Dobbs Excoriates Obama for Double Standard: Compares President’s Post-Cambridge to Post-Fort Hood Remarks

November 11th, 2009 1:34 AM

Some of the mainstream media intelligentsia following the Fort Hood, Texas massacre have cautioned people to reserve judgment about the suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan and have bypassed many key details in order to live up to what could be construed as a politically correct standard. CNN's Lou Dobbs isn't one of them.

Dobbs, on his Nov. 10 radio program, didn't reserve judgment and criticized President Barack Obama for telling people to do so in a speech following the tragic event. Dobbs played a clip from the speech Obama gave last week in which he warned, "We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."

"Isn't that remarkable, telling the American people not to jump to any conclusions?" Dobbs said. "Not to speculate, not to be curious about what is happening to our men and women, who should be the center of all of our attention and concern and care. Let's compare that statement by our president to what he said at the end of a press conference about health care shortly after the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, his good friend."

In that press conference, Obama said, "I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

According to Dobbs, it was just a matter of compare and contrast - the treatment Hasan got from the President versus the treatment the arresting officer in the Cambridge Police situation received.

"So, there are the two Presidents Obama," Dobbs said. "You pick which one is most palatable to you and you try to explain to me if you will how the more recent statement squares with the previous statement."

But then Dobbs showed he was clearly aggravated by Obama's double standard, especially after the casualties of the Fort Hood tragedy.

"How dare he stand up there and sanctimoniously tell the American people not to rush to judgment, to jump to conclusions," an impassioned Dobbs said. "My God - there are 13 people dead, 29 of them wounded, 29 of our troops wounded at Fort Hood and so I'm going to jump to some conclusions here because all we have are eyewitnesses and surveillance tape and that's all I've got to go on."

And Dobbs wasn't afraid to call this an act of terrorism, as so many others have shied away from doing. The CNN host said he would indeed be jumping to conclusions and encouraged others to do so as well.

"Let me tell you - this man carried out an act of terrorism against the United States of America," Dobbs declared. "Was he a troubled and dispirited and deeply conflicted person with all sorts of behavioral issues? Yes. And was the United States Army derelict in its responsibility to care for those who they put in the charge of Major Hasan? Absolutely. I'm jumping to those conclusions, Mr. President. I'm curious and I'm going to speculate just like tens of millions of other Americans. It's a healthy thing, not a bad thing. We're not in a court of law here - that will be administered by the United States Army, thank God."