Thursday, November 26, 2009

by Ann Coulter (more by this author)
Posted 11/25/2009 ET
Updated 11/25/2009 ET

It's been weeks since eyewitnesses reported that Maj. Nidal Hasan shouted "Allahu akbar" before spraying Fort Hood with gunfire, killing 13 people.

Since then we also learned that Hasan gave a medical lecture on beheading infidels and pouring burning oil down their throats (unfortunately not covered under the Senate health care bill). Some wondered if perhaps a pattern was beginning to emerge but were promptly dismissed as racist cranks.

We also found out Hasan had business cards printed up with the jihadist abbreviation "SOA" for "Soldier of Allah." Was that enough to conclude that the shooting was an act of terrorism -- or does somebody around here need to take another cultural sensitivity class?

And we know that Hasan had contacted several jihadist Web sites and that he had been exchanging e-mails with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen. The FBI learned that last December, but the rest of us only found out about it a week ago.

Is it still too soon to come to the conclusion that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terrorism?

Alas, it is still too early to tell at MSNBC. For Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews -- at least two of whom would be severely punished under Shariah law -- the shooting of George Tiller was an act of terrorism, no question. The death of a census taker in Kentucky was also an act of terrorism. (We learned this week that it was a suicide/insurance scam.) But as to Maj. Hasan, the jury is still out -- and will be out for many, many years.

Actually, according to Keith, the Fort Hood massacre may not have happened at all. He has argued persuasively, on several occasions, that it is impossible, literally impossible, to commit mass murder at a military base. (has someone told the 13 dead that they may not have died after all?)

Like many on the left, Keith loved to sneer at all terrorist plots allegedly foiled by the Bush administration. He was particularly contemptuous of the purported plan of six aspiring jihadists to sneak onto the Fort Dix army base and kill as many soldiers as they could.

On Nov. 11, 2008, he explained why the Fort Dix terrorist plot was a laughable fraud, saying the "morons" apparently didn't realize that "all the soldiers have these big guns." (Kitten is wondering just which morons Olberman is referring to. Perhaps he's talking in third person?)

Keith, the moron, apparently doesn't realize that on military bases on U.S. soil only MPs have guns. (Special authorization is required for soldiers to carry a firearm, which can be granted only in the case of a specific and credible threat against military personnel in that region. Thank you, Bill Clinton.)

Again on May 21 this year, Olbermann ridiculed the Fort Dix terror plot, pointing out that the six alleged terrorists seemed to be "forgetting that every man there was armed."(Curiously, even though ROTC was offered at the ag school Keith attended, he appears not to have investigated it.)

But it was not until Aug. 21 of this year that Olbermann hit upon the true reason for the Bush administration's hyping of this implausible terror plot. According to Keith -- and I'm not kidding -- it was to distract from Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' announcement that her state had been unable to respond adequately to a tornado because Bush had diverted the National Guard to his crazy war in Iraq!

The Bush administration, you see, had revealed the arrest of the Fort Dix conspirators the day after Sebelius' world-reverberating bombshell about Kansas' decimated National Guard! Eureka!

This little theory of Keith's, adorable though it is, has problems apart from his insistence that it would be impossible to kill army personnel on "a closed compound full of trained soldiers with weapons." The other problem is Gov. Sebelius was full of crap.

First, Sebelius wasn't in much of a position to know how well Kansas responded to the tornado, inasmuch as she had been partying at New Orleans' Jazzfest the day after the tornado hit -- while Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts and both local congressmen were on the scene, helping the rescue efforts.

Second, the manager of the actual rescue team soon contradicted Sebelius, saying: "We have all the staff that we need and can manage at this time. If we had more people right now, it would just start being a cluster."

The Kansas National Guard had 352 Humvees, 72 dump trucks and more than 320 other trucks, which would seem to be sufficient for the town hit by the tornado, Greensburg, Kan., population 1,574. That's almost one National Guard truck for every two people. (This is the same tornado that Obama claimed had killed 10,000 people. He was off by 9,988.)

Third, it turned out that Gov. Sebelius had rejected offers of additional help from neighboring National Guard units. (Note: doesn't this tickle your memory of Hurricane Katrina? Didn't the governor whose name escapes me at the moment, and Mayor Nagin (I wish I could forget him!) fail to request aid both before and after Katrina struck? I have memories of hundreds of school buses that could have been used to transport residents out of NO before the storm, sitting under water. Okay, maybe not mirror image examples, but clearly someone is pointing fingers trying to play the blame someone else game).

Consequently, the day after her dramatic cri de coeur for more National Guard resources, Sebelius' office completely reversed course, telling The Associated Press that the rescue efforts were going "just fine."

What the governor had meant, her office explained, was that Kansas' National Guard might be stretched thin if, hypothetically, another natural disaster were to strike immediately after the tornado.

Keith, unfortunately, was unaware of Sebelius' humiliating about-face, as it was not carried on Daily Kos.

Last December, five of the Fort Dix plotters were found guilty by a federal jury of conspiring to kill American soldiers. The sixth had already pleaded guilty.

Still, compare the macho posturing of the Bush administration over thwarting the Fort Dix terror plot to the masterful handling of domestic terrorist plots since the angel Obama has taken the helm. Why, the Obama administration managed to capture and arrest Maj. Hasan without violating a single American's civil liberties!

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I'm not personally convinced Fort Hood was an "act of terrorism" except that I'm sure there were people who were terrified, and in fear of their lives at the time. But, other than Major Hasan being classified as a mass murderer, I'm not sure how to describe it. Act of Terrorism? Simple case of mass murder?

Since I don't know what the "official" definition of "act of terrorism" might be, I have to use my own references. When I think of and "act of terrorism", I think first of 9/11. This was a group effort masterminded with the expressed intent of bringing down the United States, or as close as possible. I believe "terrorists" would go after any target, military or civilian, with little regard as to who might be harmed or killed. Remember, 9/11 targeted both military and civilian buildings. This wasn't in retaliation for military aggression; these terrorists just didn't care who was killed. The object was to kill Americans.

I think Hasan had issues with the Army and Army personnel. We know that he had gotten poor performance reviews. He was unhappy with his pending deployment to Afghanistan. I believe he had requested not to go to the Mid-East because he didn't want to fight other Muslims. I really can't fault him for that. Asian Americans faced that during WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam. German Americans and Italian Americans also faced that situation in Europe during WWI, and WWII. They could be fighting and killing relatives.

He was turned down and deployment was imminent. As a psychiatrist, the chances of him seeing actual combat were slim. He would probably have been assigned to a medical unit or facility so that he would be able to treat military personnel for mental health issues (a very broad range from the "blues" to catatonic and disassociative disorders and probably others. I'm not in the mental health field, and I don't even play one on TV, so I might be using labels I know little about).

And I'm not too awfully sure that this might not have been a case of "suicide by cop", or MP, or other military personnel. If I remember correctly, Hasan purchased the gun which was used during this massacre. It wasn't an issued sidearm or other "big gun" as Olberman described being on military bases. So, while addressing his issues against the Army and Army personnel, was he hoping that an MP would do the job that he couldn't do? Kill himself?

Sure, it's terrifying to be in a situation such as Fort Hood. I hope I never experience anything remotely like it. I'm wondering if because of our current focus on terrorism, the media isn't labeling events that might once have been reported as a "simple" mass murder as terroristic acts just for the sensationalism.

After all, an "act of terror" surely will draw more readers, listeners, and viewers than a plain old, garden variety mass murder would.

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