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Terrorism and PC: ?Muslim First, American Second:? Wiring Money to Pakistan; Intel Preservation Order

By Phil

Thursday, November 11, 2009 update:

And the hits keep coming…

It appears that Major Hasan may be more connected to Islamic terrorism than even all the below suggests. AtlasShrugs reports that monies could have been sent to Pakistan from the Major:

Fort Hood shootings suspect may have wired money to Pakistan Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON ? Authorities have been examining whether Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan wired money to Pakistan in recent months, an action that one senior lawmaker said would raise serious questions about Hasan’s possible connections to militant Islamic groups.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra , R-Mich., said sources “outside of the [intelligence] community” learned about Hasan’s possible connections to the Asian country, which faces a massive Islamist insurgency and is widely believed to be Osama bin Laden’s hiding place.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee , would not identify the sources. But he said “they are trying to follow up on it because they recognize that if there are communications ? phone or money transfers with somebody in Pakistan ? it just raises a whole other level of questions.”

Much remains unknown about the 39-year-old Hasan, born in Virginia to Palestinian immigrants. He lived alone near the Army base in Killeen, Texas, and would sometimes use a neighbor’s computer even though he had his own.

“With what I know about Hasan to date … I would expect we will learn more about him that will make us concerned,” Hoekstra said, “rather than information that says, ‘Oh man, we got that all wrong and this had nothing to do with terrorism.’ ”

Mystery of money

Hasan’s finances have been a mystery since last week, when the Army major and psychiatrist allegedly shot and killed 13 colleagues at the sprawling Central Texas military base. Hasan earned more than $90,000 a year and had no dependents, yet lived in an aging one-bedroom apartment that rented for about $300 a month.

“You can bet there is an ongoing, extensive investigation into every single financial transaction he made,” said Matt Orwig, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas who has no direct knowledge of the Hasan case. “Federal investigative agencies are very good at tracing the flow of money, both to him and from him.”

Authorities know that Hasan sent repeated e-mails, starting some time in December 2008, to a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen. That cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, formerly served as imam of a large northern Virginia mosque where Hasan worshipped. The U.S.-born cleric praised Hasan after the massacre as “a hero.”

In January, al-Awlaki told readers of his blog about “44 ways to support jihad” ? a term often translated as “holy war.” Many of his points dealt with ways to fund such efforts.

“Probably the most important contribution the Muslims of the West could do for Jihad is making Jihad with their wealth,” al-Awlaki wrote. “In many cases the mujahideen are in need of money more than they are in need of men.”

He also stressed the importance of “avoiding the life of luxury.” [emphases original]

As HotAir comments:

Hmmm.  So now we have the possibility of overseas money transfers to Pakistan at about the same time the FBI was made aware of repeated communication between Hasan and a 9/11 figure in Yemen.  Meanwhile, Hasan ? a well-paid medical professional ? lived a lifestyle of near-poverty despite living by himself.  And no one in the intelligence community thought this required further investigation?

Now, regarding potential congressional investigation into this matter, Ms. Geller once again makes a very salient point on the part of the opposition (I do wonder how there could be opposition to fully investigating this matter post haste?):

More: Chatter from the left wing blogosphere is smearing Hoekstra. That’s what the vicious left does to effective voices and leaders. Destroy truth tellers. The left machine is revving up and going after Hoekstra.

The left blogs’ fallacious charge that Congressman Pete Hoekstra leaked classified information related to the Fort Hood shooting is starting to reach the mainstream media. Rachel Maddow made this charge last night on her show -- here at Think Progress. Hoekstra didn?t leak anything ? he has called attention to a seriousintelligence failure that he wants answers about. Hoekstra asked for a classified briefing on this last week, but the administration wouldn?t give him one. He also wanted the House intelligence committee to get a briefing, but House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes refused to request one, even though House members were here until late Saturday night. This is shaping up to be a major intelligence failure that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats do not want to seriously investigate. [emphases original]

And here is Rep. Hoekstra’s letter requesting a preservation order:

RM Hoekstra Ltr to Blair 7 Nov 2009

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 update:

The news continues to come out regarding the terrorist attack by Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood.

From the Politico, Republican critics are coming out and labeling this atrocity for what it is:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Wednesday called the Fort Hood killings an ?act of terror? and joined a parade of GOP critics in suggesting that ?political correctness? might have been a factor in not preventing the shootings.

