I don’t want to go too deep down the Fort Hood Rabbit Hole Of Weirdness, so I’m just going to get off my chest some of the incredibly weird shit that’s being thrown around in the media to confuse us or throw us off. It’s looking pretty clearly like there’s a cover-up in progress, and not a very professional cover-up either. But the sad thing is that all the confusion and bullshit thrown our way will probably succeed in its goal of steering the public away from whatever it is the military doesn’t want us to find out about the shooting massacre.
Anyway, here’s my list of The Top Twelve Disinformation Tales to keep an eye on:
1. A ridiculous story planted in London’s Daily Telegraph makes Hasan out to be an old pal of the 9/11 terrorists. The Telegraph also reported that a mysterious Arab-looking visitor came to Hasan’s apartment 2 days before the shooting, like something out of a bad TV show:
“It was very unusual because he had never had anyone round before. He had long black hair and a moustache and a dark complexion.”
Remember, this is the same Daily Telegraph that last month ran a fake story claiming that Iran’s leader Ahmadinejad was born a Jew—a story that was quickly debunked as a disinformation plant. The Telegraph has a history of false plants–like the 2003 article claiming they had discovered “proof” that Saddam Hussein trained up the 9/11 terrorists in Baghdad.
Nevertheless, it’s working: now everyone from CBS to the Associated Press are reporting the Telegraph story, and the FBI is acting on the same tip, according to CBS.
2. NPR ran a story sourcing an unnamed Walter Reed psychiatrist (again, unnamed!) who claimed to be a colleague of Hasan’s painting a shocking portrait of a Muslim terrorist: supposedly Hasan went ballistic on his fellow students during a lecture that was supposed to be about medical issues. Instead, according to NPR:
The psychiatrist says that [Hasan] was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.
…dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he – Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don’t believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You’re set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.
Then the NPR report said that Hasan’s Walter Reed colleagues were told not to talk to anyone anymore, especially the FBI:
ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he’s a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they’ve been instructed – all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they’re afraid, potentially, what if people decide investigating this that people missed potential warning signs about the guy? You know, this is speculation still, but�
INSKEEP: How can they not talk to the FBI?
ZWERDLING: Well, our colleague Dina Temple-Raston has heard that from the FBI, and this military officer is telling me the same thing from Walter Reed.
INSKEEP: OK. Gentlemen, thanks very much. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling and Tom Gjelten. Thanks to you both.
No-no-no, thank you, NPR, for not pursuing that giant screaming WHAT THE FUCK red-flag there. Then again, let’s not forget how the military got busted back in 2000 for planting PSYOPS agents trained in propaganda on NPR’s news staff:
The first intern at NPR rotated among newsmagazines from September to November 1998. The other two worked for Talk of the Nation, one from January to February 1999, the other from March to May 1999. NPR and Withington would not identify the interns or allow them to be interviewed for this article.
All of the interns were non-commissioned U.S. Army officers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group based at Ft. Bragg, N.C. PSYOP overtly disseminates information supporting U.S. goals and policy to other countries. For example, the unit has placed signs in Colombian airports discouraging drug smuggling. “In civilian terms, it’s like working in an ad agency or a public relations firm,” Withington says.
The Army began to arrange the internships through NPR’s human resources office in February 1998, according to Withington.
NPR spokeswoman Jess Sarmiento says the human resources department, including Vice President for Human Resources Kathleen Jackson, knew the interns worked for PSYOP when it hired them, but thought news staffers had okayed the plan. Dvorkin says he wasn’t aware the interns were from PSYOP until a few weeks ago. It’s possible that the interns’ immediate supervisors knew, but Sarmiento says the PSYOP tie was news to a higher-up, whom she would not name, who learned of it only near the end of the third intern’s stint. And Dvorkin says he wasn’t aware the interns were from PSYOP until a few weeks ago.
3. The FBI claims that they were monitoring Hasan ever since they supposedly caught him praising suicide bombers 6 months ago. Yet they did nothing. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson explained why, using the same excuse Condi Rice used after 9/11:
“I don’t think that anyone would have ever expected a psychiatrist trained to help others’ mental health would be the one who would go off himself, unless there’s more to it, and that’s what they’re looking for.”
Indeed.
But the story changes…because today, the FBI is saying that actually they had it wrong about his blogging for suicide bombers, and in fact they have no evidence Hasan communicated with jihadist sites, except that he may have visited them online:
(CBS) A preliminary review of the computer of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused shooter in Thursday’s rampage at Fort Hood in which 13 people were killed, has revealed no evidence of any connection to terror groups or conspirators, according to law enforcement officials.
