Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of likely voters say it is at least somewhat likely the next president of the United States will be a Republican, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
The number has been trending in this direction since Democrat Barack Obama took office in January and is up 14 points since then.
Thirty-one percent (31%) of voters see it as Very Likely that the next president will be a Republican.
And what explains this? Well, this administration's unprecedented culture of corruption, for one. But the larger explanation is the public's repudiation of the left's attempted socialist takeover under Barack Obama. See, Mark Steyn's seminal essay, "The Europeanizaion of America."
The Ft. Hood killings are the chickens of the left coming home to roost. Already the chief political correspondent of The Nationhas decried even mention of the fact that the jihadist killer Hasan is a Palestinian Muslim. According to The Nation this is “Islamophobia.” This fatuous attempt to protect America’s enemies carries on The Nation’s 60-year tradition as the leading fifth column collaborator with America’s enemies — defender of the Rosenbergs, defender of Hiss, defender of their boss Stalin, defender of Mao, defender of Castro and now defender of Islamic terrorists. But The Nation is only the tip of an iceberg. The fifth column formed out of the unholy alliance between radical Islam and the American left is now entrenched in the White House and throughout our government. And in matters like the Muslim jihadist Major Hasan our military is its captive.
The Fort Hood massacre is the first of the preventable atrocities we have been warning about on ourwebsites since 9/11 — the atrocities which are apparently necessary for Americans to wake up to the threat that confronts us. We have a vast internal threat in this country in the form of this unholy alliance between the anti-American Left and radical Islam – whose Muslim Brotherhood network extends through our universities, our government and our military. It is “politically incorrect” to recognize this fact. You can be barred — as I have been — from speaking at universities for even talking about it. The embargo of discussion of the Islamo-fascist threat puts every American (including the infidel collaborators) at risk. Hasan had semi-automatic weapons. But they weren’t nuclear. That possibility is just around the corner unless we undergo a sea change in our attitudes and marshal the intelligence and the courage to recognize the threat.
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.
One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts.
CIA director Leon Panetta and the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, have been asked by Congress "to preserve" all documents and intelligence files that relate to Hasan, according to the lawmaker.
The report indicates that Anwar al Awlaki, Nidal Malik Hasan's religious mentor at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, hailed the Fort Hood attack as an act of "great heroism." See "Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing":
Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is 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. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges ....
May Allah grant our brother Nidal patience, perseverance and steadfastness and we ask Allah to accept from him his great heroic act.
I have a hard time even imagining the level of depravity and moral bankruptcy necessary to view the cold-blooded massacre of unarmed men and women as an act of heroism. It’s an act of cowardice, and Al-Awlaki is a sick and evil man. He is an enemy of this country.
You know, I spent much of this weekend defending the rights of Muslim Americans against attacks by regular commenters on this blog – people that I normally agree with. And I still fervently believe that Muslim Americans who desire to live here in peace, respecting our laws and traditions, are entitled to the same Constitutional rights to religious freedom and personal liberty as any other citizen. And I also believe that the majority of Muslims living in the U.S. fall into this category.
But anyone who has empathy on any level for the actions of Hasan, or the views expressed by Al-Awlaki, does not deserve to be an American as far as I’m concerned.
Twenty years ago today, supporters of freedom and human rights cheered and wept for joy as the Berlin Wall was torn down by jubilant young Germans.
To so many, that heady day seemed to herald the emergence of a better world. The spectre of communism had finally been laid to rest. Liberty had triumphed over tyranny.
The end of the Cold War even led some to proclaim that this was 'the end of history' - which was to say that liberal democracy was now the dominant and unchallengeable force in the world.
However, the 9/11 attacks on America tragically proved this to be absurdly over-optimistic. The eruption of radical Islamism revealed that, while the West may have been rid of one enemy in the Soviet Union, another deadly foe had risen to take its place. So much is, sadly, all too evident.
But what is perhaps less obvious is that communism did not just vanish in a puff of historical smoke. The Soviet Union was defeated and fell apart, for sure. But the communist ideology that fuelled it did not so much disintegrate as reconstitute itself into another, even more deadly form as the active enemy of western freedom.
Subversive
Soviet Communism was a belief system whose goal was to overturn the structures of society through the control of economic and political life. This mutated into a post-communist ideology of the Left, whose no-less ambitious aim was to overturn western society through a subversive transformation of its culture.