?We ought to make sure ?political correctness? never impedes national security,? McCain said in a speech at the University of Louisville.

McCain?s comments echoed those of a variety of Republican politicians and commentators ? as well as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) ? over the past few days as information about the background of the alleged shooter has surfaced in the media. The criticisms, which initially focused on the failure of the administration and the Army to use the word ?terrorism? or ?jihadism? in connection with Fort Hood, are now being merged with a larger Republican portrayal of the Obama administration?s approach toward terrorism generally.

?It?s very important what we call? the Fort Hood tragedy, said former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino. ?The failure of the connecting of the dots may indicate that in some areas we still have a law enforcement approach to domestic terror threats,? Perino said in a post in POLITICO?s Arena forum. ?That approach doesn’t stop the attack before it happens ? it waits, and then, if the attacker survives, prosecutes ?to the full extent of the law’! We can’t relax on terror threats or revert back to that approach ? we need to be proactive to prevent attacks using intelligence gathering. That might mean there are gray lines of political correctness that might make any of us uncomfortable. But look at the price that’s paid.?

What HotAir.com — via NPR — reports absolutely takes the cake. Walter Reed Medical Center knew that something was going on with Major Hasan, but they had absolutely no hard evidence that he was anything but he continually proclaimed himself to be — a Muslim jihadist.

First, the takeaway from NPR:

When a group of key officials gathered in the spring of 2008 for their monthly meeting in a Bethesda, Md., office, one of the leading ? and most perplexing ? items on their agenda was: What should we do about Hasan??

Both fellow students and faculty were deeply troubled by Hasan?s behavior ? which they variously called disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid. The officials say he antagonized some students and faculty by espousing what they perceived to be extremist Islamic views. His supervisors at Walter Reed had even reprimanded him for telling at least one patient that ?Islam can save your soul.??

One official involved in the conversations had reportedly told colleagues that he worried that if Hasan deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak secret military information to Islamic extremists. Another official reportedly wondered aloud to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of committing fratricide, like the Muslim U.S. Army sergeant who, in 2003, killed two fellow soldiers and injured 14 others by setting off grenades at a base in Kuwait. [emphases added by HotAir]

As HotAir goes on to opine:

Their chitchat about this guy continued into this year, with one official summing it up this way for NPR: ?Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.? And yet ? they were planning to deploy him anyway. In fact, here?s the amazing thing about the NPR piece, which you absolutely must read in its entirety: For all the speculation kicked around about Hasan possibly being schizoid or paranoid or having some other diagnosable condition, no hard evidence ? aside from his jihadist sympathies ? is offered. In fact, NPR flatly states that ?they didn?t have clear evidence that he was unstable.? Which makes me wonder if this is less a case of a guy in the grip of mental illness than a case of psychiatrists trying, and failing, to relate to radical ideology in the idiom of their profession.

The million-dollar question: Why didn?t they do something about it? Four reasons, per NPR: (1) Thanks to military bureaucracy, it?s hard to get a doctor fired; (2) he was being transferred to Fort Hood, so he?d be their problem soon; (3) they didn?t know about his e-mails to jihadbot preacher Anwar al-Aulaqi, thanks to the joint terrorism task force?s moronic rules barring information-sharing with other government agencies by its members without task force approval; and (4) ye olde reliable ?we didn?t want to be seen as discriminating? fear of political incorrectness. Which, of course, is also what led the feds to look the other way at his e-mail correspondence. As one investigator put it, ?(Hasan) appeared to be at a moral impasse, a moral dilemma who was reaching out for advice. Had we launched an investigation of Hasan we?d have been crucified.?

But that’s not all. Again, HotAir reports via ABCNews.com:

A senior government official tells ABC News that investigators have found that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had ?more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI? than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon.

Questions already surround Major Hasan?s contact with Awlaki, a radical cleric based in Yemen whom authorities consider a recruiter for al Qaeda. U.S. officials now confirm Hasan sent as many as 20 e-mails to Awlaki. Authorities intercepted the e-mails but later deemed them innocent or protected by the first amendment.

The FBI said it turned over the information to the Army, but Defense Department officials today denied that. One military investigator on a joint terror task force with the FBI was shown the e-mails, but they were never forwarded in a formal way to more senior officials at the Pentagon, and the Army did not learn of the contacts until after the shootings.