4. In spite of all of this in-your-face evidence that Hasan was the craziest jihadist this side of the Jordan River, and in spite of all of the gazillions of officers and colonels and colleagues going on the air saying that Hasan’s radical Islamic extremism troubled them, nonetheless, according to the New York Times, “officials were not prepared to say whether the attack was the act of a lone and troubled man or connected to terrorist groups, foreign or domestic.” Hutchinson added yesterday in the same article,
Ms. Hutchison said in remarks at the base that while Major Hasan was the only one who had opened fire, it was still unclear whether he had planned the attack alone. “That is a question still to be asked,” Ms. Hutchison said.
5. While they’re hush on that, they sure were gabbing like cokefiends during and after the shootings about supposedly 3 shooters in military garb firing M16s. Or that the Hasan was killed, and later survived and was in stable condition, then later it turned out he was in a coma, and so on. The stories were always specific yet unsourced–suggesting something more than mere confusion of the moment. Take for example this detail-packed story planted on a CNN correspondent:
A senior officer who was playing golf Thursday near Fort Hood, Texas, told CNN he witnessed the arrest of one of the two surviving suspects of the shooting at the Army installation.
Shortly after the shooting, the officer said, military police told him to clear the course and he saw other MPs surround the building that held the golf carts, he said.
The senior officer said he ducked into a nearby house for cover as 30 to 40 cars carrying MPs approached.
He said he saw a soldier in battle-dress uniform, his hands in the air. The MPs ordered him to lie on the ground and open his uniform, presumably to ensure he was not carrying explosives, the senior officer said.
He said an MP told him that authorities considered the man to be a suspect in the shootings after having overheard the man say he was with the shooter.
6. The media was quick to report that no one died in friendly fire. End of story. And we know it’s true because the same local police who might have killed soldiers conducted ballistics tests on the scene, and amazingly enough, they cleared themselves. Also, what happened to earlier reports that at least some police on Fort Hood’s base were civilian contractors? Like this report in USA Today:
Update at 7:08 p.m. ET: CNN reports that Hasan was 39, licensed in Virginia and had worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center before practicing at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood.
Besides Hasan, the dead include 10 soldiers and a civilian police officer working on the base as a contractor.
7. The strange story that Hasan was part of a Washington task force to offer advice to incoming-President Obama. I don’t care what anyone says, it does look weird. Righties twisted it to prove that Hasan was a close advisor to the Islamofascist Barack Obama; but liberals squealed that just because Hasan was on a task force, doesn’t mean diddley. Um, yes it does–if you don’t think it’s odd, you shouldn’t be in this business. Jesus Christ, how can anyone not think it’s weird, especially when they’re painting a portrait of Hasan as at the peak of his fanatical Islamofascism, screaming in lectures about beheading infidels? The real question is, what the fuck was he doing there???
8. Supposedly Hasan would walk around public in full Muslim garb, like when he visited the convenience store the morning of the shooting, which was conveniently caught on camera… but he’d wear his military garb in mosque. Also, note how the media quickly got used to using a black-and-white photo of Hasan, even though there are plenty of color photos including color versions of the same b/w photo. The b/w photo instantly recalls the 9/11 suspects’ photos. Here, take a look:
Exhibit A: What sort of terrorist is this, I ask you!? He looks downright nice, I tell ya! Next!
Exhibit B: H’m, we can definitely do something with this…
Exhibit C: Just take the photo above, click the “black-and-white” button, add a bit of blurriness to make it nice ‘n terroristy, then place it next to colorized Americans, and voila! Folks, I think we got ourselves a terrorist, wouldn’t you agree?
Exhibit D: Oh yeah, no doubt about it, folks, this guy puts the “error” in “terrorist”:
Exhibit E: Okay, now that we’ve got that established, we can run a few blurry CCTV color shots of Hasan dressed up in his Halloween Islamofascist costume:
Voila! That wasn’t so hard, was it?
9. Why is no one following up on reports that Hasan was serving in the military all the way back in 1989, when he attended Barstow community college in the California desert–meaning he was in the military for at least 20 years. Here’s one local report from the Victorville Daily Press:
College records also show that Hasan, who would have been 19- or 20-years-old at the time, was A private first class or below while attending Barstow College. Hasan’s residential address zip code also indicated that he was living on post, according to Stokes.
