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Author Topic: Shooting at Ft. Hood Texas 11/05/09 13 dead, 43 wounded-(Murder Charges)  (Read 730168 times)
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« Reply #860 on: December 10, 2009, 06:00:05 PM »



A few lines, and thoughts, about healthcare

 Last Updated Thursday, Dec 10, 2009 - 02:30:56 pm CST

By Michael Cahill
*

Editor’s note: The family of the late Mike Cahill resubmitted this Letter to the Editor penned by Mr. Cahill in September, two months before he was killed in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood.

We do not need to stop, slow down or take more time. Eleven-year-olds read the last Harry Potter offering in a weekend, so expecting our legislators to read through a bill that is repetitive and includes issues they have already discussed is not too much to expect.

In any case, we have been discussing this nationally since Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, and even Nixon tried to get something added. We know what we need to know.

We know that the most cost-effective ways to provide the best medical care in this country is Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and CHIPS. We know that the essentially UHC provided in Great Britain works far better than our own system and works far cheaper. When the last administration was refusing states the right to negotiate their own drug prices, the British negotiated a seven percent across the board decrease in their prices.

If you find yourself surprised at that first sentence above, it is for two reasons: You’re not paying attention to what is actually happening, and you cannot use reason to talk someone out of a belief they didn’t use reason to arrive at.

My example for that last sentence is Obama’s signing of the biggest middle-class tax cut in history with the stimulus bill, getting not one Republican vote and being met by “tea party” protests for his tax policies. We need to pay more attention and think logically. We need to decide just what it is we like and trust in the current system.

Do we trust our employers to offer us an adequate plan, to negotiate an affordable rate of payment, in a policy that offers what we need for as long as we need it?

We need to recognize that plans are all cutting benefits, drop everyone eventually and will deny claims whenever they get the chance. The cost of insurance is rising faster than the rate of inflation - even medical cost inflation - and is rising more than the trillion dollars predicted for one of the plans in consideration.

I note that the Bush tax cuts applied only to the upper 15 percent of income and cost $1.35 trillion over the 10 years they will last.

The plans we have love us like a glutton loves their lunch and as soon as we start needing medical care they have a responsibility to their shareholders to drop us. These plans together with the pharmaceutical companies are willing to cede a few millions to the needs of reform only to assure them that the government will not take over and start negotiating cuts in their skyrocketing profit margins. They are trying with great success to get the cost socialized by subsidies from the government on their terms, while they privatize their profits. And they are funding ads to convince us that we are better Americans doing it their way than doing it the best way.

If you saw C-Span this week (Aug. 21) running each morning a series of interviews with actual experts and rerunning them in the evening you’d learn a lot more and not have to tolerate the string of half-truths and just plain lies surrounding this issue. The information is right there if you just take the time and responsibility to look for it. It’ll be on the Web for a good long time too.

We need to decide if healthcare is a natural right and condition of all of us on the basis of our common humanity or is it a privilege?

If it is not a basic human right, then what earns the privilege? Do we, as Americans, really believe that only those with jobs have a right to even the mediocre coverage we get now? Is it really right that 60 to 70 percent of bankruptcies are precipitated by medical bills, even with insurance, that people’s lives are shorter, their disabilities greater for lack of health care?

No subject of Her Majesty will lose their house for having a heart attack, and there was no freedom to do so in the minds of the founding fathers, nor the troops who fought for our freedoms.

http://www.cameronherald.com/articles/2009/12/10/news/opinion/opinion03.txt
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« Reply #861 on: December 11, 2009, 04:41:30 PM »


Adam Mancini/U.S. Army
Staff Sgt. Azhar Sher from Company B, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment speaks with an Afghan National Police officer in Zabul province, Afghanistan, during a deployment in March. Since returning to Europe, the Army has assigned Sher to Heidelberg, where he is trying to get a waiver that would allow him to move off base. Sher had argued that living on base was difficult for his extended family because he is a Muslim. The Army has denied his request.


Muslim soldier’s fears lead to off-post housing request

By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, December 12, 2009

HEIDELBERG, Germany — Staff Sgt. Azhar Sher is a rare and valued commodity in the Army. Fluent in Pashto and a variety of other languages spoken in Afghanistan, the infantryman has spent most of the past five years there because, he said, he believes in the mission.

Five deployments in five years, no problem.

But back home, living on post? That can be a problem for a Muslim with Pakistan-born parents, no matter how patriotic.

"I belong to a very large extensive family and, let me be very blunt and honest with you, my family wears traditional clothes and practices their traditional ceremonies just like any other family should and I am very proud of it," Sher wrote to U.S. Army Europe Command Sgt. Maj. Ralph Beam on the CSM’s blog.

Sher, newly assigned to Heidelberg, wanted to live off-post to ease visits with his parents, brothers, uncles and friends, just as he had when he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry

Regiment in Hohenfels, Germany. There, he wrote, "Neither my wife nor I have to deal with the hassles of signing in my relatives on post wearing hijabs and shalwar kamiz."

But his new command said no.