To grasp the extent to which this has in fact taken place, we have to go back in time to well before the moment the Berlin Wall fell. The collapse of communism was actually a slow-burning process. Its moral and political bankruptcy became obvious decades before that glorious Berlin day in November 1989.
For many communist fellow travellers, the scales fell from their eyes when the Hungarian uprising was crushed in 1956. Others, over the years, lost faith not just in communism but in its less radical sister, socialism, as their core tenet of 'equality' proved itself in a myriad different ways to be the enemy of freedom and justice, with market forces appearing to carry the torch of liberty instead.
But as communism slowly crumbled, those on the far-Left who remained hostile towards western civilisation found another way to realise their goal of bringing it down.
This was what might be called 'cultural Marxism'. It was based on the understanding that what holds a society together are the pillars of its culture: the structures and institutions of education, family, law, media and religion. Transform the principles that these embody and you can thus destroy the society they have shaped.
It was still dark on Thursday when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan left his aging apartment complex to attend 6 a.m. prayers at the brick mosque near Fort Hood. Afterward, he said goodbye to his friends there and asked forgiveness from one man for any past offenses.
“I’m going traveling,” he told a fellow worshiper, giving him a hug. “I won’t be here tomorrow.”
Six hours later, Major Hasan walked into a processing center at Fort Hood where soldiers get medical attention before being sent overseas. At first, he sat quietly at an empty table, said two congressmen briefed on the investigation.
Then, witnesses say, he bowed his head for several seconds, as if praying, stood up and drew a high-powered pistol. “Allahu akbar,” he said — “God is great.” And he opened fire. Within minutes he had killed 13 people.
But relatives and acquaintances say tensions that led to the rampage had been building for a long time. Investigators say Major Hasan bought the gun used in the massacre last summer, days after arriving at Fort Hood.
In recent years, he had grown more and more vocal about his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tortured over reconciling his military duties with his religion. He tried to get out of the Army, relatives said, and apparently believed it to be impossible, though experts say he was probably given inadequate advice.
At times, he complained, too, about harassment, once describing how someone had put a diaper in his car, saying, “That’s your headdress.” In another case cited by relatives, someone had drawn a camel on his car and written under it, “Camel jockey, get out!”
Major Hasan’s behavior in the months and weeks leading up to the shooting bespeaks a troubled man full of contradictions. He lived frugally in a run-down apartment, yet made a good salary and spent more than $1,100 on the pistol the authorities said he used in the shootings.
He was described as gentle and kindly by many neighbors, quick with a smile or a hello, yet he complained bitterly to people at his mosque about the oppression of Muslims in the Army. He had few friends, and even the men he interacted with at the mosque saw him as a strange figure whom they never fully accepted into their circle.
“He was obviously upset,” said Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old who attended the mosque and ate frequently with Major Hasan at the Golden Corral restaurant. “He didn’t want to go to Afghanistan.”
This is one of those "analytical" pieces that attempts a master synthesis of the various facts and interpretations now available. And at every turn, the piece plays up Hasan's assimilationist, all-American bona fides, and downplays -- even denies, pleading that events are still under "investigation" -- the fanatical extremism that Hasan eagerly adopted as part of his strict interpretation of Islam.
As I reported just tonight, according to London's Telegraph, Malik Hasan preached exterminationism of infidels even at professional events:
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.
He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.
Malik Hasan may very well have been a fine and gentle man. But he was a ruthless killer who screamed "God is great" before riddling his targets with automatic fire. For the New York Times, there's an agenda -- an agenda of political correctness that bends over backwards not to alienate the Muslim community and the apologist for fanatical Islamism. Of course, if this had been an evangelical Christian opening fire at a conference of imams or murdering another abortion doctor, there'd be no talk of not "rushing to conclusions." Christians as a body would have been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, found "consumed be hatred" and "intolerant of diversity." That's the double standard that not only demeans the goodness in the hearts of all Americans, but puts this country at an even greater risk of destruction.
The Jihadis will return. We know this, in the same way that we know about death and taxes. Thanks in large part to the weakening of our defensive efforts under the new administration, there will be further attacks against this country's population, perhaps even worse than those of 9/11. (This week's attack by Nidal Malik Hasan serves to underline the threat.)