Fort Irwin officials have not yet been able to confirm whether Hasan was stationed at the fort at that time, according to spokesman Etric Smith. Smith said that Army records show that Hasan became an active duty soldier in 1997 and said fort officials could not account for the discrepancy at the time.
They also reported he was a straight-A “model student” which conflicts with the portrait of the slacker terrorist who took scholarship money from the gullible US government.
10. Hasan was a psychiatrist. It could mean not just that he was studying treatment and therapy, as they say; but also, as we learned about military psychologists, Hasan could have been in a program involving interrogation and torture. Just sayin’. Think how the military and intelligence might best want to use an asset like Hasan: an Arab and a Muslim with training in psychiatry, and a trail of Muslim-fanatic credentials that for some strange reason never got him in trouble. I could think of a lot of ways a guy like this could be useful in a theater of war, or in trying to capture terrorists.
11. If Hasan was in Al Qaeda and his goal was all along to attack Americans, why did he fight so hard to get out of going to Iraq and make such a loud stink about his sympathies with suicide bombers? Why would hire lawyer and even offer to pay to get out of the service? As we know with the 9/11 terrorists, the whole point of being a sleeper terrorist is to pretend you’re more American than the red-blooded Americans: go to casinos and strip bars, drink all the liquor you can in everyone’s sight, etc. Obviously Army knew he was unhappy, and they knew that he was a crazy Muslim. Were they really too dumb to put two and two together, or did they know and use him or dangle him in some way?
12. If you wanted to conduct a fake investigation, who better to head it up than neocon tool Joe Lieberman? Lieberman already showed his impartiality and determination to get to the truth by declaring on television that Hasan is a “home-grown terrorist.”
Keep in mind that there could be all sorts of reasons why they’d want to cover it up. For example, if this was a “going postal” workplace shooting, which I still lean towards, that’s as good a reason as any for government officials to throw together a half-assed cover-up…because they’re covering their own asses. A perfect example of a police coverup of a shooting massacre is what happened after Columbine. The coverup was so crude families of victims eventually filed lawsuits, as this 2002 article explains:
(AP) The families of five slain Columbine students asked that a federal grand jury investigate their claims that authorities have covered up evidence that one student was killed by police.
“Lies have been told, beyond any doubt,” family attorney Barry Arrington said after he submitted his request to the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday. “The only issue is, why are they lying?”
The families claim an officer accidentally shot 15-year-old Daniel Rohrbough as he fled the school during the April 20, 1999, massacre.
Rohrbough’s father, Brian, claims Denver police Sgt. Dan O’Shea told a school administrator he feared he might have shot a student, and that a sheriff’s deputy saw the shooting.
Like I said, a lot of reasons to cover up, and a lot of lies and disinformation.
Read Mark Ames first article on the Fort Hood massacre in Alternet.
Read Mark Ames article on the Orlando shooting published Saturday in the Daily Beast.
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
Click the cover & buy the book!
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48 Comments
Add your own1. winston smith | November 8th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
i want to thank you for updating us. you won’t get this from MSM.
2. Robert D | November 8th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Ridiculous.
The media will come up with any bit of old tat in a desperate attempt to link this story with Islamic terror:
“It was very unusual because he had never had anyone round before. He had long black hair and a moustache and a dark complexion.”
Well that settles it then. Osama bin Laden popped in at Hasan’s place for coffee and scones before it all went down.
Seriously now. Mysterious men in black hats? Are we really going to resort to recycling the plots of Hardy Boys mysteries as a substitute for actual reporting?
If Hasan really was a terrorist “plant” – then how do we explain away his desperate attempts to quit the military in recent years? I mean, if you’re planning on doing an inside job, surely you’d want to be, wait for it… on the inside? Ummm… isn’t trying to quit your job at a military base rather at cross purposes?
I don’t know whether they are being deliberately cynical with these links, or whether it’s just lazy journalism, or racism, or what.
It’s as if linking the incident to Islamic terror makes it more palatable. Hey, hey, hey – it’s just those crazy Muslims again. We all know what bad, violent, messed up people they are.
Let’s just create external enemies and blame everything on them. No matter how far-fetched it might be, it’s preferable to facing up to the notion that the American military culture Hasan was a part of for more than half of his life is sick and twisted enough to chew up a man so bad he’d want to do something like this.
3. Geoduck | November 8th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I really doubt there’s some Grand Overarching Conspiracy; the guy probably snapped at the thought of being shipped off to die in whatever hellhole he’d been tagged for, and started spraying bullets. Then, like humans do, everyone else panicked and gobbled and ran around trying to cover their own butts, literally and then figuratively. A thousand -little- conspiracies, all snapping at each other in the 24-hour-a-day mass media shark tank.