"I do not believe there is a problem in the Heidelberg community — or any other military community," Beam responded on his blog. "There are many different ethnicities and cultures living in Army housing. Many of the soldiers have large gatherings around our housing areas with no issues. Give it a chance."

The final decision came from the Baden-Württemberg garrison commander, Col. Bill Butcher.

Butcher met with Sher and his wife, a non-Muslim Russian-American he met in Korea. He told them he was sympathetic but that his hands were tied, Sher said.

Sher joined the Army a decade ago, he said, and is comfortable being both a Muslim and a U.S. soldier. But since 9/11, he’s sometimes been subject to other soldiers’ suspicions — usually just glances but sometimes hostile comments.

"Living in the Army community — people look at you different. It’s an uncomfortable feeling," Sher said in a phone interview. "You can ask any soldier, ‘Do you want to live with someone whose religion you’ve been fighting?’ They’ll tell you."

The mass killings at Fort Hood last month, allegedly committed by a Muslim Army psychiatrist, "didn’t help, either," Sher said.

Sher said he was investigated once as a possible subversive. And once at Hohenfels, he said, he dropped an uncle by the main gate to wait for him while he ran an errand; by the time he returned, the military police had questioned the uncle about why he was there.

Sher had returned in September from his latest Afghanistan deployment where, he said, "They didn’t like me because I’m an American soldier." He expected he’d get another exception to the family housing policy.

But every time he’s tried to explain, leaders told him that the Army community welcomes diversity and celebrates all cultures.

"I said, ‘Sir, the other cultures you’re talking about, we’re not at war with.’"

Last month, Gen. George Casey, U.S. Army chief of staff, said there were about 3,000 Muslims in the armed forces. Casey spoke after the Fort Hood shootings, which he said might create a backlash against Muslim soldiers.

"I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that," Casey said on CNN.

But the issue with Sher also has to do with another cultural difference: his extended family.

Sher’s relatives visit him frequently and for long periods, and he said he wants them to be able to come and go as they please, to be able to get to a mosque on their own.

"They can wear their own traditional dress. They feel at home. Not like I have to take them," he said. "My family is not just ID-card holders."

Butcher has commanded the garrison for about five months, and in that time, he said, he’s received two or three requests monthly for an exception to the housing policy. The policy states that if suitable family housing on-post is available, that’s what will be offered. It was revised and tightened in 2007, Butcher said, to save money and optimize resources.

"I don’t think I’ve approved more than three or four," he said.

He approved a typical exception recently, he said, for a soldier stationed in Heidelberg whose wife worked in Kaiserslautern.

"We don’t want people on the road, driving back and forth," Butcher said.

But "we don’t authorize housing based on extended family," he said.

Butcher had the policy in mind when he met with Sher last week.

"Certainly I’m sympathetic," Butcher said. "He’s an NCO who’s committed his life to serving our nation. Five deployments into Afghanistan is amazingly admirable."

But he said he could not grant Sher’s request for an exception.

"I honestly believe we have a great, diverse community here," Butcher said.

In the end, a sort of compromise was reached. Butcher called the housing office and was told that a three-bedroom apartment was available in Mark Twain Village, which is close to a mosque and where there are unguarded pedestrian gates.

Sher said the housing office had told him he had to live on Patrick Henry Village, relatively far from downtown Heidelberg, where several civilian guards man an imposing, multilane gate.

Sher wasn’t thrilled with the solution that would have him living on post for the first time in his career. But he said he thought it was "reasonable."
"If they let me live off-post," he said before his meeting with Butcher, "they’re admitting there’s a problem."

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66607
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« Reply #862 on: December 11, 2009, 04:46:49 PM »

U.S. Muslims pen strategy to wrest 'narrative' from militants

By Joe Sterling, CNN
December 11, 2009 3:00 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- A leading Muslim-American civil rights group is advocating intense grassroots engagement among police and U.S. Muslim neighborhood leaders to thwart the emergence of homegrown Islamic terrorists.

A report, issued Friday by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, reflects the shock among American Muslims over the Fort Hood massacre, the arrests of five American Muslims in Pakistan suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, and the arrests of eight Somali-American men on charges related to what prosecutors said were efforts to recruit youths to fight for a Somali guerrilla movement.

Titled "Building Bridges to Strengthen America: Forging an Effective Counterterrorism Enterprise between Muslim Americans and Law Enforcement," the paper stresses a division of labor and a collaboration between police and community groups: Police should fight crime, including terrorism, and neighborhood leaders should deal with the causes of radicalization, it says. At the same time, the paper says, both need to work hand in glove.

"We will capture the narrative from those who seek to misguide the young people," said Haris Tarin, the head of the council's District of Columbia office. He was speaking Friday at a news conference in Washington that introduced the 32-page paper.

"One incident of violent extremism is one too many," said Alejandro J. Beutel, the author of the report and the group's government liaison. "Our community needs to develop more sophistication in dealing with this challenge."

Beutel, who also spoke at the news conference, said there needs to be a greater emphasis on community policing, an idea that calls for closer ties between neighborhood residents and cops on the beat. Developing closer relations with local Muslims would help police tap "unique cultural and linguistic" skills that can spot and head off trouble.

