Accused Fort Hood shooter dreaded deployment, cousin says (MSM excusing the terrorist, again)

Dallas Morning News ^ | 11/6/2009 | DMN

[tobyhill]

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan never served a tour of duty in Iraq. But the psychiatrist worked inside two places that have seen the terrible fallout from the war – first Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in the nation's capital, and lately at Fort Hood, the giant Central Texas base.

He dealt with some of the invisible wounds from the conflict. He counseled soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps getting a preview of the horrors of war that he had yet to see.

But Hasan was, in many ways, very different from the soldiers and family members who had direct experience with the pain and suffering of war. He'd served in the Army for several years but had not been deployed overseas. Unmarried, he hadn't experienced the stress of soldiers whose family life had been interrupted by long deployments that put them in harm's way.

His religion, too, set him apart. He told relatives a few years ago that he was having second thoughts about his military career because other soldiers had harassed him because of his Muslim faith. More recently, he had expressed misgivings about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

[murdoog]

I have to wonder...this man was a psychiatrist counseling our soldiers who may have had difficulty adjusting to some of the more grisly aspects of warfare, but was clearly squarely on the side of his patients’ enemies. I think it would be worthwhile to inspect just what were the outcomes of the soldiers placed under his care. Since the soldiers who saw him were actually his enemies, he would have no interest in helping them adjust to the realities of war, and it would be quite easy to conduct some psychological warfare on a person in a frayed mental state.

I can't help but think of Hannibal Lecter.

[tobyhill]

You’re right, he did it because he’s nothing but a terrorist.