4. Bioyhh | November 8th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Ames,
Fox is reporting that Hasan did “frequent” a strip joint:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573052,00.html
It gets stranger by the day.
5. CKoTuHa | November 8th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
“Exhibit D”, the last black and white photo, was his Facebook profile pic.
6. gyges | November 9th, 2009 at 12:15 am
1 “He had long black hair and a moustache and a dark complexion.”
He’s one of our newspaper’s favourites; here is what he looks like 1 and 2.
7. MonkeyMuffins | November 9th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Nidal Hasan was not a member of the Task Force, as Mark Ames has erroneously asserted in number 7.
This myth has been debunked by MediaMatters.org:
“WorldNetDaily falsely claimed that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan ‘advised Obama transition’ in the headline of an article by Jerome Corsi highlighting his listing as a ‘participant’ in a report for the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University’s Presidential Transition Task Force. However, Corsi himself acknowledges that there is no evidence that ‘the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition’ — indeed, the Task Force was initiated in April 2008. Moreover, while Hasan was listed as one of approximately 300 ‘Task Force Event Participants’ in the report’s appendix, HSPI has reportedly said he was not a ‘member’ of the Task Force, and was listed because he RSVP’d for several of the group’s open events.”
– http://mediamatters.org/research/200911060011
I support Mark Ames’ general line of reasoning with regard to this and other shootings — having been abused, exploited and bullied most of my time in This American Life I know he speaks a lot of hidden-in-plain-sight truth for those of us living lives of quiet desperation filled with impotent and justified rage — but this particular slap dash, irrational-and-counterproductive(*) post leaves a lot to be desired.
It reeks of the desperate, clap trap style made infamous by nine-eleven-was-an-inside-job conspiradroid moonbats.
Surely Exiled and Ames can do better than the powers-that-be against which they rail.
Because they’ve done a Rich-Little-style imitation of those powers with this fluff piece.
—
(*) Number 10 is superfluous, baseless, wild-eyed speculation which only detracts from the purported purpose of this piece.
Number 12 jumps the shark with wholly unrelated information about lawsuits alleging a Columbine police cover up (and since when are filed lawsuits proof of the allegations made in the lawsuits?)
And all the uber-paranoid stuff about PSYOPS, law enforcement machinations and media malfeasance (numbers 2 through 6 and 9) is straight out of the nine-eleven moonbat-conspiradroid playbook, to which I reply:
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
8. Balqis | November 9th, 2009 at 2:45 am
I was thinking they were on a mission to make us feel guilty to be Muslims, but must be much more than that
Mark, thanks for going always beyond the bunch of lies they want us to believe
9. Evan Harper | November 9th, 2009 at 3:41 am
You know, I don’t doubt that there’s a lot of bullshit being thrown around about this story right now, but I think you’ve taken an “everything including the kitchen sink” approach here and it shows. When something like this happens, there’s always going to be a blizzard of confusion and rumours. Remember the “car bomb at the State Dept.” on 9/11? The networks were running with that story for what seemed like hours, even though it should have taken 30 seconds to debunk.
There’s a book called “Columbine” that you’re probably familiar with, that came out on the 10th anniversary of those events, and it shows conclusively how virtually everything the media established about the killers’ motives and background was wrong. It won’t surprise me at all if 10 years from now there’s a similar book called “Fort Hood.”
10. Metallica | November 9th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Strip clubs are about the only cultural activity in Fort Hood.
11. Plamen Petkov | November 9th, 2009 at 8:21 am
woah, that image you are using is priceless! Where pray tell us did you get it from? Amazing!
12. MarkBob | November 9th, 2009 at 9:12 am
There are holes that need to be filled in.
He was a PFC in 1989, “Became an avtice duty soldier in 1997”. Might 1997 be the date when became a commissioned officer? 2009-1989 = 20 years service, he sould/should be eligible for retirement? Was he being “stop lossed”? Was this the final trigger for “going postal”?
13. Monkey See Monkey Do | November 9th, 2009 at 9:50 am
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/11/fitzgerald-a-nest-of-ninnies.html#_login
14. Wenjo | November 9th, 2009 at 9:59 am
C’mon Lieberman, where’s that link to Iran?