The study said police must surmount community distrust, which it says is common and calls "an automatic barrier to police community outreach."

"Unfortunately, in the current political climate, the actions of certain law enforcement agencies -- whether spying on peaceful activist groups and houses of worship without reasonable suspicion, or religious profiling -- have added to difficulties," the report said.

Such a "heightened sense of fear and grievances also creates a greater pool of alienated people terrorists can tap into for recruitment," Beutel's report said.

Tarin and Beutel said concern about radicalism in the Muslim community isn't new: Books have been published about the subject, and imams at mosques have raised the issue for many years.

Speaking at the news conference, Tarin said that Muslim leaders need to "think outside the box" and engage young people in cyberspace, on social networking sites and in other social circles where they are coming together. And both men said that all Muslim groups need to work together to help confront problems like the emergence of radical thought and identify sources of discontent.

Beutel said the U.S. Muslim community can learn from the experience of the British Muslim community. While there was initial surprise that local Muslims were involved in the July 7, 2005, London bombings, Muslims there later realized that militant leaders were tapping into the problems caused by youthful alienation and social issues such as racism, drug use and premarital sex.

Beutel cites a study that says many militants had been secular before they embraced radical Islam, but they typically lacked mainstream religious knowledge. He said making communities "religiously literate" would help fight radicalism.

"Muslim communities must do their part to reach out and continue to assist law enforcement to bring real terrorist perpetrators to justice," Beutel wrote in the report. "The role Muslim communities should play is in counterradicalization efforts through better religious education, social programs and long-term constructive political engagement."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/11/muslim.policing/
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« Reply #863 on: December 11, 2009, 04:52:21 PM »



Schumacher to present championship trophy to Fort Hood troops
Friday, December 11, 2009

The first thing U.S. Army driver Tony Schumacher said when he claimed his sixth straight and seventh overall NHRA Full Throttle Series championship title was that the trophy would be heading to Fort Hood.

Schumacher won the championship just days after the Nov. 5 shooting at Fort Hood that claimed 12 lives and left 31 injured, and today he will be presenting the trophy during the Fort Hood Community Strong event that will feature a number of formal presentations followed by a series of musical acts.

“This trophy will go to Fort Hood,” Schumacher said after winning the championship Nov. 14, just nine days after the Fort Hood shootings. “I don’t think there’s any question in the world where it belongs. We’re going to give this trophy to the families of the victims. Hopefully, they’ll know how much we’re thinking of them when they see it on display. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with them.”

Schumacher will make the presentation at approximately 1 p.m. local time, and NHRA President Tom Compton will be on hand to offer the full support of the sanctioning body.

http://www.nhra.com/story/2009/12/11/schumacher-to-present-championship-trophy-to-fort-hood-troops/
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« Reply #864 on: December 11, 2009, 05:15:18 PM »

December 11, 2009
Hmmmmm: Khattab Removes All Traces of Link to Ft. Hood Killer Hasan
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199966.php

ooklepookle  /  All Albums  /  ooklepookle's Default Album
http://s288.photobucket.com/albums/ll161/ooklepookle/?start=0
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« Reply #865 on: December 11, 2009, 05:19:54 PM »



Random Lake soldier Pfc. Amber Bahr shot at Fort Hood facing surgery, delayed deployment

BY ERIC LITKE • Sheboygan Press staff • December 11, 2009

A month after being shot in the back during the Fort Hood shooting spree, Pfc. Amber Bahr of rural Random Lake says life has settled down but is still far from normal.

“I don’t feel safe everywhere I go now,” said Bahr, 19, who is still stationed at the Texas Army base. “Everyone is pretty much saying the same thing right now.”

That feeling of security was suddenly and tragically shattered Nov. 5 when a gunman opened fire, killing 13 people — including staff Sgt. Amy Krueger of Kiel — and injuring dozens more. The bullet that injured Bahr struck her in the back and exited her abdomen.

Bahr said Friday she is expecting to have surgery in the next few weeks to remove bullet fragments, though she has already resumed light duty at the base.

“I still have pain sometimes that shoots up and down my back and my leg, but other than that it’s not really that bad,” she said. “I’ve still got to sit down and rest a lot if I know I’m, like, overworking myself, but it’s getting better.”

Bahr didn’t initially notice she’d been shot as she tied a tourniquet around a friend’s wound. She discovered her own injury while at the hospital with a friend. Her actions drew praise from her commander, who called her an “amazing young lady,” a mention by President Obama during his speech at the Fort Hood memorial service and a face-to-face meeting with the President.

The injury will keep Bahr from immediately joining her unit when it deploys to Afghanistan in mid-January. She said doctors have told her not to carry more than 20 pounds and limit the pace and distance that she walks.

Bahr is a nutritionist with the 20th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade, which lost four soldiers in the Fort Hood shootings. She and others from the unit were in the Soldier Readiness Center getting medical screenings and shots in preparation for deployment when the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire.

