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?
"Put it this way," says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."
Please keep in mind that I regard NPR as National Left Wing Biased Radio, based on their slanted coverage of news stories. However, even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then. I have not seen this coverage in this depth on Hasan's prior career or on just how long the Army had been aware they had an unsuitable, unstable doctor on their hands.
Long story short: A reluctance to take action against a Muslim because the Army was afraid of giving him grounds for a discrimination lawsuit; the Army's unwillingness to go through the drawn-out process required to boot an unfit doctor out of the service; and a laissez-faire attitude of leaving the problem for his next duty station to handle, is what left 13 people dead at Ford Hood at the hands of a Muslim terrorist.
I think there's a good chance they'll try the psycho or brainwashed defense though (while playing up the liberal islamic minority status as well).
But military juries are pretty good at sifting thru the BS.
True. There's an old saying among lawyers: "If you're innocent of the charges, you're better off in front of a court-martial. If you're guilty, you're better off in a civilian court." It's hard to pull the wool over the eyes of officers and senior enlisted personnel who know the service, its conditions, its stresses and its rewards at least as well as the defendant and his JAG do. Considering that Hasan was caught in the act with a smoking gun in his hand, at this point his best bet would be to try for a plea-bargain that I think no JAG prosecutor would offer, nor the convening authority for the court-martial approve.
I think the Commanding General at Fort Hood should tell his Sergeant Major to start scouting around the base for a sturdy office chair to strap this murderous bastard into. If being shot while seated was good enough for Gary Gilmore, it is good enough for Nidal Hasan.
The UCMJ is different than civilian law. The only chance this individual has of avoiding execution is if Obama overturns it. The liberal folks and ACLU are going to raise a week-old dead skunk stink before this is over because they'll talk about his "rights" that the UCMJ doesn't recognize.