When this attack occurs, we will see an end to all the nonsense. Our present drift regarding terror policy is occurring only because Americans have been encouraged to put unpleasant realities at a distance, to live in a dream world where all the bad stuff happens to other people. 9/11 has ceased to signify. Terrorism has become a matter of bad manners. As my grandfather might have put it, this country is in for a rude awakening.
When it comes (and sad to say, it will need to be even worse than the Hassan attack) people will want answers and action. They will get both. Few things move faster than a frightened politician, particularly a politician frightened by his own constituents. Fearful pols will see to it that current efforts to undermine American security will come to an abrupt halt. The law enforcement paradigm will be overturned. The attempts to "Mirandize" Islamist terrorists -- to turn them into esoteric versions of American street criminals, protected by the same legal constraints -- will cease. Contingent efforts to criminalize American security officials doing their best to protect the country will be curtailed. All the deeply complex questions fabricated over the past few years will be abruptly simplified.
But there is one thing that will not be addressed: the role of the American left.
The American left is unparalleled at wriggling out of deadly cul-de-sacs of its own creation. Consider how many times since the Vietnam War this country's left has involved itself in activities that in saner epochs would have resulted in lengthy jail sentences. Support for the Sandinistas and the Salvadoran FMLN, the Nuclear Freeze movement (a KGB operation from start to finish), cooperation with Palestinian and related terrorist groups. In each case, the left continued its involvement until the bitter end; and in each case skipped off with no consequences. This offhand attitude toward sedition has its roots in the excesses of the witch-hunt era. The aura of martyrdom donned by the left since the early 50s has bought them a free pass for over half a century.
The myth concerning the left and the terror conflict asserts that American leftists pulled together with the rest of the country until such Republican Saurons as Cheney, Rove, Ashcroft, and their puppet W simply went too far: persecuting innocent citizens, impugning the Constitutional rights of the poor Jihadis, and shocking the world with their viciousness and brutality. As the sole exemplars of moral purity in the millennial world, the left had no choice but to begin "speaking truth to power" ....
There is only one way this will end: people are going to die. Americans will be killed in large numbers and under the most horrifying circumstances in attacks that could very likely have been prevented. And when this occurs -- as it must -- what will the left do? The same as they did after 9/11. Grab a kid-size American flag from somebody else's hand and stand waving it frantically until the moment of potential retribution is safely past.
Be sure to read the whole thing. (I mean it ... the best is at that link.)
Senator Joseph Lieberman's discussion today on Fox News Sunday was one of the most succinct, morally compelling commentaries on the Fort Hood massacre we've heard thus far. Certainly Lieberman's statements are the most forceful we've heard from any Democratic Party leader. See Chris Wallace, "Lieberman Calls for Fort Hood Investigation":
Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Senator Joe Lieberman says he plans to begin a congressional investigation to determine whether the shooting of 13 people at Fort Hood was an act of home-grown terrorism.
Lieberman said there were "strong warning signs" that the alleged gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was an "Islamist extremist."
"If that is true, the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act and, in fact, it was the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11," Lieberman told FOX News Sunday.
He said he also wants to find out whether the Army missed warning signs that Hasan was becoming extreme in his Islamist views.
According to bystanders at Fort Hood, Hasan shouted the words "Allah Akbar," Arabic for "God is great!" when he opened fire. Over the past few years, Hasan reportedly made a series of statements justifying suicide bombing and comparing it to the bravery of an American soldier who would throw himself on a grenade to protect his colleagues.
Lieberman said if Hasan was showing signs he had become an Islamist radical, the Army should have shown "zero tolerance" and discharged him immediately.
Referring to the very same broadcast, Raw Story suggests that the "New York Times reports, however, that investigators have tentatively concluded it was not part of a terrorist plot."
Of course, there's no necessary reason for Hasan to have acted as part of a formal jihadist cell in a planned terrorist operation. Perhaps a solitary Muslim extremist, the facts are clear enough for anyone to make a reasonable case that Nidal Hassan is responsible for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. We know now that Nidal Hassan:
* Attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, where he worshipped with three of the 9/11 terrorsts; and where he trainded under Anwar al Awlaki, a radical Islamist cleric and fanatical al Qaeda booster.