“Once I get my surgery and once I’m fully recovered, then I’ll be deployed,” Bahr said, estimating that would happen in March or April. “I’m upset that I don’t get to leave with everyone else, but I understand the situation.”
Said her mother, Lisa Pfund: “She really did want to go, and she eventually will go.”

The delay also means Bahr, a 2008 graduate of Random Lake High School, won’t be home for Christmas. She was initially told she would deploy despite the injury, which would have allowed her to come home beforehand.

“I don’t know when I’m going to be able to come home, honestly,” Bahr said. “Knowing I’m going to be gone next Christmas, too, it’s kind of hard.”

When she arrives in Afghanistan, Bahr said she will stay with her unit through the remainder of their one-year deployment, coming home in January 2011.

Reach Eric Litke at (920) 453-5119 and elitke@sheboyganpress.com.
http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20091211/SHE0101/91211114/1062/SHE01
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« Reply #866 on: December 11, 2009, 06:26:38 PM »


Singer Nick Jonas, left, actor Gary Sinise, center, and actor-comedian Dana Carvey attend the USO's Community Strong event in Fort Hood, Texas on Friday, Dec. 11, 2009.
(AP Photo/Jack Plunkett)


Fort Hood families enjoy concerts after tragedy

By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
Dec. 11, 2009, 3:26PM

FORT HOOD, Texas — Soldiers at Fort Hood had the day off Friday to spend the time with their families and enjoy a carnival and concerts organized to support them in the wake of last month's mass shooting.

The event was to feature performances by Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band, Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, the Zac Brown Band and rapper Chamillionaire. Comedian Dana Carvey was to be the emcee.

"We had something real bad happen here on the fifth of November, and the fact of the matter is we've been working real hard since that day to put things back right, and we've had a lot of help," said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, Fort Hood's commanding general, told troops before the concerts began. "Part of this today is really a demonstration of how much the community here in central Texas and Texas and across the nation really care about the soldiers and families at Fort Hood."

USO president Sloan Gibson said the event was "America saying thank you" for soldiers' service to the country and to the community for its support in the wake of the Nov. 5 shootings.

An Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan, has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in connection with the mass shooting. He remains hospitalized in a San Antonio military hospital, recovering from gunshot wounds that left him paralyzed.

The event, which was organized by the USO, was called "Community Strong," a play on the motto of "Army Strong."

"Since the events of the fifth of November, we've learned that it takes an entire community to in fact be strong," Cone said. "And what we've seen is an outpouring of love and support."

Sinise said he's performed several times for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan when not filming his television series, "CSI: New York."

"After this incident, I felt it was important to ... show our support at Fort Hood," Sinise said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6765772.html
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« Reply #867 on: December 11, 2009, 06:30:23 PM »

Lawmaker: Report threats in the ranks

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 11, 2009 17:17:40 EST

The U.S. lawmaker whose congressional district includes Fort Hood, Texas, has introduced a bill he hopes will encourage service members to report potentially dangerous people to law enforcement agencies.

The bill, HR 4267, extends whistleblower protection rights to service members who tell defense investigators or law enforcement officials of their concerns about someone in their chain of command who might have dangerous ideological views that post a threat.

Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, the chief sponsor of the bill, said, “If a military service member believes any person poses a clear and present danger to the military or the public, they need to be assured that reporting the danger or taking decisive action to prevent an attack is protected under the same whistleblower regulations as those for reporting suspected sexual harassment or mismanagement of funds or resources.”

Carter spokesman John Stone said the Nov. 5 shooting at Fort Hood — where an Army officer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is alleged to have opened fire on soldiers in a processing center — might have been avoided had some of Hasan’s current and former colleagues reported suspicions about his beliefs about U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A statement from Carter’s office says that so-called “political correctness” may have preventing warnings from being made. “Members were afraid of being accused of ‘profiling’ based on religious and ethnic grounds, which could be a career-killing offense,” the statement says.

“Never again should we allow all the glaring warning signs of a Major Hasan to be ignored,” Carter said in his statement. “This bill should close the door on excuses for preventative action, and should help us all recognize that we cannot allow political correctness to cost another American life.”

Current whistleblower protection for military members applies to situations where a service member is reporting waste, fraud or abuse or some other illegal action to military investigators or to members of Congress, and does not specifically cover law enforcement.

Under the protective umbrella of the law, the person who reports a problem cannot be punished in any way, including demotion, denial of promotion, reassignment to new or lesser duties, or denial of a reassignment. A person who believes they have faced reprisal is able to file a complaint about mistreatment, and if their claim is upheld, the adverse action can be undone.

Carter’s bill, which has eight original cosponsors, was referred to the House Armed Services Committee for action. Congressional aides said they do not expect the bill to be considered before the committee holds hearings into the Fort Hood shooting, which have been delayed at the Defense Department’s request while a criminal investigation continues.

Hasan has been charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder for the shooting, in which 13 people were killed and more than 30 injured.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/12/military_reportingthreats_forthood_121109w/
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« Reply #868 on: December 11, 2009, 06:42:36 PM »

Notable homegrown terrorism plots
   
(Verna Sadock - AP)
Friday, December 11, 2009

Dec. 7, 2009


David C. Headley is charged in Chicago in a terrorism plot against a Danish newspaper. The indictment also alleged that he conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding the November 2008 terrorist attack in the Indian city.