HotAir questions:

Awlaki (or in the 9/11 Commission report, Aulaqi) was bad enough. And the FBI knew about Aulaqi, unlike the Army, which was kept in the dark about Hasan?s correspondence. If they knew that Hasan had communicated with Aulaqi and other people on their terrorism watch lists, why didn?t they connect the dots? Why didn?t they at least inform Hasan?s chain of command?

It should probably be obvious by now that we’re getting a lot of this material via leaks:

All good questions ? and apparently, people in the intel community want some answers. American media outlets have been getting a deluge of leaks, all pointing to dropped balls in the counterterrorism effort as one reason Hasan still had access to Fort Hood and orders to deploy to a war zone. Those leaks do not occur by accident. They come from people who are either angry at the failure of the system to stop Hasan, or people looking to cover their own asses in the wake of earlier revelations. A ?senior government official? could be either, but it?s almost certainly one or the other.

As the scope of this failure becomes known, the big question will be this: how many more Hasans do we have, communicating with known terrorists and 9/11 attack suspects? If counterterrorism officials had this much information about Hasan and still didn?t act, it doesn?t leave any confidence at all that Hasan was just an anomaly.

And did you see Rasmussen’s new poll today that says that 60% of Americans want the shootings at Fort Hood to be treated as a terrorist attack?

Sixty percent (60%) of likely voters nationwide say last week’s shootings at Fort Hood should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 27% want the incident investigated by civilian authorities as a criminal act. Another 13% are not sure.

Those following the story Very Closely are even more likely to want the shooting investigated as an act of terrorism.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of all voters say Major Nidal Malik Hasan should receive the death penalty if convicted. Nineteen percent (19%) disagree, and 16% aren’t sure. …

Seventy-six percent (76%) believe the army should remove from duty all officers like Hasan who attempt to contact radical terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. Only seven percent (7%) disagree. This general view was articulated by Senator Joseph Lieberman, who said, “If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance.”

“There were definitely clear indications that Hasan’s loyalties were not with America,” Lt. Col. Val Finnell, a classmate of Hasan’s for two years at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., said in news reports.

I agree with HotAir’s conclusion regarding these numbers:

If more jihadist links start rising to the surface, you can bet that these numbers will grow significantly into a mandate.

As if all of the above weren’t enough, JihadWatch reports on the following FoxNews transcript between Greta van Susteren and an unidentified former classmate (more at the FoxNews link):

This is a rush transcript from “On the Record,” November 9, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.[...]

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, we already (INAUDIBLE) Sir, tell me, how did you — how did you know the suspect? When did you first meet him?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (FORMER CLASSMATE): Well, I met him as part of a master’s of public health program at the Uniformed Services University (INAUDIBLE) health sciences at Bethesda, Maryland, in 2007 and 2008.

VAN SUSTEREN: How much contact did you have with him in 2007 and 2008?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (FORMER CLASSMATE): Just about every day for several classes that we had together for about four or five months.

VAN SUSTEREN: Did he ever say anything peculiar, red flag-ish, that drew your attention?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (FORMER CLASSMATE): Lots. Lots. The first thing that raised a red flag was one of our first courses together was an environmental health class. We had to do a project or actually a presentation at the end of that class, and we were supposed to do some kind of environmental health project. Now, people were talking about mold. People were talking about water quality.

Well, Hasan gave a presentation on whether the war on terror was a war on Islam. I raised my hand immediately. I questioned why that type of topic was being presented at because it was so off-base, and it was allowed to continue. His radicalism grow throughout the year. He would make frequent comments that he was a Muslim first and an American or an officer second, and also that, you know, Islamic law, Sharia law took precedence over the Constitution. And we all became concerned because he’s a sworn officer of the United States and he’s supposed to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Yet his loyalties lied elsewhere.

VAN SUSTEREN: Did you make any complaints or any — note it to anybody else, or did anyone — did anyone else do that, or did the professor or teacher do anything, if you know?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (FORMER CLASSMATE): Well, I made that particular complaint at that point in time. I have a very close colleague who engaged senior leadership at the university, a number of people, regarding this matter, regarding his concerns over these statements that he made.

