Free Republic

Since the moment cable news anchors first announced the name of the shooter at Fort Hood military base in Texas, there's been a clear and ever-growing undercurrent to coverage of Major Nidal Hasan's crime. Is there a threat of home-grown terrorism in America? Hasan, after all, was deeply troubled by America's two wars in Muslim nations. He exchanged e-mails with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam living in Yemen with ties to al-Qaeda. Could there be more Hasans? In recent days, pundits have been consumed with the question of whether the shooting qualifies as terrorism. Whether Hasan is a Muslim whose...

The FBI said today that it appears Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan acted alone in the Fort Hood shootings, and was not involved in terrorist activities when a joint terrorism task force crossed paths with him last year. “At this point, there is no information to indicate Major Nidal Malik Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot,” the FBI said in a statement. “The investigation to date has not identified a motive, and a number of possibilities remain under consideration. We are working with the military to obtain, review and analyze all information relating to Major...

Major Hasan: Soldier of Allah; Many Ties to Jihad Web Sites Officials Say Accused Fort Hood Shooter Used Multiple Hotmail, AOL Accounts for Overseas Contacts By RICHARD ESPOSITO, MARY-ROSE ABRAHAM and RHONDA SCHWARTZ Nov. 12, 2009 — United States Army Major Nidal Hasan proclaimed himself a "soldier of Allah" on private business cards he obtained over the Internet and kept in a box at his apartment near Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan, the alleged perpetrator of last week's fatal shootings in Fort Hood, TX, was charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder under Article 118 of the Uniform Code of...

Something has gone terribly wrong in the entire reaction to the Ft. Hood massacres, as evidenced by the media, the administration, the military authorities, and perhaps the public at large. There seems almost a dreamy disconnect from the terrible fate of the slain—as if we are innately impotent to stop such mayhem, or are above the fray and so like Platonic Guardians must remain deep in contemplation about how in theory we can persuade the Hasans to cease and desist—as if our therapeutic stance in the first place did not encourage and embolden such monsters to act. Not a “tragedy”...

Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic? Hasan had been a trouble spot on officials' radar since he started training at Walter Reed, six years earlier. Several officials confirm that supervisors had repeatedly given him poor evaluations and warned him that...

JARRATT, Va. (AP) - Sniper John Allen Muhammad is meeting with relatives in the hours before his execution and one of his attorneys described the convicted killer as fearless. Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said Muhammad had no regrets and would die with dignity Tuesday night in Virginia. Gordon also insisted that Muhammad was innocent. Gordon says Muhammad met with one of his sons before the execution and then reminisced with the attorney about the time he spent with his son before Muhammad went to prison.

On CNN's American Morning show yesterday, reporter Carol Costello quoted the mother of a Muslim U.S. soldier as fearing "a backlash against Muslim American soldiers." "She knows some are already reaching conclusions as to why Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly opened fire on his fellow soldiers," Costello stated. Continued Costello: "The right-wing website, Pajamas Media, is an example. Phyllis Chesler writing, 'I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslim. We must connect the dots before it's too late.'" Costello was referring to a Pajamas Media column entitled "The Jihadist is always the victim," in which Chesler...

The breaking news about Fort Hood made me cringe. Like most Muslims, I hoped the shooter would be a Smith or Jones, while some smirked and gleefully waited for a Muslim name to say, I told you so. Once again, this incident would highlight the polarized social relations in American society amid a national tragedy. American Muslims would be uncomfortable by intense media scrutiny, while others would have a field day maligning Islam and blaming Muslims. And both would be wrong. If Major Nidal Malik Hasan were Robert Stewart, who committed mass killings at a nursing home in North Carolina,...

MOUNTAIN HOME, IDAHO -- The setting sun is streaming in the living room window of Marion Lewis's house as he puts aside his cigarette and starts telling the story of the day his daughter was murdered. break He remembers the day, Oct. 3, 2002, when Lori Lewis Rivera was shot to death by the D.C. snipers at a gas station in Kensington. Two thousand miles away, her father was oblivious, out in the wilderness running a giant rock-crushing machine. Lewis stares at the floor as he recalls it, kneading his beefy hands and wiping away tears with his fingers. break...

Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings. But federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding that the messages warranted no further action, government officials said on Monday. Major Hasan’s exchanges with the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Major Hasan worshipped, indicate that the authorities were aware of Major Hasan before last Thursday’s deadly rampage, but did...

By now, most of us are tired of the continuing litany of “let’s not judge” what happened at Fort Hood, and that Major Malik Nidal Hasan was simply mentally ill and stressed out because of his impending deployment. He, like a disgruntled employee, simply snapped. That is why it was so refreshing to hear Senator Joe Lieberman on Fox News Sunday, where the maverick Democrat now independent dissident dared to say that Hasan “reportedly showed signs of being a “self-radicalized, homegrown terrorist.’” There were indications, he noted, that Hasan “had turned to Islamist extremism” which should be investigated. If so,...

On April 19, 1995, 168 people lost their lives at the hands of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City at the federal Alfred P Murrah Building. The media and officialdom INSTANTLY declared the attack to be an act of TERRORISM. Upon discovering who was responsible for this deadly attack, EVERYONE within the establishment branded McVey to be a Right-Wing Extremist, a member of some kind of vast conspiracy, and a CHRISTIAN Religious Fanatic. Truth be told, McVey was not a very religious person. He wasn’t part of any vast Right-Wing conspiracy, and his fundamental political and social views were not anywhere...

The personal Web site for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero. The posting Monday on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

"..They are Americans of every race, faith, and station. They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers. They are descendents of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is a patriotism like no other. What they share is a commitment to country that has been tested and proved worthy. What they share is the same unflinching courage, unblinking compassion, and uncommon camaraderie that the soldiers and civilians of Ft. Hood showed America and showed the world..." I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes today about the...

Survivors of the Fort Hood massacre described today how Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly gunned down unarmed soldiers, and then shot them again as they lay wounded on the floor. Investigators believe more than 100 shots were fired from Hasan's gun in a matter of minutes. He was described as calm and methodical in his attack, pausing only to reload. Soldier Keara Bono survived the onslaught although she was wounded slightly in the back and grazed in the head. Bono told "Good Morning America" today that she initially thought the scene of Hasan standing up, praising Allah and starting to...

The uncle says Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a sensitive man haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated. The Army psychiatrist was not political, his relatives in the West Bank say. Hamad described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, the uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby. The young man became more religious after the death of his parents, who were Muslims...

Maj Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at a Texas military base, had become increasingly devoted to Islam following the death of his parents but was no terrorist, his cousins in the West Bank said on Friday. Speaking from their home in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Hasan's relatives painted a picture of a man cornered into an act of "lunacy" by the repeated discrimination of his peers and an attempt by the army to force him to serve in Afghanistan. "They discriminated against him because he was a Muslim," Mohammed Mohammed, one of Hasan's cousins, told the...

Health experts say they are hardly astonished that the suspect in the worst mass murder ever at a U.S. military base is an Army psychiatrist — the very person who is supposed to be helping soldiers deal with the traumatic stress of war. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, suspected of gunning down 13 and wounding 30 at the Fort Hood Army Post in Texas, treated soldiers at the Darnall Army Medical Center there after being transferred in July from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he had worked for six years. Dr. Robin Kerner, an attending psychologist who specializes in...

<p>Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in yesterday's Fort Hood shootings that killed 13 and wounded 30, identifies as a Muslim.</p> <p>Much has and will be made of his religion from people too ignorant to read a Qur'an, or too isolated to talk to a Muslim, or too stubborn to educate themselves. Even the Washington Post calls him a "devout Muslim." But can a "devout Muslim" commit such acts? No more than a "devout Christian" can, no.</p>

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - As if going off to war, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan cleaned out his apartment, gave leftover frozen broccoli to one neighbor and called another to thank him for his friendship—common courtesies and routines of the departing soldier. Instead, authorities say, he went on the killing spree that left 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, dead. Investigators examined Hasan's computer, his home and his garbage Friday to learn what motivated the suspect, who lay in a coma, shot four times in the frantic bloodletting that also wounded 30. Hospital officials said some of the wounded had...