* Posted anti-American hate-speech at online social-networking sites, and hailed Islamist suicide attacks against American forces.
And now, it turns out, according to London's Telegraph, "Fort Hood Gunman Had Told U.S. Military Colleagues That Infidels Should Have Their Throats Cut" (via Memeorandum):
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.
He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.
Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.
It was the latest in a series of "red flags" about his state of mind that have emerged since the massacre at Fort Hood, America's largest military installation, on Thursday.
No doubt the White House and its mainstream media apologists will continue to remind us not to jump to conclusions.
"This was a terrible tragedy for all involved," Napolitano told reporters in the United Arab Emirates' capital Abu Dhabi. "Obviously, we object to -- and do not believe -- that anti-Muslim sentiment should emanate from this."
Napolitano said her agency is working with state and local groups to try to deflect any anti-Muslim anger after the Thursday attacks by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.
Oh Yeah? Well let’s really give her something to worry about. Pass these videos along to your friends, preferably WITH NO WARNINGS. Every American should be forced to watch these.
ACTUALLY, OUT OF RESPECT FOR MY REGULAR READERS, FULL CONTENT WARNING!!!!!
A New York City bicycle cabbie who mocked the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and posted a prayer on the Web calling for the murder of Jews is now sending a "Get Well Soon" message to the suspected Fort Hood gunman, the New York Post reported.
Yousef al-Khattab, 41, a radical Muslim in the borough of Queens who runs RevolutionMuslim.com, claims on the site that the soldiers massacred at the Texas base deserved to be massacred, and he insists the victims are in "eternal hellfire." As for the suspected gunman — Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — Al-Khattab hails him as a hero.
"An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a pre-emptive attack," al-Khattab wrote on the site. "Get well soon Major Nidal. We love you."
Al-Khattab, a Jewish-born New Jersey native formerly named Joseph Cohen, converted to Islam in 2004. Known by the FBI for posting radical messages online, al-Khattab claims that the 13 murdered and 38 wounded soldiers at Fort Hood were "terrorists" who deserved to die.
"These people are soldiers in a volunteer army," al-Khattab told the Post. "They expect to see combat. They know the danger."
"Rest assured the slain terrorists at Ft. Hood are in the eternal hellfire," al-Khattab writes online.
But Senator Joseph Lieberman, appearing of Fox News Sunday, pledged to filibuster a Senate bill that includes the public option:
If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.
This traitor needs to go. The GOP needs to quit funding the campaigns of RINOS such as him. I find it interesting that one twitterer who responded to a tweet that I posted advocating that he needs to be voted out responded with "Unfortunately he is as conservative as we are getting in that district." ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" ABSOLUTELY NOT! The time for compromise is over. We need to raise up true red blooded conservatives all across the nation that will run to unseat RINOS who run on the coattails of our party and then support their own radical liberal agendas. Can you say Dede?
Are you mad as "HELL" yet? If not get off your apathetic arses and join in with the millions of conservative voices that will fight with every last breath to win back our party and save the Country that we love from descending into the abbys of SOCIALISM.
We keep hearing politicians throw around terms such as this corporation or that institution is too big too fail. Americans let get this straight......AMERICA IS TOO BIG TO FAIL! We need to keep fighting. I for one will never give. Lets's send a message to Cao and his ilk....Votes have consequences so start packing!
Let that be a lesson for the upcoming Senate health care vote. It's unlikely that any GOP senators will defect, not even Olympia Snowe. But it pays to keep score on these things.
All year, leading democrats from the president on down have argued that the Republican Party is in the midst of a catastrophic civil war. You know the story. Successive election defeats have narrowed the GOP's ideological range, and now an open struggle is afoot for control of its voice and agenda. Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, it seems, are out to destroy Republican moderates and commit the party to a radical course sure to relegate it to irrelevance. Only a move to the left can save the Republicans.
And, in fact, the new president and Congress had a real opportunity to divide the Republican Party. A moderate stimulus bill that offered a short-term boost and included a meaningful tax-cut component, for instance, might have won a very significant number of Republican votes in Congress last winter and launched a damaging internal GOP battle over the proper role of the opposition. Some restraint on taxes and spending in general, and on health care and energy policy in particular, would also have divided congressional Republicans and left the direction of the party in doubt.
