Ft. Hood

Wow it didn’t even take a week for this to happen:

The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee on Tuesday night accused the White House of withholding information on the Fort Hood attack.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) said administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman, raising "red flags" about what the White House was hiding.

"When they withhold information, you always start asking questions," Hoekstra told Fox News. "That's what raises red flags. What do they know that they don't want us to know?"

Maybe we should all take some time and tell Hoekstra that the politicizing of the horror that happened at Ft. Hood won’t be tolerated.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R - MI-2) Website http://hoekstra.house.gov/ Phone 202-225-4401 Fax 202-226-0779 Contact http://www.house.gov/formhoekstra/IMA/email.htm Additional Information

And they came out already, starting with Hannity, who is claiming that President Obama knew about Maj. Hasan.

As Cesca reminds us:

After 9/11, everyone -- everyone -- supported President Bush. But it's clear that the wingnuts and Republicans will never give our current president the same deference.

But what about George Bush – did he know? Maybe we can start a new form of “Ft. Hood truthers” here, ones that have a little more evidence on their side:

The FBI and the Army last year investigated contacts between a Yemen-based militant Islamist prayer leader and the Army psychiatrist accused of last week’s deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, but they dropped the case after concluding that he didn’t pose a terrorist threat, a senior federal law enforcement official said Monday.

The disclosure on Monday that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan communicated with an imam who had ties to Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers was sure to raise the question of whether U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies had information that, if properly shared and investigated, might have helped to prevent the attack.

So not only was this guy making contacts under Bush’s watch, but Bush’s FBI investigated him.

I would say there is more just in saying that Bush knew of Hassan than Obama. I mean this guy was brought up in the military under Bush’s watch and slipped through under Bush’s “totally awesome” interrogation and investigating techniques. I wonder what Dick Cheney will have to say about this?

A soldier shoots a bunch of people on a military base where the people are allowed to carry guns. It took a civilian police officer to finally take him down. Does that mean the argument of allowing teachers and anyone else to carry guns would reduce the number of school shootings or casualties?

Not 24 hours after the massacre at Ft. Hood, wingnuts have found a way to turn it into something political. In this instance, Maj. Hasan was an adviser to Obama, brought to you by birther in chief – Jerome Corsi. What a great way to honor the memory of those who perished yesterday – NOT.

There is still a lot of speculating going on, but the most reasonable sounding thing I have heard so far is this:

His cousin said Maj Hasan had been resisting such a deployment.

"He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of trying everything," Nader Hasan told Fox News.

He also said that Nidal Malik Hasan had been battling racial harassment because of his "Middle Eastern ethnicity".

(emphasis added)

Even on The Today Show they were interviewing people who know Maj. Hasan and talked about how much he heard things like “sand nigger” or “terrorist” yelled at him.

While the right is trying to paint Hasan as some Islamic terrorist, just look at the guy. He was American born and just spent countless years going through school to become a Psychiatrist, MD. This wasn’t a man planning on doing something like this, this was a man who snapped.

So our question now is how to fix our relationship with Muslims. The military really needs to take a long, hard inner look at itself and come up with a way to limit incidents like this.

And the fix isn’t limited to the military alone – it also must include society. For example, look at this:

Here we have a guy who went on a rampage, and so far the one of the leading reasons is that he was constantly harassed about his ethnicity and religious beliefs, and then you add in a big voice of the right making wild claims like this. This isn’t a solution – it’s asking for more of the same.

Luckily Maj. Hasan is still alive. Now maybe we can get a better idea of what was going through his mind when he decided this was the route to take. Hopefully we can use that as a teaching moment also and try to instill a better sense of tolerance in both our military and society as a whole.

This could be a make or break moment for President Obama. How he takes the lead on this will really define him not only as our President, but also as a man. We can’t afford any cover-up of what really happened. We need full transparency here and for our Commander in Chief to insure the changes needed to help prevent future events like this from happening. The coming weeks and months should prove to be rather interesting as this story continues to unravel.

Watching Tweety talk about the carnage that happened today at Ft. Hood is seriously raising my blood pressure. In a conversation between him and Cliff Van Zandt I have heard 9/11 brought up a few times and reference the main shooters last name, Hasan, as being a key to what has happened. Of course then Matthews precedes to talk about how people will “turn to conspiracy theory and speculation” right after he just spent 32 minutes doing just that.

People like Matthews shouldn’t be allowed on the air when stories like this happen. He has a history of suffering from massive foot in mouth disease, and today is not a time for him to exhibit it. Please MSNBC – yank him off and let Shuster or one of the other’s fill in.