnicity from other soldiers after the September 11 attacks. But his uncle insisted yesterday that Hasan would not have been driven to mass murder by revenge or religion.

Speaking in the West Bank town of al-Bireh, Mr Hamad said his nephew "loved America" and could only have been caused to snap by an as yet unexplained factor. "He always said there was no country in the world like America," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "Something big happened to him in Texas. If he did it – and until now I am in denial – it had to have been something huge because revenge was not in his nature."

[kenbuzz]

"He loved America"

I don't believe it.

[DeputyDave]

Originally Posted by kenbuzz

Not wanting to miss the opportunity to exploit this tragedy, some in the Muslim community are using this situation as an excuse for fund-raising.

Linky: http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/...covery-of.html


CAIR's co-founder, Omar Ahmad, speaking in the Bay Area in 1993:
Link: http://www.anti-cair-net.org/AhmadStateScanned.pdf

Ahmad in Chicago, 1999, praising suicide bombers to youth attending a convention:
Link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-085118-1135r/

Very disturbing that those quotes are coming from Americans.

[arminius]

Originally Posted by DeputyDave

Very disturbing that those quotes are coming from Americans.

I don't believe they are. They may be citizens of this country but they are not Americans.

[Goldblum]

One day, this country will either wake up or die.

[pedagogue]

Originally Posted by Goldblum

One day, this country will either wake up or die.

Is it because:

1. Our refusal to properly protect our borders from foreign invaders?
2. Our reliance on foreign oil?
3. Our reliance on foreign dollars?
4. Our denial that we have terrorists walking our streets?
5. Our hyper-focus on international affairs while our own country crumbles?
6. Our unmatched gluttony for everything from food to getting our "fifteen minutes"?
7. Our gov't subsidized corp america?
8. Our refusal to admit we have lost the "War on Drugs"?
9. Our denial that N. Korea is a greater threat than Iraq or Afghanistan?
10. Our refusal to admit we need major changes to how we handle our military and its personnel?

I could go on and on.

[wm lopez]

Originally Posted by kenbuzz

Dude, just go back 1 page to post #146 from yesterday.

I was watching several news channels and when I got to FOXNEWS O'Reilly show. That was the 1st show that was saying it may have been terrorist. And they showed clips of other channels like Dr. Phil and some others were saying it was stress etc.,. But FOXNEWS once again is giving the news straight. By passing the pc crap.

[sracer]

Originally Posted by The Cow

Do you really believe that to be true of everyone?

Until you provide proof of an American of Italian descent enlisted in the military during WWII who killed fellow American Soldiers on an American military base... then, yes.

[Goldblum]

Originally Posted by pedagogue

Is it because:

1. Our refusal to properly protect our borders from foreign invaders?
2. Our reliance on foreign oil?
3. Our reliance on foreign dollars?
4. Our denial that we have terrorists walking our streets?
5. Our hyper-focus on international affairs while our own country crumbles?
6. Our unmatched gluttony for everything from food to getting our "fifteen minutes"?
7. Our gov't subsidized corp america?
8. Our refusal to admit we have lost the "War on Drugs"?
9. Our denial that N. Korea is a greater threat than Iraq or Afghanistan?
10. Our refusal to admit we need major changes to how we handle our military and its personnel?

I could go on and on.

All of the above, probably in the order you listed them.

[Goldblum]

I heard Dr. Phil's comments. The man is a complete moron. I can't believe people actually heed his advice.

[JumpCutz]

Originally Posted by wm lopez

But FOXNEWS once again is giving the news straight. By passing the pc crap.

Exactly

[Sondheim]

Originally Posted by sracer

Until you provide proof of an American of Italian descent enlisted in the military during WWII who killed fellow American Soldiers on an American military base... then, yes.

This was the original statement:

Those Americans of Japanese, German and Italian descent had no problem fighting against the enemies of the USA no matter who they were.

That they didn't open fire on their base doesn't mean they didn't have a problem with it. I've read accounts of German- and Italian-Americans who were deeply troubled about being sent to Europe to fight against their former countrymen (which sometimes included friends and members of their own family who had remained behind.) And it's been mentioned in this very thread that Japanese serving in the US military during World War II were specifically only sent to the European front.

[grundle]

The reason that he was able to kill so many people is because he did it in a "gun free zone" where his victims were not allowed to defend themselves:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting

Fort Hood shooting

Neither military-issued nor personal weapons may be carried about the base by typical soldiers. Lt. General Robert W. Cone, commander of the III Corps and Fort Hood, stated the on-base firearm policy: "As a matter of practice, we do not carry weapons on Fort Hood. This is our home."[81]Military weapons are only used for training or by base security, and personal weapons must be kept locked away by the provost marshal.[82]Specialist Jerry Richard, a soldier working at the Readiness Center, expressed the opinion that this policy had left them unnecessarily vulnerable to violent assaults: "Overseas you are ready for it. But here you can't even defend yourself."[44]

[Deftones]

wikipedia says it, so it must be true!