But Washington Democrats chose a different route. While they have been peddling the story of Republican self-immolation, they have actually been creating the conditions for a Republican resurgence. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid have launched the country on a course of massive spending, a dramatic expansion of government, and a slew of new taxes in the midst of a recession. Finding themselves in control of Congress and the White House and so possessed of an unusual opportunity to pursue their ideological agenda, they have sought to make the most of it. But they have misjudged just how far to the left of the country as a whole the Democratic base now resides—and so, rather than strengthen their own brand, they have inadvertently done wonders to build and unify the Republican Party.
In Congress, Republicans now march nearly as one, to a degree not seen in 15 years. Rather than split on the stimulus, conservative and moderate Republicans easily agreed that it went much too far to the left. The bill received zero Republican votes in the House and just three in the Senate. On many crucial votes since, and in the ongoing health-care and cap-and-trade debates, Republicans have stood together almost unanimously.
Around the country, the party seems to be regaining its balance. Last Tuesday's election results were an extraordinary boost for Republicans. They showed that it is not necessary to run away from the party's conservative brand to win elections. On the contrary, Republicans running as Republicans seem to succeed in the age of Obama, and to attract independent voters in droves.
As he notes there, the rubber hits the road in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid's under pressure to produce a healthcare monstrosity that a majority of Americans opposes. The Politico's got the story, "All Eyes on Sen. Harry Reid." But the bottom line is who's going to vote for the bill in the upper chamber? A bit of that calculation's at NPR, "House Hands Health Care Challenge Off to Senate."
The prospects of facing defeat next year must weigh on Senate Democrats as they contemplate their healthcare votes. (See, "2010 elections: Democratic Fears, Republican Hopes.") Reid will need the support of all 58 senators from the Democratic caucus. He'll also need the support of Connecticut's Joseph Lieberman, the Independent Democrat who has pledged to oppose any health bill that includes the public option. And on this morning's "Face the Nation," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina announced that the Nancy Pelosi ObamaCare cram-down would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate:
In the Senate, the Democrats need 60 to break a filibuster, and several Democrat Senators have expressed deep reservations about the breadth and expense of the bill . . . and the Senate bill is nowhere near as broad and expensive as Pelosi's. Also, in the House, the minority party cannot control or obstruct the majority. In the Senate, not only can a minority party obstruct legislation, a single Senator can do it.
Independent Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman said Tuesday that he would support a Republican filibuster against the bill unless it's changed. Key Democratic moderates including Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.; Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., also said they were uncertain how they'd vote, expressing deep reservations about the public plan.
And Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the only Republican to have voted for any version of health care reform, reiterated Tuesday that she's "disappointed" in Reid's proposal and will not support the government option.
The wavering, and in some cases crumbling, support for the package demonstrates how much of a gamble the Nevada Democrat took by unveiling a bill Monday that includes the controversial government plan but has no Republican backing. And it's a reminder of the warnings made months ago by Senate Democrats like Kent Conrad, D-N.D., that a public plan simply does not have the votes to pass and should not be included in the final bill.
It's just so much bull. The terror-enabling left and the radical lamestream media have been pumping up the "post-traumatic stress disorder" explanation forf the murderous terror rampage at Fort Hood. Check out this piece for example, "Major Malik Nidal Hasan and PTSD: Was Stress Disorder to Blame?":
Fort Hood is an army base with the highest number of Army suicides and it is believed that this is due to it being the arrival and departure point for soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan had also recently been told he was deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan himself.
