Hood massacre report gutless and shameful

by snuffysmith | January 16, 2010 at 12:00 pm

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Ralph Peters of the New York Post has written a damning indictment of the DOD Report "Protecting the Force Lessons From Fort Hood," which is an examination and investigation into the causes and circumstances surrounding the Fort Hood massacre by Major Hasan that occurred last Fall.

There are two basic problems with the grotesque non-report on the Islamist- terror massacre at Fort Hood (released by the Defense Department yesterday):

* It's not about what happened at Fort Hood.

* It avoids entirely the issue of why it happened.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It's so inept, it doesn't even rise to cover-up level.

"Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood" never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat "the alleged perpetrator," Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they're still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).

The report of the Pentagon probe apparently blames an "information gap." It certainly suffers from one. Peters writes:

The report is so politically correct that its authors don't even realize the extent of their political correctness -- they're body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian.

Reading the report, you get the feeling that, jeepers, things actually went pretty darned well down at Fort Hood. Commanders, first responders and everybody but the latest "American Idol" contestants come in for high praise.

The teensy bit of specific criticism is reserved for the "military medical officer supervisors" in Maj. Hasan's chain of command at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As if the problem started and ended there.

Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn't stop Hasan's career in its tracks.

The answer is straightforward: Hasan's superiors feared -- correctly -- that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today's armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

Ralph Peters asks the questions that the Fort Hood Investigators have avoided, and it should come as no surprise that they get the criticism they deserve. My first hope is that Secretary Gates has the guts to reject the report as being inadequate on its face, especially in light of the recent official pronouncement from the intelligence community that Hasan's actions constituted a terror attack on the military. And if not an outright rejection, a resubmission back to those who wrote the report with the advice that they upgrade their conclusions in light of the recent intelligence.

Barring that, my second hope is that the trial will reveal more information. This won't be a civil trial bu a military one. However, when I look at the way things are going, I for one would not be surprised to learn in the months to come of an agreement to a plea deal, thereby avoiding any trial or publicity. And if there is a trial, it will be classified.

Call me a cynic. The bureaucracy doesn't like to admit it erred big time.

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snuffysmith

at 12:10 on January 16th, 2010

More News On The Fort Hood Shooting Report

Obama Fort Hood shooting review: need better tracking of "disaffected" individuals -- Chicago Sun Times
Pentagon Report on Fort Hood Details Failures -- New York Times
Fort Hood Shooting Report: Warning Signs Were 'Missed' and 'Ignored' -- ABC News
Pentagon Inquiry: Supervisors Discounted Fort Hood Suspect's Worrisome Behavior -- Washington Post
Fort Hood shooting was terrorism, U.S. says -- Reuters
Gates Makes Recommendations in Ft. Hood Shooting Case -- Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times
Major Hasan’s Smooth Ascension -- New York Times editorial
Ft. Hood Review Faults Hasan's Bosses -- Kara Rowland, Washington Times

Karl Gotthardt - albertacowpoke

at 12:19 on January 16th, 2010

This is another case of bureaucratic gooblie gawb that is trying to appease the public. A blind man could have seen the warning signs. The problem wasn't the signs, but why wasn't anyone acting on the plentiful information available?

Rory Cripps

at 12:42 on January 16th, 2010

Great post! As I've implied over and over again on numerous NP posts, PC is the most pernicious form of sociological cancer! It completely precludes any and all legitimate debate regarding matters of life and death. It stifles free speech. And its effect is to propel a free and independent citizenry into a reactionary state.

Rasmussen says that 79 percent of voters believe another terrorist attack is likely within the next year and 63 percent say political correctness prevented the military from responding to warning signs from Major Nidal Malik Hasan that could have prevented the Fort Hood shootings from taking place.

Most voters believe the massacre at Fort Hood, should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act rather than by civilian authorities as a criminal act. 58 percent say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

snuffysmith

at 19:03 on January 18th, 2010

Muslim Question Persists In Army Shooting -- Washington Times

Fear of offending Muslims or being insensitive to religion was likely a key factor to why Army supervisors missed signs that the suspect in the deadly Fort Hood shooting rampage was a Muslim extremist, according to national security experts.

Senior Pentagon officials last week sought to play down or sidestep questions about why Army supervisors and FBI counterterrorism officials missed warning signs or failed to take action against Army Maj. Nidal Hasan before the Nov. 5 attack, which killed 13 people — all but one them soldiers.

Read more