15. Erik | November 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Good story, good site, blabla, etc. – I’m getting tired of praising you Ames, so… could you please not send med six (6!) tracking cookies when I log on to The Exiled? Department of Homeland Security gets by with only one.
16. fajensen | November 9th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
The simple explanation is saturating the media with garbage ensures that something else is *not* reported – maybe how incompetent the FBI really is or yet more bailouts to the AIG flunkies. Or ???
17. Connors | November 9th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
“And all the uber-paranoid stuff about PSYOPS, law enforcement machinations and media malfeasance (numbers 2 through 6 and 9) is straight out of the nine-eleven moonbat-conspiradroid playbook, to which I reply:
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.”
Could be incompetence, could be malice. How would you know either way? But surely, mere incompetence cannot explain why intelligence officials (if true) sat on information revealing an American army officer to be a terrorist. Let’s look at the evidence and decide without resorting to the cheap moonbat whatever accusations.
18. machete | November 9th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
This is a hate crime. and no newspaper in america will report that. It doesnt jive with their PC culture. It is outright hatred. same for the Orlando massacre. Same for the DC snipers. etc etc. Why do they hate us so? when all we want to do is give them our tax money, free food, water, free housing, free education, free welfare, free retirement, free disability, free healthcare, free everything? Their hatred knows no bounds. Wait until you are the minority. You wont see any mercy my friends.
19. Allen | November 9th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
This thing just gets weirder and more fascinating by the day …
20. nzfrog | November 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
The greatest conspiracy might be, as Ames tells us repeatedly, to transform the act of a angry gunman into something “meaningless”. Look at the options the New York Times gives us below: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/the-meaning-of-fort-hood/
The Meaning of Fort Hood
By ERIC ETHERIDGE
… Does Hasan’s rampage signal an internal jihadi threat we’re ill-equipped to thwart, or was it just another meaningless moment of American lone-gunman violence?
21. icetrout | November 9th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Fucking Neo-Libs would suck the turds out of a dead skunks ass just to be obstinate.Fuck you & all the muslim pig-fuckers.Death to all towel-heads & their traitor brethren !!!
22. mr. mike | November 9th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
So we have commenters 13 and 21 either linking to anti-muslim websites or saying that it’s the “towelheads” fault for beliving in Islam. Brilliant.
I myself believe that Maj. Hassan finally snapped because he wasn’t allowed to leave the Army, and that he definitly wanted no part of the quagmire in Afghanistan. Except for him being an Army officer and a Muslim, this was pretty much another postal shooting, though Joe “too wimpy to join the GOP” Lieberman will make this into an Hamas-Al Quaida plot.
23. wengler | November 9th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
The whole “he’s dead” story that ran for literally hours before the “he’s alive” one kicked in tells me that a friendly was killed by the military/police and was thought to be the shooter.
It is going to be very hard for the families of the victims to get the real story behind this. Military personnel can be ordered to be silent and the trial can also be closed to the public. The families are also less likely to have the resources to pursue any alternative investigation or a civil suit.
Another thing for anyone joining the military to consider: they can kill you and cover it up successfully. Even their premiere recruits like Pat Tillman.
24. Hal9000 | November 10th, 2009 at 2:11 am
Why am I not surprised that the MSM shows an irrelevant liquor store video of Hasan in Arab garb, but they have not shown video from the gun store where he allegedly bought the murder weapon?
25. Necronomic Justice | November 10th, 2009 at 4:49 am
@21. icetrout,
The irony is, you are probably a huge fan of a few neo-liberalist douchebags. You just have no clue what the phrase means.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlKL_EpnSp8
26. brian | November 10th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Lieberman trying to make himself out to be the big man and in so doing get some coverage for killing healthcare since how can you take his committe chairmanship away at this time of crises
27. Geoduck | November 10th, 2009 at 10:48 am
@11 Plamen Petkov:
As indicated by the file-name, it’s a shot from the satirical puppet movie Team America: World Police.
28. mh | November 10th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Thank you again, Ames. Writing what many of us are thinking. It’s a really frustrating thought; they’re going to pull this over. No matter what.
29. Cobblers | November 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
@7
You make a good case, MonkeyMuffins.
> Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
OTOH, if THEY didn’t know what they were doing, they would occasionally make a mistake in your favour.
It takes tremendous fortitude to hold off on the paranoia and decide that the humiliation experienced in the workplace is mere happenstance. Certainly there is a dividend of contentment to be enjoyed from being so generous-minded in ascribing seeming malice to general tomfoolery. Take pity on your fellow colleagues: most of them are dumb conformists; they know not what they do.