You want to know what fucking PTSD is like? I'll tell you. You have nightmares that go on for weeks. Mine would always be the same. Wherever the window was in the room in which I was sleeping I would see a bright white flash. I would wake up screaming to my wife “Get up! Get the fuck up! An IED just went off!” Sometimes I would just wake up screaming in agony as I relived the moment where my right arm was ripped from my body by an Iranian shape charge. (I may not know what childbirth feels like, but I know what it's like to go an hour with my arm ripped off without painkillers (I'm allergic to morphine).) PTSD makes you paranoid as hell. “Why is that person staring at me? Are they a threat? Where is the nearest exit? Why are these people so close to me? Why is no one pulling security? What was that noise? Where is the nearest cover? I need to get out of here.” You lie wide awake in bed at night wondering if it's safe to go to sleep or if you should get up and start pulling security. When I got home from Walter Reed and started college (a week later, stupid idea) I would often stay up for days at a time without sleeping. Eventually my body would completely shut down from exhaustion and I would sleep for 12 hours or more only to complete the cycle all over again. (I still cannot believe I got all As and Bs.) Since I was injured in a humvee I am especially susceptible on the road to the effects of my PTSD. I still get nervous and hold my breath every time I drive by a piece of trash or tire debris on the shoulder or median. I avoid guardrails and broken down cars on the side of the road. On a couple different occasions I yelled out “tire!” to warn my wife (who was driving) of a potential IED in the road. There was nothing there (no tire, no nothing). One late night while driving home completely exhausted on our small two lane country roads at slow speed I locked up all four tires on my car to keep from hitting a cardboard box in the middle of the road. At that moment I would have bet the contents of my bank account it was an IED. That's what fucking PTSD is like. At no point in time have I ever felt the desire or need to grab a weapon and go shoot someone or something up. At no point in time have I ever grabbed a weapon and broken a law because I felt the need to protect myself. PTSD urges you mitigate the risk of events that happened in your life. But if you've never had anything traumatic happen in your life, you can't fucking have PTSD.
Bill O'Reilly on the left-wing press coverage of the Fort Hood rampage:
"We did 5 million viewers at 8 O'Clock, wiped out CNN and MSNBC, wiped them off the face of the earth. The guard has changed in this country. The media guard has changed. And you know why people came in here, because they knew they were going to get an honest story. They weren't going to get spin that Hasan is some kind of post-traumatic syndrome victim. Some kind of victim of a terrible public policy gone awry. They're not going to get that..... I almost said a bad word. They're not going to get that garbage here."
Since mid-October, here are the highlights of jihad activity in America. Don't tell the media or the authorities, they are busy searching behind Nidal Hasan's jihad.
It’s no wonder that Fox seems to be driving all the major stories these days. It’s simply a matter of sheer mindshare. A story on Fox reaches more people. When Fox decides something is news it becomes news whether anyone else likes it or not. Fox is supplanting the role long played by the New York Times and the Ochs-Sulzberger family that owns the 88% of the paper. For nearly 50 years, the Times has sent out its headline for the next day out on the wire and newspapers and broadcasters have en masse synchronized their own stories to whatever the NYT decided to cover. The Ochs-Sulzbergers ultimately decided what was and was not news for the entire country.
Look, conservatives can hold their heads high. What a fight! And the Housebillbarely passed. Now action moves to the Senate, and there's slim chance that Democratic health nationalization will pass there. So, I'm hopeful and holding off on further analysis until tomorrow. Not only that, I'm distracted! I blame Theo Spark! As you can see, our lovely lady here demonstrates a very public option with her forward material. Indeed, she might even be too hot for Smitty's reach-around roundups! Enjoy!
The FBI dispatched agents from Austin, San Antonio and Waco to the scene, and pressed into service a 15-member forensic unit to help military police collect evidence. Agents from the bureau's Washington field office interviewed relatives, neighbors and friends who knew Hasan during his years in the Washington area. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also are on hand to help with weapons analysis.
Investigators also focused on Guns Galore, a firearms store just down the highway from the mosque. Store owner David Cheadle said federal agents interviewed him about the sale of a FN Herstal Five-Seven pistol that was used in the shootings. "It is a popular choice for personal defense," Cheadle said, pulling one from his case, "but it's expensive" -- more than $1,100 at his store.
The gun, made of lightweight polymer, can handle magazines with 20 or 30 rounds. It is a controversial weapon among gun control advocates because it can penetrate body armor when used with more powerful, but restricted, ammunition employed by law enforcement and the military.
An Army official said the suspect had fired more than 100 rounds before he was felled by two Army civilian police officers, Sgt. Kimberly Munley and Sgt. Mark Todd.
Pictured above is a FN Five-Seven single-action autoloading pistol at the Fabrique Nationale website, a Belgian manufacturer with production and sales units in the U.S. (not necessarily the same weapon used by Hasan).
The officials said a continuing search of Major Hasan’s computer indicates that he had logged on to Web sites that celebrated radical Islamic ideologies and that he had exchanged e-mail messages with like-minded people, some possibly overseas. In addition, they believe that he may have written inflammatory Internet postings that justified suicide attacks, though that has not been concretely established.
