Nidal Malik Hasan

PC News: Networks Downplay Terrorism, Muslim Connection in Ft. Hood Attack
By Carolyn Plocher | November 11, 2009 | 10:54 AM EST
  • Networks Decide Attack Wasn't Terror: 85 percent of the broadcast stories didn't mention the word "terror." ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news referenced terrorism connections to the Fort Hood attack just seven times in 48 reports.
  • ABC, CBS, NBC Follow White House Line: Before Obama's Nov. 10 speech, 93 percent of the stories had ignored any terror connection. But after Obama hinted at what ABC called "Islamic extremist views," all three networks mentioned terrorism.
  • Alleged Attacker's Muslim Faith Not Important Either: Slightly more than one-fourth (29 percent) of evening news reports mentioned that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim. Of those, half (7 out of 14) defended the religion or included experts to do so.

Last week, Fort Hood, Texas was the site of the worst mass shooting in history on a U.S. military base. At 2:34 p.m. local time on Nov. 5, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan - one of the military's own - reportedly attacked fellow soldiers, yelling, "Allah Akbar." He then allegedly fired more than 100 rounds into Fort Hood's crowded processing center, killing 13 and wounding 29. This heinous act stunned the nation and captivated the news media.

Dobbs Excoriates Obama for Double Standard: Compares President’s Post-Cambridge to Post-Fort Hood Remarks
By Jeff Poor | November 11, 2009 | 1:34 AM EST

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."

CNN Misquotes Ft. Hood Private to Cast Doubt on Cries of 'Allahu Akbar'
By Lachlan Markay | November 10, 2009 | 5:20 PM EST
CNN misquoted a soldier at Fort Hood who was wounded in last week's shooting to  suggest that the soldier's recollection that Major Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" before firing was in doubt. Many in the media have been doing their best to downplay evidence suggesting Hasan was acting in accordance with radical Muslim beliefs.

"I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up and yelled 'Allahu Akbar' in Arabic and he opened fire," Pvt. Joseph Foster recalled yesterday on CNN's "American Morning" (Video below the fold - h/t Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit).
FT's Freeland 'Comforted' Military's Devotion To 'Diversity' Endures Despite Hasan Case
By Mark Finkelstein | November 10, 2009 | 8:12 AM EST

Of all the things that might give you comfort in the wake of Nidal Malik Hasan's murderous rampage, where would you rate the news that the military's commitment to "diversity

The War on Terror Made Him Do It
By Rusty Weiss | November 10, 2009 | 12:54 AM EST
As is seemingly tradition, the media is once again playing that classic game known as ‘How Can We Blame Bush?'  It's the party favorite where liberals take the biggest headline of the day, and immediately link Bush to the cause in one fell swoop, eliminating all facets of rationale. 

Now, syndicated columnist Gwynne Dyer has introduced his own version, something that is only surprising in the length of time it took for this kind of diatribe to crack the pages of the media:  ‘Fort Hood = Bush's fault'.

In his latest column, Dyer makes the tired argument that it is the War on Terror which breeds Muslim resentment, and by extension, is an obvious explanation for the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan.  It was President Bush who popularized the War on Terror phrase, delivering a speech shortly after the attacks of September 11th which would outline his future plans. 

As Dyer states (emphasis mine):

The one explanation that is excluded is that America's wars in Muslim lands overseas are radicalizing Muslims at home.

Dyer's revisionist history also explains that the War on Terror itself was not in response to escalating attacks by jihadists - rather, it was part panic, part ignorance, and a heaping portion of racism.

(More after the break)

Matthews on Ft. Hood Suspect Warning Signal: 'That's Not a Crime to Call al Qaeda, Is It?'
By Jeff Poor | November 9, 2009 | 9:11 PM EST

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has said some things that would make your scratch your head - like getting a thrill up his leg from a speech given by Barack Obama. However, this one will really make you wonder what he was thinking.

On his Nov. 9 broadcast of "Hardball," in an interview with Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Matthews compared the incident of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan at Ft. Hood to Sirhan Sirhan's 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

"You know, I have a hard time with this because people like Sirhan Sirhan, who is still serving time for killing Bobby Kennedy, didn't like what Bobby Kennedy had said on television," Matthews said. "Bobby Kennedy had made political statements saying we're going to sell arms, fighter planes directly to Israel, not under the table. We're going to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Those are the things that triggered his killing spree. He killed one person - Bobby Kennedy, horrifically. But did he become a different religious person because he committed the crime? And when did this happen?" [Audio: Part I here (925 KB), Part II here (1.18 MB)]

NYT Gives False Impression That Catholic Medal of Honor Winner Was Muslim
By Matthew Balan | November 9, 2009 | 6:38 PM EST

Lt. Michael Monsoor, Medal of Honor winner, taken from US Navy websiteAndrea Elliott’s front page article in the November 9 New York Times played up the thousands of Muslims in the U.S. military and how their “service...is more necessary and more complicated than ever before,” but gave the false impression that a Medal of Honor recipient named near the end of her piece was a Muslim himself, when he was actually Catholic.

Elliott spent much of her article, “Complications Grow for Muslims Serving in the U.S. Military” (which appeared above the fold on the front page of the print edition of the Times), detailing the concerns of “many Muslim soldiers and their commanders...[who] fear that the relationship between the military and its Muslim service members will only grow more difficult” after Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood on November 5. She later noted that “[w]hatever his possible motives, the emerging portrait of Major Hasan’s life in the military casts light on some of the struggles and frustrations felt by other Muslims in the services.”