But Joseph Berke’s The Tyranny of Malice, once you get past the Freudian melodrama, leaves no doubt in the mind that malice rules the workplace. Think about it: you’re a rational guy, right? Your relationship with your employer is a business agreement, right? A bit of a one-sided agreement, to be sure, but still a business agreement.
Except, haven’t you noticed that when you start working for a place it’s a bit like being abducted into a cult, sort of like being drafted into a totalitarian army? And I’m talking about civvie street, not the army.
Now think about what it must have been like for a guy like Hasan.
Your points are good, but you haven’t said WHY so much energy is being directed to distracting the public from a simple human resources fuck-up.
30. Jess | November 10th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hahaha, Muffins, you can’t contradict the Ames by citing Media-fucking-Matters! Who on earth would believe those puppets? Why do they write such short articles? They’re distracted by the chafing, what with Soros’s arm run so far up their asses!
Actually, I followed your link, and even MfM makes clear that the man of the hour _was_ on the task force. The real stretch lies in thinking that this or any other “security task force” has ever had anything to do with Obama. BOWAFT
Oh, for you quivering Nancys out there who are just enraged at how the liberal/conservative/take your pick media is going to pull the wool over your eyes, remember, we CAN say something definitively:
1) this shitbird is Muslim
2) this shitbird is a terrorist
Ergo, this shitbird is a Muslim terrorist.
31. tigre | November 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Corsi- the author of that story on the Obama connection, is a long time right wing activist. He was the king of the swiftboaters, wrote the anti John Kerry book.
Research your sources, we’re being spun everyday, all day.
32. twentyeight | November 10th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
@#7:
“OMG, Ames used teh phraz ‘PSYOP’ he iz ‘moonbat'”
Come on, man, you know better. It’s almost like only paranoid nuts think the gov’t would pay people to appear on-camera to tear down Saddam statues… oh, wait, they did. Psyops? On NATIONAL PUBLIC radio? It’s almost like they let William Buckley, Pat Buchanan and a bunch of Chicago School goons have taxpayer-funded airtime on the TV or something… What do you think this game is about, anyway?
You used the term “moonbat,” I think I know what that makes you.
33. Robert D | November 11th, 2009 at 12:48 am
@#30
Are the perpetrators of workplace massacres also “terrorists”?
Was Charles Whitman a “terrorist”?
John Muhammed?
Is the perpetrator of any sort of murder spree a terrorist?
Not really in the sense that the word is traditionally applied, no.
Hence, describing Hasan as a “terrorist” carries an implication that may not be accurate to his case.
By further describing Hasan as a “MUSLIM terrorist” – there are yet more implications.
It has yet to be clearly demonstrated that Hasan’s motivation was that of an “Islamic Terrorist”. That he was “striking at America” out of the same sense of motivation as a group such as Al Qaeda. That he was affiliated with traditional Islamic terrorists or inspired by them. That his motivation was “violent anti-Americanism” rather than rage and a sense of injustice about his treatment in a messed up military heirarchy.
The media seems rather keen to emphasise the link between Hasan and Islamic terrorism. However, the reasoning behind that link contains glaring holes. It all appears to be a bit of a stretch.
That’s where the apparent distortion of the situation lies.
If Hasan’s case really shares more in common with traditional American workplace massacres, then the implication that he is an “Islamic terrorist” represents a total denial of the nature and cause of Hasan’s actions.
34. Jon | November 11th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Obviously linking him to Islamic terrorism is stupid, but saying that his religion played absolutely no role is also stupid – a kind of politically correct self-deception.
35. Frank McG | November 11th, 2009 at 2:48 am
The most surprising thing about this article is that, given the subject, it took a whole 13 posts before the log cabin crazies came out. I guess shooting massacres don’t upset them as much as the idea of receiving health care.
36. A Sesoned Incompetent | November 11th, 2009 at 10:05 am
“Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.”
I love when people use this quote, as it comes from a man who did try to conquer the world (Napolean). It’s the equivalent of the “Oh shucks, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that” defense.
Ames, Why did you cut off the end of that cnn article in point 5?
“The man was surrounded for 25 to 30 minutes, until a convoy of vehicles arrived, led by a Ford Crown Victoria and carrying men in suits, and he was taken away, the senior officer said.”
Who was this suspect? Why couldn’t the officers on scene take him into custody themselves, instead of keeping him surrounded for 25 to 30 minutes?
37. Ben | November 11th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Can’t a guy be psychologically AND religiously motivated?