November 2009


Fourteen people are charged in Minnesota with recruiting youths from U.S. communities to train with or fight on behalf of terrorism groups in Somalia.

Nov. 5, 2009

Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist of Palestinian descent, kills 13 people on the Fort Hood, Tex., military post and injures dozens. Investigators continue to examine whether he had links to radical Islamists or al-Qaeda.

Oct. 21, 2009

Tarek Mehanna is arrested in Boston and charged with plotting to bomb shopping malls and conspiring to kill politicians.

Sept. 23, 2009


Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born Colorado resident, is charged with planning a bombing attack in the United States.

Sept. 24, 2009

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian man, is arrested in Dallas on suspicion of attempting to detonate a truck bomb outside a skyscraper in the city.

July 27, 2009

Daniel P. Boyd, a North Carolina resident, and six others are charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Boyd allegedly had spent time training at terrorist camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was also charged with conspiring to recruit young American men and help them travel overseas in order to kill or maim.

June 2007



The FBI disrupts an ideologically inspired terrorism plot to allegedly destroy fuel supplies and pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

May 8, 2007

A plot to bomb the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey is thwarted. Dritan Duka, Shain Duka, Eljvir Duka, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, Serdar Tatar and Agron Abdullahu are arrested. On Dec. 22, 2008, they were found guilty of conspiracy to harm military personnel.

Feb. 13, 2007


Daniel Maldonado, a former Houston resident, is indicted on charges of conspiring to train with al-Qaeda in Somalia. He is deported from Kenya to the United States. He was convicted of receiving training from a foreign terrorist organization and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

June 23, 2006

Seven men are charged in Miami with plotting to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago and a federal building in Miami. The indictment charged that four of the men sought help from al-Qaeda. FBI Deputy Director John Pistole called the plot "more aspirational than operational."

August 2005

Kevin James, an inmate in a California state prison, and three others are charged with forming a domestic terrorist group that planned to attack U.S. military installations, "infidels," and Israeli and Jewish facilities in the Los Angeles area.

May 8, 2002

Jose Padilla is arrested at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on a material witness warrant. At the time, he was alleged to have been plotting a radiological "dirty bomb" attack. He was later alleged to have conspired with al-Qaeda to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas. He was convicted (with two co-defendants) in January 2008 of "conspiracy to murder, maim or kidnap." He was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

-- Julie Tate

Sources: News reports and court documents

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121004677.html
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« Reply #869 on: December 11, 2009, 07:34:04 PM »


Mineola: Hughes wants more charges for Hasan


FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS


Friday, December 11, 2009

State Rep. Bryan Hughes said Thursday that he has joined 30 other representatives in calling for the U.S. Army to charge Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan with taking the life of an unborn child.

Hasan is an Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people, including a pregnant woman, when he opened fire Nov. 5 at Fort Hood.

Hughes, R-Mineola, said the legislators cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as amended by the 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and the Texas Senate Bill 319, which allow a person to be prosecuted for the death of a pregnant woman's fetus.

Hughes has represented Camp, Harrison, Upshur, and Wood Counties in the Texas House of Representatives since 2003.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/12/11/12112009_Hughes_UCMJ.html
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« Reply #870 on: December 11, 2009, 07:46:14 PM »

Thank you again for continuing on with this HEART. I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me.  an angelic monkey
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Jesus loves the little children, all the children in the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.

 Words: C. Her­bert Wool­ston (1856-1927)  Music: George F. Root (1820-1895)
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« Reply #871 on: December 11, 2009, 08:10:05 PM »

Toy drive to benefit Fort Hood families
[/b]

by KVUE.COM

Posted on December 11, 2009 at 4:37 PM

Updated today at 4:40 PM

You can help families at Fort Hood have a merrier Christmas this year.

The Recording Academy (GRAMMYs) Texas Chapter is hosting a holiday gift drive to support the soldiers and their loved ones.

The Austin-based music organization is inviting the entire community to bring toys and gift cards for those still reeling from the recent tragedy on their base.

Drop off your donation at the the Recording Academy Texas Chapter Office, 3601 South Congress (Penn Field,) Suite G-500 between 9am and 5pm Monday, December 14.

On Monday evening, the gifts will be taken to Fort Hood and given to families in need during the holidays.


http://www.kvue.com/news/local/Toy-drive-to-benefit-Fort-Hood-families-79091857.html
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« Reply #872 on: December 11, 2009, 08:15:57 PM »

Apple-Pie Jihad
Homegrown terror takes root.
11 December 2009

They are named David. They are clean-shaven dental students and attendees of community colleges. They study hard, play sports, and open Facebook accounts. Their friends call them “normal Joes.” And they’re being arrested in ever-growing numbers, would-be terrorists plotting to kill their fellow Americans and conduct “holy war” at home and abroad. Wednesday’s arrest in Pakistan of five Muslim-American men attests to a growing phenomenon: the radicalization of young American Muslims on American soil.