It's all uncoordinated to any larger terror plot, and so far there's no evidence of any outside direction. Yet, so far the investigation is providing more compelling evidence that this was not just a man who snapped. Nidal Hasan Bought, begining shortly before 9/11, became a commited jihadist and developed an increasingly hostility to the United States and America's missions abroad. It does little good for the administration and commentators to continue insisting that it's too soon to draw conclusions. As we saw this afternoon, Nidal Hasan attended the same mosque as a number of the September 11 hijackers: "Nidal Malik Hasan, Fort Hood Shooter, Linked to September 11 Terrorists."
From Jawa Report, here's the webpage for Anwar al Awlaki, Nidal Malik Hasan's religious mentor at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia. Al Awlaki boasts of the Taliban "making U.S. soldiers" cry in Afghanistan and argues against enemy armies, "Establishing Islamic sharia is an obligation, and fighting in the cause of Allah is an obligation, and if that cannot be achieved except by fighting against these armies then that becomes an obligation."
America and its allies in the area are plotting against the mujahedeen, nevertheless their growth increases by the day. May Allah grant the true believers victory and grant them steadfastness on His path.
Their intention is to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah will complete His light even thought the disbelievers may detest it.
Any one who knows anything about al-Awlaki knows he is as radical as they come.
A deeper terrorist plot? No indication of that. But those who continue to claim that the attack had nothing to do with a broader goal of jihad really have nothing left to stand on.
Again, let me remind the simple minded that like most human behavior murder is often motivated by many things. Sure, Hasan very well could have been distressed over an impending deployment and perhaps that deployment was a proximate cause. He may also have been bat shit crazy.
However it is also clear that he held the same world view as the vast majority of Islamist terrorists and that this was at least one of his motivations.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.
As investigators look at Hasan's motives and mindset, his attendance at the mosque could be an important piece of the jigsaw. Al-Awlaki moved to Dar al-Hijrah as imam in January, 2001, from the west coast, and three months later the September 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour began attending his services. A third hijacker attended his services in California.
Hasan was praying at Dar al-Hijrah at about the same time, and the FBI will now want to investigate whether he met the two terrorists.
Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, as an "al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11 hijackers... who targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen".
The mention of Hasan's mother's funeral at the 9/11 mosque is important, for as the Washington Post reported today, Nidal Malik Hasan adopted a strict interpretation of Islamist fundamentalism at precisely the same time as his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki. See, "Fort Hood Suspect Became More Devout After Mother's Death, Cousin Says."
And what will be the response of the administration? More warnings not to "jump to conclusions?" Actually, yes, as reported in the New York Times this afternoon, "Obama Says Don’t 'Jump to Conclusions'." And in his weekly address this morning, President Obama -- while respectful and thankful for America's past and present service personnel on the eve of Veterans' Day -- downplayed Nidal Malik Hasan religion and never uttered a word about the possibility of a premeditated fanatical Islamist attack against our troops:
So again, compare this post with my previous entry, "Obama Dishonors Commander-in-Chief Role." I'm sure many have strong feelings about this, and it's my position that President Obama only makes such attacks more likely, since he refuses -- out of abject political correctness -- to identify and repudiate Nidal Malik Hasan's actions for what they were: those of a weak coward who hated his country and who killed those pledged to uphold our freedoms. Both the president's and Hasan's behavior are despicable.
I don't know that I'd criticize President Obama on this one: he does have a full schedule, and the President of the United States can't always just drop everything.
I respect Dana immensely, and I'm proud and thankful of his daughter for her service, but there's really little debate on this: American soldiers have been killed on home ground in a premediated, religiously-motivated terrorist attack. The president needs to be with the families of the dead and wounded, and he needs to come out more forcefully against what has happened. The shootings have been described as an act of war by retired military personnel. And actually, I probably wouldn't have posted on the disagreement, but it turns out that Comrade Repsac3has been trolling the comments this weekend, and he's piggy-backing on Dana's comments to attempt a "consensus repudiation" of American Power.