Colby Cosh has a good take – http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/10/colby-cosh-taking-islam-seriously.aspx
“Non-Muslims shoot up schools, malls and post offices all the time, and it should not be surprising that when a Muslim goes looking for an external locus of blame or rage, his pathology takes a specifically Muslim form. Every week it seems like there’s some creepy family annihilator in the news who wanted to “protect” his or her children, or send them to a “better place,” by drowning them in the bath or slitting their throats. No Christian ever seems to notice that such actions are predicated on a specifically Christian notion of the afterlife, let alone express concern or shame. In an overwhelmingly Christian society, no one ever asks them to. (Maybe someone should?)”
I think Klebold and Harris would’ve converted to Islam after 9/11. It’s not that Islam is inherently violent, it’s that violent people have a guaranteed heroic place in Islam.
38. Robert D | November 12th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Well, there’s also a lot of violent people that find no religious framework for their actions.
I’m not so sure that Klebold and Harris would have converted to Islam. That’s quite an assumption. If they did, it would probably have been out of a desire to shock. A statement of their disenfranchisement and contempt for authority, rather than an actual embrace of the religion’s ideology.
Y’now, kinda’ like biker gangs using Osama bin Laden’s visage as part of their iconography. Or even the Sex Pistols wearing swastikas on their lapels.
You can create a violent framework of belief out of Islam as you can out of any religion. Especially the big three mono religions. They all carry justifications for violence in their sacred texts. Justifications that you can embrace or reject at will.
However, it appears quite probable that Hasan’s apparent interest in Islamic terrorism has more to do with the distress and sense of alienation he felt as a part of a disfunctional military culture – a culture he could not adequately assimilate with – than it does with a genuine desire to embrace some kind of religious ideology.
That would place Hasan more squarely in the category of a rage / murder spree perpetrator, than with what we would normally associate with Islamic terrorism.
Even if Hasan adopted some of the style and rhetoric of Islamic militancy – as is claimed – that doesn’t necessarily signify that this functioned as his primary motivation. His sense of alienation and frustration could have driven him to identify with some aspects of Islamic militancy, out of a sense of desperation, because he could find no other avenue to contextualise his rage.
39. Frank | November 12th, 2009 at 5:05 am
He is as much a terrorist as the shoe bomber.
The presidency would like us to think nothing happened on their watch, even if the blame belongs to the military.
40. Spade | November 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
“All of the interns were non-commissioned U.S. Army officers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group based at Ft. Bragg, N.C. PSYOP overtly disseminates information supporting U.S. goals and policy to other countries. For example, the unit has placed signs in Colombian airports discouraging drug smuggling. “In civilian terms, it’s like working in an ad agency or a public relations firm,” Withington says.”
WTF Ames; you just figuring out now that Intel folks have penetrated NPR? Fuck, we hire Marketing Majors too, you tool… check out the board of gov’s for NPR and the majority are Republicans… must be a conspiracy… dork.
Seriously, tho, the military trains 10’s of thousand of Intel types, year-in, year-out, at military schools.
And,yes, I was one of those folks…
41. Aaron Aarons | November 12th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
The guy is an Arab and a Muslim. For years, as a psychiatrist, he’s been hearing stories from his patients about atrocities against Arabs and Muslims that they took part in.
He was about to be shipped out to a place where these atrocities were taking place. So he decided (1) not to go and (2) to prevent others from going there to take part in these continuing atrocities.
I doubt there aren’t Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians, Hindus or whatever who wouldn’t do the same in a similar situation.
42. Rubicon | November 12th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I’m disturbed by the fact that over 100 rounds of pistol fire were supposedly gotten off amongst seasoned vets. How many rounds can a pistol clip hold? 20? That means that soft little pudding-chinned creature could manage to re-clip his pistol 4 times before being taken down? More piqued to hear that it was all rifle rounds that were found at the scene.
It went from 3 shooters, to 1 dead shooter, to 1 barely alive shooter, who then miraculously is heard shouting “Allah Akbar”. All witnesses were no doubt “briefed” on the fact that they could expect the same treatment were they to deviate from the official storyline.
I must ask, in and among all the other shootings suddenly going on, what is it that we are to turn our attention away from, and onto these well-staged “freak outs”?
By the way, I don’t buy “lady cop saves the day”, if only for the fact that those rent-a-cops are supposed to stay at the front gate area.
I think this display was meant purely to get the public foment up for keeping the war (and its very expensive funding) going at any cost. The generals had already been loudly complaining about the lack of support for their just-out-of-reach victory in AfPakRaq.