When the New York Police Department first issued a 90-page report in August 2007 asserting that what it called “homegrown radicalization” was destined to become a major terrorist threat, many of the nation’s civil libertarians, self-proclaimed Muslim spokesmen, and even law enforcement officials were outraged. Civil libertarians warned that the NYPD’s conclusions would lead to religious and ethnic profiling in policing. Muslim groups demanded and got meetings with senior NYPD officials. FBI analysts and officials disputed the NYPD’s findings in interviews and congressional testimony.

But the department stood its ground, and police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly backed his troops. The department’s intelligence division continued its research, and the report gradually found supporters in Washington. With the arrest of the five young Americans in Pakistan, and with the charges filed last month against recruiters from al-Shabaab alleged to have enlisted Somali teens in Minnesota to fight in the Somali civil war, the report’s once-controversial conclusions appear to be all too true.

At a Tuesday conference for Operation Shield, an NYPD program that shares intelligence and security tips with local businesses and private security firms, Mitchell D. Silber, the NYPD’s director of intelligence analysis, outlined his analysts’ updated findings. His bottom line hadn’t changed, he told the audience of over 200. While al-Qaida remained a vital source of “inspiration and an ideological reference point,” the more insidious terrorist threat was younger Muslim men between the ages of 15 and 35 who had no direct al-Qaida connection but who had become radicalized by exposure to extreme interpretations of Islam. The NYPD had seen nothing that would mitigate its concern that members of New York’s diverse Muslim population of 600,000 to 750,000 people—about 40 percent foreign-born—might be vulnerable to radicalization.

What was new, Silber said, was the department’s understanding of the growing importance of the “spiritual sanctioner”—a religious figure who provides justification for violence, often through mosque lectures or radical websites. A prime example, he said, was Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Sunni imam who had preached at Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Virginia in 2001 and 2002. The 9/11 Commission concluded that two of the 9/11 hijackers—Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi—had worshipped at that mosque in spring 2001. So, too, did Major Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist whom the government has charged with the murder of 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas last month. Silber added that al-Awlaki’s radical tracts had been linked to plotters in three other terrorist schemes: plans by six radical Islamists in 2007 to attack the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey; the 2006 plot to blow up multiple jet aircraft in flight; and the plot by the so-called “Toronto 18” to detonate powerful truck bombs in downtown Toronto in 2005 and 2006.

Silber said that the key plotters in 30 of some 33 plots that the NYPD had examined, or 90 percent, had been radicalized in the West and were targeting the country in which they had been radicalized. In the past year alone, Silber went on, U.S. authorities had uncovered nine plots that had elements of homegrown radicalization, indicating that radicalization was an ongoing problem in the U.S. In half a dozen of these cases, he said, people who had contemplated traveling abroad to carry out violence decided instead to try to do it within the United States. This kind of threat “is substantially greater than what we have seen in the past,” Silber said.

I was reminded of a Pew poll of American Muslims three years ago that showed that a third of American Muslims between the ages of 18 and 29 said that they supported suicide bombings.

Still, there may be some good news buried in the NYPD’s graphs and charts. First, the number of al Qaida-inspired, homegrown terrorist plots against the West peaked in 2004 (experts are still hotly debating why that year saw such a high number – perhaps as a reaction to the 2003 Iraq invasion). Second, almost none has succeeded. Except for the case of Major Hasan, who may or may not have had links with a militant Islamic group, there have been no lethal terror attacks in the West since the bombings of the London Tube and train stations in July 2005.

Consider the five Muslim Americans arrested in Pakistan this week. Pakistani officials said that the five had used their American passports to travel to Pakistan to meet with representatives of Jaish-e-Muhammad, a banned Pakistani militant group with links to al-Qaida. The young men were said to be seeking training to conduct jihad in northwestern Pakistan and against American troops in Afghanistan. One had even recorded a farewell video to his family. Their overtures to terrorist groups were rejected, Pakistani officials said, because they lacked the requisite references from trusted militants.

What’s encouraging is that the families of the five had reported them missing to law enforcement officials, and that a Muslim-American group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which itself has been accused by Steven Emerson and other terrorism analysts of helping radicalize American Muslims, encouraged the families to contact the FBI. And Nihad Awad, CAIR’s cofounder—who had previously been reluctant to acknowledge that the Muslim-American community had a problem with potential radicalization—finally acknowledged as much this week. The incident in Pakistan should remind us that in addition to the intelligence-led policing efforts of the NYPD and the FBI, our most powerful defense against Islamic radicalization and terrorism is the efforts of mainstream Muslim-Americans to help prevent extremists from carrying out their plots.

Judith Miller is a contributing editor of City Journal, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a FOX News contributor.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon1211jm.html
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« Reply #873 on: December 11, 2009, 08:17:44 PM »

Thank you again for continuing on with this HEART. I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me.  an angelic monkey

Thank you Fanny!
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« Reply #874 on: December 12, 2009, 02:17:10 PM »

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/texas/lead-prosecutor-named-in-fort-hood-case

Lead prosecutor named in Fort Hood case
Col. Michael Mulligan will head the prosecution


Updated: Friday, 11 Dec 2009, 9:02 PM CST
Published : Friday, 11 Dec 2009, 9:02 PM CST

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - A senior military official said Friday that a new lead prosecutor has been appointed in the Fort Hood shooting case, a man who secured the death penalty in a similar case four years ago.