—-

It’s time to face a simple set of facts — the shootings that occurred on Thursday, November 5 were terroristic in nature, as I’m about to show. There is no amount of political correctness or the wanting to not offend the “wrong” individuals that will ever cover this up. Yet, there is another another fact — while not all Muslims are terrorists, some terrorists are Muslims, and — like it or not — we in America did not stop fighting the global war against Islamic terrorism just because we have a different President in office.

Let’s start by appropriately setting up what’s really going on here (h/t BigGovernment and Pamela Geller):

Barack Hussein Obama has advised us not to rush to judgment about the massacre at Fort Hood. ?We don?t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,? said the President in a statement he delivered from the Rose Garden (while George W. Bush was in Fort Hood).

Obama doesn?t want us to jump to the conclusion that the shootings at Fort Hood were a terrorist attack by an Islamic jihadist, Major Nidal Hasan. Obama would rather we forgot that Nidal Hasan screamed ?Allah akbar? before he mowed down scores of patriotic Americans and gave away Qurans with his business card before his act of jihad. Hasan also gave his landlord two week?s notice ? showing that he planned this for a long time. He didn?t just snap.

Obama wants us to ignore that Hasan went to a mosque where a jihadist imam preached hatred of America. The same imam was ?spiritual adviser? for three of the 9/11 hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001. Obama would rather we didn?t know that when Hasan was asked his nationality, he didn?t identify himself as an American, but as a Palestinian. Obama doesn?t want us to rush to judgment about how Hasan spoke approvingly of the shooting death by an Islamic jihad terrorist of a Little Rock Army recruiter in June. Obama doesn?t us to draw any conclusions from how Hasan reportedly was heard saying, ?maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Times Square.?

But Obama says, don?t rush to judgment. …

This was not the act of a crazy person. This was not the random act of a nutcase. Hasan committed murder execution style, at close range. He shot 44 to 50 rounds ? that?s a lot of ammunition to come out of those two guns in such a short period of time. This was premeditated. …

Everyone was too scared to be called a bigot for saying Nidal Hasan was dangerous. Or they just assumed he was a ?moderate.?

Like Obama, they rushed to judgment.

There were many, many signs that premeditation was involved with Major Hasan was involved in this first attack on American soil since September 11, 2001. Let’s start — via AmericanPower — with the following ABCNews video:

According to ABCNews, a top al Qaeda recruiter, Anwar al Awlaki, had been in contact with the Major:

As officials advance the investigation into the Army Major who allegedly perpetrated last week’s massacre at Fort Hood , attention is turning to Anwar al Awlaki, a top al Qaeda recruiter who was in contact with Major Nidal Malik Hasan before last week’s shootings.

Awlaki, a charismatic American Muslimimam, now operates a jihadist web site out of Yemen that calls on all Muslims to wage war against the U.S. Officials say Hasan had between 10 and 20 contacts with Awlaki beginning late last year.

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Hasan was attempting to make contact with Awlaki, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

According to the officials, the Army was informed of Hasan’s contact, but it is unclear what, if anything, the Army did in response.

“Awlaki is known as a senior recruiter for al Qaeda,” former FBI agent Brad Garrett, now an ABC News consultant, told Nightline. “He would be the spiritual motivator. Almost like someone you would go to and say, ‘this is what I’m thinking about doing.’ And they join in and encourage you and basically help you rationalize your behavior.”

On Wednesday, a new blog entry on Awlaki’s site praised Hasan as a “hero” and a “man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

Before moving to Yemen, Awlaki was the imam of a Falls Church, Virginia mosque that was attended by Hasan and two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Per The Wall Street Journal:

Federal law enforcement officials said that Maj. Hasan, who is recovering in a Texas hospital, communicated 10 to 20 times by email with Mr. Awlaki, the onetime spiritual leader of a mosque in Virginia that Maj. Hasan attended with several of his relatives. Mr. Awlaki now lives in Yemen.

Maj. Hasan’s emails to Mr. Awlaki were intercepted as part of an effort National Security Agency effort to monitor the electronic communications of suspected Islamic extremists world-wide.

A federal investigator said the FBI contacted Maj. Hasan’s then-employers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to find out more about his background and professional occupation, but acknowledged that such background checks were fairly routine and that the emails in question appeared benign.

Army officials declined to comment about whether officials at Walter Reed conducted a follow-up investigation into Maj. Hasan or alerted others within the Army hierarchy after they had received the FBI inquiry.