43. danster | November 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
you couldve shortened this article down a bit. And besides that you missed the biggiest misinformation about this story, that being the mom hero who skilled hassan. Turns out it wasnt this white woman, it was a black man who did that.
44. Ibn McVeigh Lives On! | November 13th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Dear American MF’S:
Let’s put the ol’ shoe on the OTHER foot for just a moment.
Imagine you’re living in Iraq when that country invades -for NO legitimate reason whatsoever- the USA and now there are demented, oversexed Iraqi soldiers running amuck thru the streets of YOUR old neighborhood, shooting and raping and maiming and murdering people YOU might know. Even some of your family members!
Now, if you had just ONE OUNCE of fucking HUMAN BLOOD pulsing thru your cholesterol-choked arteries (and of course I’m NOT saying you DO ..you fucksters) then the FIRST thing you would do is go out and blow the MF head off every MF Iraqi you can find before the bastards put you down.
Well THAT, my water-boarding and International Ponzi-Sheming firends is EXACTLY what this guy did.
Maybe if MORE of them did it you MF war criminals would think TWICE next time before kicking down the WRONG COUNTRY’S DOORS when you’re out playing SWAT*.
*Stupid White American Terrorists
45. Hal | November 14th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
“THEY (FORT HOOD INVESTIGATORS) CALLED LAST NIGHT AND ASKED ABOUT A SPECIFIC NAME AND GUN PURCHASE, BUT THE NAME WAS NOT HASAN.”
This is what David Cheadle, the owner of the gun store wherre Nidal Hasan is alleged to have bought the murder weapon, told ABC news reporters the day after the shootings.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/tracking-source-gun-ft-hood-shooting/story?id=9014618
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cop-killer-gun-thought-ft-hood-shooting/story?id=9019521
If Hasan is the only suspect, Why would investigators ask about the a gun purchase made by someone other than Hasan, and not ask about a purchase made by Hasan? Unless there is another suspect, their line of questioning makes no sense at all.
46. Rehmat | November 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
The people who have studied the American history with open eyes – would admit that White House will never be able to bring the real culprits behind the major tragedies which affected the course of American history, such as, the assassinations of presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy or Pearl Harbor, attacks on USS Liberty and USS Cole, or the 9/11 and now the Fort Hood shooting. However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a few incidents surrounding the 9/11 tragedy be recorded here…..
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/911-the-dog-that-doesnt-hunt/
47. adolphhitler | November 16th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
@44…i like it, somebody actually sees both sides of the story
48. Chris James | November 19th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
OK lets see if I have this right, the assault was ended in gunfire, the premises now under control, one soldier
was arrested because: an eyewitness indicated who to arrest? or the Police knew who they were in a gun fight with and knew who to arrest? A manhunt ensued for a second shooter who got away, (also pointed out I assume). Two hours later a man in battle fatigues was arrested at a golf course witnessed by a senior officer who saw a Ford Crown Victoria, with “suits” inside, whisk the soldier away. TV news: “3 Shooters, 1 dead, two arrested”
Now new news, two soldiers were questioned and released. After a police lineup with eyewitnesses? No.
Now Hasan comes to life, although first reported dead, by? people who worked with him testifying they saw
him shot dead? No, he was actually taken away by an interrogator and was missing for hours and then was
taken to the hospital. And did the media ever ask what happened to the two “suspects”? The one who was obviously
fingered on the premises and the second by someone who described or named him in detail. Where are these shooters / soldiers / jihadists in stolen uniforms? In Guantanamo or rendered because we couldn’t afford to have the country paralyzed in fear?
Now the General of the base camp with a stern look on his face snaps “I have no “background” with Major Hasan”
Now other Generals take control and “I am not allowed to comment on anything relating to the investigation of
the shooting at Ft Hood” Every question is deflected EXCEPT, anything you want to know about the Major with the Muslim name who after the three hour ride into the country with the interrogator lies in a hospital and whose
speech has been affected with further paralysis. Surprise? Not really, so lets handle this like an interesting mystery,
it will be exciting watching the twists and turns, lets make something thrilling and fun out of it, because the real
truth will probably make us sick to our stomach. Or you can stay in the weeds and let Lieberman lead you to the
truth as he now promises and investigation into the Ft Hood shooting. Or as Lieberman puts it, “I want a thorough
investigation into Hasan and I want the truth to come out” Yes Joe we believe you.
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