Col. Michael Mulligan will head the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Hasan, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the investigation.

Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the Nov. 5 shooting on the Texas Army post. Hasan remains hospitalized in a San Antonio military hospital, recovering from gunshot wounds that left him paralyzed.

"They're building a team and bringing in outsiders, which shows they're going full steam ahead," Hasan's civilian attorney, John Galligan, said Friday of Mulligan's appointment. "I just urge that they show the same degree of fairness to the defense, and I would like to think that every case is treated differently."

Galligan said he has filed a motion to add two more military defense attorneys to his team.

Mulligan prosecuted the 2005 case at Fort Bragg, N.C., in which Sgt. Hasan Akbar was sentenced to death for a 2003 attack on members of the elite 101st Airborne Division at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait. Two officers were killed and 14 other soldiers were wounded in the rifle and grenade attack.

During the trial, Mulligan told jurors that Akbar, a Muslim, launched the attack at his camp — days before the soldiers were to move into Iraq — because he was concerned about U.S. troops killing fellow Muslims.

An Islamic community leader in Killeen near Fort Hood has said Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, had previously sought advice because he felt conflicted about what to tell fellow Muslim soldiers who expressed misgivings about fighting other Muslims. Hasan's family has said he confided in them that he felt harassed as a Muslim in the U.S. military.

In Akbar's case, a defense psychiatrist testified that Akbar suffered from forms of paranoia and schizophrenia but was legally sane and understood the consequences of his attack. Akbar's father also had said his son complained in vain to his superiors about religious and racial harassment before the attack.

Akbar became the sixth person on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The last U.S. military execution was in 1961.

Army officials have not said whether they will seek the death penalty in the Fort Hood case. They have said that doctors will evaluate Hasan by mid-January to determine his competency to stand trial as well as his mental state at the time of the shooting.






   



















   
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« Reply #875 on: December 15, 2009, 08:37:55 PM »

Thanks Muffy!
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« Reply #876 on: December 15, 2009, 08:41:19 PM »

Lawmaker scolds administration on Fort Hood info

WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Lieberman, who chairs a Senate oversight committee, chided the Obama administration Tuesday for not providing information to lawmakers probing the Fort Hood killings.

The Connecticut independent said his Homeland Security panel still has not received the personnel file of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the Nov. 5 shooting spree that left 13 people dead.

Lieberman and other committee members met behind closed doors with Pentagon officials to discuss the military's procedures for collecting and sharing information about U.S. service members who might be a threat to others.

The briefing could have been open, Lieberman said, but the Defense Department refused to testify in public.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department is following normal procedures when Congress has an interest in a subject related to a criminal investigation. But providing Hasan's personnel file is prohibited by privacy laws, he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jNwH5lDwPB_bKVrl37tO9Ondvn9AD9CJV5TG4
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« Reply #877 on: December 15, 2009, 08:50:55 PM »

Video: Congress investigate Fort Hood KXAN.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dUspBa-YSo&feature=player_embedded

Senator in Fort Hood probe says military policies fail to meet 'threat of Islamic extremism'

02:34 PM CST on Tuesday, December 15, 2009

By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News
dmichaels@dallasnews.com

FBI agents who discovered Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's extremist ties before the Fort Hood massacre may not have had access to key Army records on the psychiatrist, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said today.

That's because some information counter-terrorism investigators need stays in military education or training files "and does not make its way to the personnel files" that intelligence agencies would get for an initial review, said Collins. She's the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which is investigating how pre-massacre intelligence about Hasan was handled.

Hasan's colleagues and superiors repeatedly raised concerns about him during his psychiatric training in the Washington area, as has been widely reported since the Nov. 5 slaughter. Issues included his fundamentalist Islamic leanings, religious proselytizing, commitment to the Army, poor work performance and mental stability.

"It doesn't appear that the military has updated its personnel policies to reflect the threat of Islamic extremism," Collins said after a closed hearing with Defense Department officials. "There appears to be a real gap in the protocols in the personnel procedures, and that is an issue we're exploring."

Army spokesman George Wright said he couldn't comment on Hasan's personnel file. But in general, he told The News, a soldier's supervisor decides whether to include letters of counseling or reprimand in the soldier's personnel file.

Officials who briefed the homeland security committee include Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James R. Clapper; Karl F. Schneider, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs; and Major Gen. Carla G. Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of the Northern Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Hasan trained at Walter Reed.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the homeland security committee's chairman, said the Obama administration would not allow Tuesday's briefing to be held in public and has taken too long to share information with lawmakers. But, he said, the committee had recently "turned a corner" that will improve access to information.

In the meantime, Lieberman and Collins have moved forward with their investigation by consulting outside experts and holding closed hearings. The military is doing its own investigation of whether the massacre could have been prevented and whether there are better ways to identify potentially dangerous service members.