Near the end of the article, Elliott changed the subject ever so slightly that it might have gone unnoticed. The reporter quoted Captain Erich Rahman, an Iraq war veteran and Bronze Star winner: “Too many Americans overlook the heroic efforts of Arab-Americans in uniform, said Capt. Eric Rahman...He cited the example of Lieutenant Michael A. Monsoor, a Navy Seal who was awarded the Medal of Honor after pulling a team member to safety during firefight in 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq.  Lieutenant Monsoor died saving another American, yet he will never be remembered like Major Hasan, said Captain Rahman. Regardless, he said, Muslim- and Arab-Americans are crucial to the military’s success in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

CBS’s Schieffer Blames Army for Ft. Hood Shooting
By Kyle Drennen | November 9, 2009 | 5:32 PM EST
Bob Schieffer, CBS At the end of Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, host Bob Schieffer offered commentary on the cause of the mass shooting at Fort Hood: “That doctor [Major Nidal Hasan] should not have been at Fort Hood. I don’t care how hard-up the Army is for mental health professionals....sadly, this shows the Army still does not take protecting soldiers’ mental health as seriously as it does training them to shoot.”

Schieffer went on to argue: “And then there is the other part that often happens in government. Don’t deal with the problem, shuffle it off to somewhere else. When he had problems at Walter Reed hospital, the doctor was just packed off to Fort Hood.” In similar fashion, Schieffer “shuffled off” the responsibility of an overly politically correct media that continually denounces profiling of criminal suspects or terrorists.

Earlier in the broadcast, Schieffer asked Congressman Ike Skelton: “Do you think this is a sign that the military is simply overextended?”

Speaking to Senator Lindsey Graham, Schieffer referred to Hasan’s Islamic extremism, but countered: “Islam doesn’t have a majority – or the Christian religion has its full, you know, full helping of nuts too.”
ABC: U.S. Knew Hasan Tried Contacting Al Qaeda Months Ago
By Noel Sheppard | November 9, 2009 | 10:29 AM EST

ABC's Brian Ross reported Monday that suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Halik Hasan tried to contact people connected to the terrorist group al Qaeda.

Even worse, U.S. intelligence officials were aware of this months ago, and "it's not known whether the military was ever told by the CIA or others that one of its majors was making efforts to communicate with figures under electronic surveillance."

Given media's discomfort with discussing Hasan's Muslim ties, as well as their desire to never point fingers at the Obama administration, it's going to be very interesting to watch how Ross's exclusive report on "Good Morning America" Monday will be covered in the coming days (video embedded below the fold with full transcript):

NYT Wants You To Know: Percentage-wise, Hasan Was Hardly Ever Homicidal
By Mark Finkelstein | November 9, 2009 | 7:31 AM EST
Check out the headline from on the front page of the hard-copy New York City edition of today's New York Times:

After Years of Growing Tension, 7 Minutes of Bloodshed

The article reports that Nidal Malik Hasan began feeling disgruntled with the Army as far back as 2004.

Let's see, there are 525,948 minutes in a year. If Hasan's been feeling "tension" for about five years, that makes about 2,629,740 tension-filled minutes.  And during that entire period, he only engaged in a homicidal rampage for seven minutes.  I mean, come on, he was only a murderer for some tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of the time!  

CNN's Nguyen Asks: 'Was It Taunting, Was It Teasing, Was It Harassment?'
By Mike Bates | November 7, 2009 | 3:17 PM EST
On CNN Saturday Morning News today, anchor Betty Nguyen interviewed a psychiatrist about Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 and wounded 30 others in a shooting spree Thursday in Fort Hood, Texas.  She began by delving into possible reason for Hasan's actions:
NGUYEN: Dr. Paul Ragan, a psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder joins me now from Nashville. Dr. Ragan, let me ask you this. Are the Ft. Hood shootings the action of someone who might have suffered from PTSD?

DR. PAUL RAGAN, SPECIALIZES IN POST-TRAUMATIC SYNDROME: I think actually that's fairly unlikely. Dr. Hasan just finished a two-year fellowship at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress and he had only been an independent Army psychiatrist for about four months. That is at an operational base. So for him to have been suffering from PTSD I think is highly unlikely.
More Emerging Bias: Maddow Guest Suggests Lack of Health Funding Motivated Fort Hood Killer
By Jack Coleman | November 6, 2009 | 9:24 PM EST

When in doubt, cite the need for more government funding of health care. You won't find an argument on MSNBC.

Among the guests offering their perspectives about the Fort Hood massacre on Rachel Maddow's show last night was Salon.com national correspondent Mark Benjamin, who tried to downplay growing evidence that suspected assailant Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by a jihadist's hatred of America --

BENJAMIN: There are people that believe that this is a person that was suffering some sort of secondary post-traumatic stress from treating soldiers and there are people that believe he was somehow influenced by Muslim extremism. I think it could be a combination of both. I certainly have met mental health care providers in the military who after sitting all day long and listening to some really disturbing tales, you know, when they're treating these soldiers coming back from Iraq, and in combination with the fact that they're overwhelmed, overworked, don't have the resources to do their jobs, become extremely stressed and frazzled. And there's no reason to not think that this could, this could ultimately lead to that kind of a conclusion.