“That’s all part of the investigation,” said Col. Catherine Abbott, an Army spokeswoman.

However, as the AP reports, government officials had already been investigating Major Hasan as far back as December 2008:

WASHINGTON ? Finger-pointing erupted between federal agencies Tuesday over Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan. Government officials said a Defense Department terrorism investigator looked intoHasan’s contacts with a radical imam months ago, but a military official denied prior knowledge of the Army psychiatrist’s contacts with any Muslim extremists.

The two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case on the record, said the Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by theFBI was notified of communications between Hasan and a radical imam overseas, and the information was turned over to a Defense Criminal Investigative Service employee assigned to the task force. The communications were gathered by investigators beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.

That Defense investigator wrote up an assessment of Hasan after reviewing the communications and the Army major’s personnel file, according to these officials. The assessment concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation ? in large part because his communications with the imam were centered on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator determined that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said. …

The disclosure Tuesday of the defense investigator’s role indicated that the U.S. military was aware of worrisome behavior by the massacre suspect long before the attack. Just hours later, a senior defense official, also demanding anonymity, directly contradicted that notion.

The senior defense official said neither the Army nor any other part of the Defense Department knew of Hasan’s contacts with any Muslim extremists. But the defense official carefully conceded this view was based upon what the Pentagon knows now.

The FBI has launched its own internal review of how it handled the early information about Hasan. Military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies also are defending themselves against tough questions about what each of them knew about Hasan before he allegedly opened fire in a crowded room at the huge military basein Texas.

Some further warnings, as reported by FoxNews:

? In the days and weeks before the shooting, Hasan voiced his objections to Muslims fighting the war on terror to members of his mosque, the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen. Congregants at the mosque said he voiced his objections to Muslims serving in the U.S. military and to his impending deployment to Afghanistan.

? Over the summer, Hasan’s comments led Osman Danquah, co-founder of the mosque, to recommend that it deny Hasan’s request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood, the Associated Press reported.

? In the months before Thursday’s shooting Hasan tried reaching out to people associated with Al Qaeda ? and did so under the watchful eye of at least one U.S. intelligence agency. An intelligence official told FOXNews.com that “Hasan was on our radar for months.”

Much of the above could theoretically be explainable under a number of circumstances, but for the next major pieces of evidence that support Major Hasan’s radical beliefs.

According to The Washington Post, Major Hasan gave the following presentation, lecturing on Islam instead of a medical topic:

Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood, was supposed to discuss a medical topic during a presentation to senior Army doctors in June 2007. Instead, he lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Muslim countries.

MAJHasanSlides

While the entire presentation is quite eye-popping, the last page is especially direct:

Department of Defense should allow Muslim Soldiers the option of being released as “Conscientious objectors” to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.

No, really — look at page 50, it’s right there. It’s as if, somehow, if anyone who is voluntarily serving in the military (which, of course, is precisely how our professional, all-volunteer force is comprised) has some semblance of a problem with any action with which the American government gets involved, they should be allowed to pick and choose when, if and to what extent they’re going to serve.

I certainly hope I’m not the only one that sees a problem with this kind of attitude. And if you’d like further reaction (or lack thereof) from those who have been associated with Major Hasan, the previously-linked FoxNews article goes into those further details. Also, Ms. Geller reports on further reaction on the above:

UPDATE: Other classmates who participated in a 2007-2008 master?s program at a military college said they, too, had complained to superiors about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan?s anti-American views, which included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution. (more here)

And as RightSoup reports, check out the Major’s business card:

So, what’s up with the acronyms?

Ft. Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan?s Islamic extremism was no secret to his colleagues and superiors. No, Nidal?s carrying-card, shown above? has it spelled out for all to see. After the traditional ?M.D.?, Hasan added ?SOA.? and ?SWT.? ?SOA? stands for ?Soldiers Of Allah?, ?SWT? used when writing the name Allah; Muslims often follow it with the abbreviation ?SWT.? These letters stand for the Arabic words ?Subhanahu Wa Ta?ala,? or ?Glory to Him, the Exalted.? Muslims use these or similar words to glorify God when mentioning His name.