So, with all due respect, let's go to Flopping Aces:
The priority for the Commander In Chief, IMHO, would be to bypass any planned speech and immediately fly to Austin, Texas, act like a Commander in Chief, go to the site of the shootings, meet with senior staff, assess the situation and events that led to the shootings, speak to the troops, particularly the injured, demonstrate concern and take action based on the findings of your assessment. Such actions should include addressing the families of the fallen and the injured. Assure the American people that their military bases and the security of the bases are not compromised and all possible measures will be taken to tighten what already has been established to safeguard the safety of soldier.
There are many differences between President Obama and former president George Bush but none may be as glaring as President Obama’s handling of the Fort Hood shooting. There is no doubt that former president George Bush would have taken to the airwaves and held a special news conference.
Though President Obama has made three attempts to speak against the violence that transpired on November 5, 2009, he has yet to do so. In each of his remarks, he discussed the facts, the need for patience, and the grief that victims’ families are undergoing. He has yet to condemn the shooting, nor illustrate ways to prevent this from happening in the future.
Will President Barack Obama be able to avoid negative attention for his initial reaction to the Fort Hood Massacre? His first speech after the killing of at least 13 soldiers on a US military base showed a complete lack of any presidential leadership. It may (and should) go down in history as far worse than the “Pet Goat” incident.
On September 11, 2001 President George W. Bush heard a plane had hit the World Trade Center when he was about to hear elementary kids read a book to him at a school in Florida. Bush had a whisper in his ear from Andrew Card about the plane while he was in front of a group of small children. At that point the complete picture of a full scale terrorist attack was not known. Bush knew something was happening, but he did not know how bad, and he did not want to frighten the kids in front of him.
The book the children read to him was called “The Pet Goat” and that incident has been used to attack Bush by the Left ever since ....
After meeting with the children and getting more information, President Bush gave a short but powerful press conference to the country. It showed great leadership and clarity on what was going on. You can debate if he should have immediately ran out on the kids and then made his speech, but there is no debating the strength of his first public words on the incident.
As the world watched he started out his speech:
“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended.”
"We don't know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts," Obama said in a Rose Garden statement otherwise devoted to the economy.
Funny but he was willing to reach conclusions within hours of the murder of abortionist George Tiller. Interestingly, it took Him 2 days to issue a statement when a Muslim terrorist killed a soldier at an Army recruitment office in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Seems some incidents call for restraint and others call for immediate conclusions.
Also, compare and contrast the media reaction.
Immediately Tiller's murder an act of domestic terrorism (here, here and here for just a few examples. Warning: liberal sites).
Just to be clear, jumping to conclusions is not what anyone is advocating. My problem with Obama and his courtiers in the media is that there are certain classes and subject which may not be speculated about but there are clearly some times when it's ok.
The media is most definitely jumping to conclusions, one unconnected to anything we know about Hasan while at the same time ruling out any consideration of a subset of the things for which there is evidence or at least indications.
So, folks can see why I might not be fully in sync with my good friend Dana. (And Repsac3 can hump a stump for all I care.)
Newly-elected Congressman Bill Owens has joined President Obama and Speaker Pelosi in voting for the House healthcare bill with the "public option" provision. This is the ultimate stab-in-the-back to constituents in the district, since Owens campaigned in opposition to the bill. From Michael Patrick Leahy (via Memorandum):
From the start of his campaign on August 10 until an election eve debate on October 30, Owens adamantly opposed the type of public option that is contained in HR 3962, the Pelosi bill the House is voting on later today.
Owens announced qualified support for the “current bill” in an October 30 debate less than 84 hours before the polls opened. His statement of support was lost in the ensuing melodrama when Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race the next day, and then switched allegiances and endorsed him rather than the Conservative Doug Hoffman.
In his statement today lauding Owens, President Obama unwittingly confirmed what had been reported here earlier today–that the voters of the 23rd Congressional District had been misled throughout the campaign by Bill Owens that he opposed the Pelosi public option Health Care bill, and that, had Mr. Owens’ been honest with the voters throughout the entire campaign he would not have won the special election.
Dishonesty from the Democratic Party. Who would have guessed it?
This is Sean Hannity taking a photo of Keith Olbermann taking a photo of him at the World Series. Olbermann writes, "The guy I'm taking a photo of, who's taking a photo of me - we get along perfectly at the ballpark - less so during our day jobs." You think?
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