A Senate report on the Fort Hood shooting is sharply critical of the FBI’s failure to recognize warning signs that an Army psychiatrist had become an Islamist extremist and amounted to a “ticking time bomb.”
The report concluded that both the Defense Department and the FBI had sufficient information to detect that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been radicalized to violent extremism, but they failed to understand and act on it. It said the FBI’s top leaders must exercise more control over local field offices and put to better use the intelligence analysts who should have been able to connect the dots.
Hot Air has excerpts from the report, including the following:
Hasan advanced to a two-year fellowship at USUHS [Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences]…Less than a month into the fellowship, in August 2007, Hasan gave another off-topic presentation on a violent Islamist extremist subject instead of on a health care subject. This time, Hasan’s presentation was so controversial that the instructor had to stop it after just two minutes when the class erupted in protest to Hasan’s views. The presentation was entitled, Is the War on Terror a War on Islam: An Islamic Perspective? Hasan’s proposal for this presentation promoted this troubling thesis: that U.S. military operations are a war against lslam rather than based on non-religious security considerations. Hasan’s presentation accorded with the narrative of violent Islamist extremism that the West is at war with Islam. Hasan’s paper was full of empathetic and supportive recitation of other violent Islamist extremist views, including defense of Osama bin Laden, slanted historical accounts blaming the United States for problems in the Middle East, and arguments that anger at the United States is justifiable…The instructor who stopped the presentation said that Hasan was sweating, quite nervous, and agitated after being confronted by the class.
Hasan’s promotion of violent Islamist extremist beliefs continued after the presentation. One classmate said that Hasan supported suicide bombings in another class. He told several classmates that his religion took precedence over the U.S. Constitution he swore to support and defend as a U.S. military officer.
It was also known that Hasan was in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki. This was attributed to “research.”
Remember: Hasan’s just a lone nutjob. Radical Islam has nothing to do with it. Don’t jump to conclusions. Also, Sarah Palin controlled Jared Loughner’s mind with her Magic Voodoo Map of Death.