Hasan passed this card out before he went on his jihad against the brave men and women at Ft. Hood, many of them his colleagues. That awful morning, he also passed out copies of the Quran, and gave away the food in his house. [emphases original]

Yet, with all of the above, the thing that could be the most damning piece of evidence for this Administration is the fact that Major Hasan was a Task Force Event Participant for the transitional Homeland Security Presidential Transition Task Force (please see report page 29):

PTTF_ProceedingsReport_05.19.09

Here’s the main take-away of this report, a la LibertarianRepublican:

Meanwhile, a lot of very important material is now coming out about the Ft. Hood Jihadist-killer.

A Report from the Dept. of Homeland Security Policy Institute, dated April 2008 -- Jan. 2009, titled “Thinking Anew: Security Priorities for the Next Administration,” lists Hassan as a Task Force Participant (Source: Examiner):

Homeland Security Institute
Nidal Hasan
Uniformed Services University School of Medicine

What did Obama and Napolitano know . . . and when did they know . . . that Hasan was a terrorist? If Obama knew and protected Hasan, then he has committed impeachable offenses.

Yes, you read that correctly, too. In other words, what did he [the President] know, and when did he know it? Of course, isn’t this kind of situation so familiar with this man, Mr. Obama?

What’s more, according to the Telegraph out of the UK, the Taliban is claiming to get in on the action:

The Taliban claimed there would be more attacks like the Fort Hood shootings unless Washington ends it policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a report.

It also described the US army psychiatrist who carried out the massacre in Texas as a “hero”.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist websites, said it had picked up a Taliban message praising the attack.

The message said: “The recent attack on the military base in Texas warns that if the occupation policy of the American rulers continues in this way, without them folding the carpets of occupation and transgression in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is natural then that incidents and attacks similar to Texas will spread to the Pentagon and other American military centres.

“According to media reports, the hero of the attack is a Muslim psychiatrist and major in the American army, of Palestinian origin.”

So, what is Congress doing about it? According to CNSNews.com, Rep. Hoekstra is going on the offense:

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Monday that the Obama administration has been withholding ?critical information? on the Fort Hood murders allegedly committed by Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

Hoekstra is demanding that the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Director of National Intelligence preserve documents relating to the incident for use in possible future congressional investigation.

“President Obama said people should not jump to conclusions about what happened at Fort Hood, but the administration is in possession of critical information related to the attack that they are refusing to release to Congress or the American people,” Hoekstra said in a statement. “I intend to push for intense review of this and other issues related to the performance of the intelligence community and whether or not information necessary for military, state and local officials to provide for the security of the post was provided to them.”

The Michigan lawmaker sent a letter Saturday to the top administration intelligence officials, saying he saw ?serious issues? with their performance related to the Fort Hood murders, and indicating that the intelligence community had refused to comply with his request to review certain information related to the case.

As the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, Hoekstra is one of the so-called Gang of Eight--a group of lawmakers that included the leaders of the House and Senate and the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees--who are briefed on intelligence activities deemed too sensitive to share with the full intelligence committees.

The Politico has more coverage of potential action — and, unfortunately yet obviously, inaction — in Congress.

As I round out this posting, a number of commentary links cover the fact that we’re taking political correctness to an extreme that could one day destroy us if we’re not careful:

• Fort Hood’s 9/11 (New York Post)
• Fort Hood and the PC Cowards (BernardGoldberg.com)
• Did Political Correctness Cause Oversight of Fort Hood Terrorist? (HumanEvents.com)

Don’t forget: Jonah Goldberg at TownHall.com implores us to connect the “Unconnected Dots,” especially in light of the following graphic showing recent, known locations of the Islamic terrorist network in America (via standeyo.com):

Last but certainly by no means least, Jeff Schreiber at AmericasRight has a great posting with a further listing of more reporting being done by the excellent blogs AtlasShrugs and JihadWatch.

Terrorists and terrorism are on American soil and in full force. If we continue to proceed down the rhetorical road of putting our collective heads in the proverbial sand of political correctness, that sand will turn out to be quicksand and will swallow us whole.

As the saying goes: “If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.”

Evil is real and is manifested by such atrocities as what we saw not only on the morning of September 11th, but also in the attack at Fort Hood. Instead of dismissing the concept of terrorism simply because someone is in the military or because they have an Islamic-sounding name, let’s deal with the issue head-on and bring true justice to the victims.

After all, the truth is always the best policy to pursue.

-Phil

AxXiom’s Rules for Activists

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Photo courtesy CBSNews

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on November 12, 2009 (boomark / email).