Lieberman said the committee is still trying to obtain Hasan's Army records. He said the panel may receive a classified briefing later this week about an FBI-led terrorism task force that began intercepting e-mails last December between Hasan and a radical imam in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Information-sharing problems still seem to be compromising American security more than eight years after the 9/11 attacks, Collins said.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nationworld/stories/121609dnnatforthood.3573d17a0.html
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« Reply #878 on: December 15, 2009, 08:57:19 PM »

Fort Hood hero Munley may need more surgery

Submitted by WWAY on 15 December 2009 - 5:29pm

Fort Hood hero and Carolina Beach native Kim Munley may need more surgery than expected.

Monday night Munley wrote on her blog about a visit with her vascular surgeon. She said the doctor found only one of three veins in her leg are working properly. That means she may need bypass surgery before she gets her knee replacement surgery.

Munley wrote she hopes the problem can be fixed with shunts and balloons. She also said her doctor pointed out how lucky she is the leg can be saved at all, as she went two hours without blood flow to it after the shooting.

http://www.wwaytv3.com/node/19860
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« Reply #879 on: December 15, 2009, 09:14:13 PM »

Most Domestic 'Jihadists' Are Educated, Well-Off

By Bobby Ghosh / Washington

Asked to visualize a jihadist who is based in North America, most Americans would probably conjure up a profile not unlike that of Najibullah Zazi — the Afghan immigrant who was arrested in September in Denver for allegedly plotting to bomb targets in New York. Zazi, who sold doughnuts and coffee from a vending cart not far from Wall Street, is a young, poor and poorly educated Muslim from a country where the U.S. is at war. It's not hard to imagine someone of that profile being manipulated by al-Qaeda's skillful propagandists and recruiters.

But a profile like Zazi's, say experts on terrorism, may be the exception rather the rule for jihadists who are recruited on North American soil. "Historically, the idea that terrorists come from [poor and quasi-literate] backgrounds is a complete myth," says Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University. "They are much more likely to be well-educated and come from middle-class and wealthy families."

See the Fort Hood massacre in the top 10 news stories of 2009. http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944421_1944383,00.html

That description, in fact, fits all the Americans who have been accused of terrorism-related activities since Zazi's arrest. Nidal Malik Hasan, charged with killing 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, is a psychiatrist and Army major. David Coleman Headley, who allegedly plotted to bomb a Danish newspaper and has been implicated in the Mumbai attacks, is a Chicago businessman. And the five young Virginia men who were detained in Pakistan last week have only their youth in common with Zazi: two are sons of businessmen, and the group's supposed leader, Ramy Zamzam, is a Howard University dental student. (The five men have not yet been charged, but Pakistani officials allege that they hoped to seek combat training in order to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.)

The affluent background and education of so many American Muslims who have been accused of terrorist activities comes as no surprise to experts. "We don't have the Muslim slums that you see outside Paris," says Scott Stewart, vice president for tactical intelligence at Stratfor, a private intelligence analysis organization. "Most Muslims in [the U.S.] are doing well, so those who have been radicalized tend to come from that class."

See pictures of a jihadist's journey.  http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1883150,00.html

The social status of such suspects makes them harder to spot for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and also for the Muslim community as a whole. "Within the community, there's a tendency to think, Oh, this guy's from a good family; he won't go down that path," says Stewart. This may explain why Zamzam's group apparently didn't set off any alarms in the Virginia Muslim community before their sudden disappearance in late November. At the mosque Zamzam frequented, he seemed to have made no special impression on the imam or his fellow worshippers. Nor did Hasan stand out among the believers at his mosque, near Fort Hood.

The idea that mosques are the favored hunting ground of extremists and propagandists is a myth too. Since 9/11, law enforcement and national security agencies have maintained a close scrutiny of Muslim places of worship; equally, Muslim community leaders have grown more alert for any radical preaching. As a result, terrorist groups seeking American recruits now tend to propagandize mainly online. This also means that relatively wealthy Muslims are much more likely than poorer ones to be exposed to extremist views. "You need a computer, an Internet connection — poor Muslims don't have that kind of access," says Stewart.

Pakistani authorities say Zamzam and his friends were recruited online, via YouTube and Facebook.

The key factor these cases have in common is the willingness of the suspects to embrace the propagandists' argument that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. policies elsewhere in the region, are part of an assault on the global community of Muslims. "The narrative — that America is at war against Islam — works for people from all classes," says Steve Emerson, author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us. He points out that even many of the 9/11 hijackers had been highly educated.

See pictures of the battle against the Taliban. http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1653255,00.html


Hoffman, who has studied terrorism of all stripes, say it's not just Islamic extremism that attracts middle-class adherents. "You look at every kind of terrorism over the past century, and you'll find that the majority of the people who participated were not poor or ignorant but well-off and educated."

Despite the growing evidence against the stereotype, however, Hoffman says people will always tend to believe that terrorism is class-related. "We want to believe that, because then we can fix it. We can create jobs, provide opportunities, and these young men can be turned away from that path," says Hoffman. "But reality is much messier than that."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947703,00.html#ixzz0ZoTRPdSq


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