It has now become apparent that there were several warning flags in the air considering Major Weak Dick Hasan that were missed. From his increasingly alarmed colleagues at Walter Read, to FBI intercepts of his email communication with a radial imam in Yemen – intercepts not shared with the Army - to the local imam at Killeen who told him that his interpretations of Islam were dangerously wrong, there was sufficient evidence of a nutter losing the bubble to have the matter investigated.
But it wasn’t, and now 13 soldiers – and one unborn child – are dead, and many more wounded. This then, was another in a series of unconnected dots like those that led to nearly 3000 deaths on 9/11. Two events born of the same toxic hate with an eight year and two month gap between them.
We’ve been here before, what with the “Gorelick Wall“ of restrictions that “go beyond what is legally required,” to prevent the overlap of criminal and terror investigations. We ought, by now, to have learned our lessons. Thus, Daniel Henninger quite rationally asks, “what went wrong?”
In our time, nothing was bigger than the nearly 3,000 killed on September 11. But anyone who got involved with the development of public policy then knows that for the next seven years the battle never stopped over the details of the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, then Guantanamo, then waterboarding, renditions and secret prisons and all the other issues that for some could be summed up in two words: “Bush-Cheney.”
This will never come up in the Lieberman hearings next week, but I think that nonstop policy battle is why Hasan’s overseers dropped the ball…
(If) you are an intel officer or FBI agent tasked with providing the protection, what are you supposed to make of all this bitter public argument? What you make of it is that when you get a judgment call, like Maj. Hasan, you hesitate. You blink.
(For) years you have watched a country and its political class in rancorous confusion about the enemy, the legal standing of the enemy, or the legal status and scope of the methods it wants to use to fight the enemy. In war, uncertainty gets you killed. It just did.
The Global War on Terror (GWOT) may have become magically transmogrified into a Strong Program Against Man-made Disasters (SPAMD), but the nature of the enemy has not changed, nor has his targets and methods. And it doesn’t much matter to the families of those killed whether the terrorist was a lone kook in Texas or a loose collection of kooks in Kanduhar – their loved ones are equally dead.
What has changed is the boss atop the FBI, Attorney General Eric Holder, who – despite the president’s oft-expressed desire to “move on” – strenuously advocated for the prosecution of CIA investigators who may have crossed the line during the Bush era.
Many of us were concerned at the time that such prosecutions – however justified they might have been in a vacuum – were politically fraught not to mention a terrible message to send to the career bureaucracy.
It would give me no pleasure to be proved right in this case, but the initial evidence is not encouraging.
I commented on “The Wall” a few days back, thinking, as a few details emerged, that this appears to have the same characteristics. In the post-9/11 days, and seeing the acrimony caused by the finger pointing, it boggles my mind that those in the positions to handle this missed the message, and did not really change their ways. Worse to think they were told to be PC. You know, the FBI used CAIR as a consulting agency to make sure the FBI understood the sensitivities of the Muslim community.
We cannot bring ourselves to name the enemy, in this case, very domestic, so, until we can, more “blinking” will follow. More will suffer.
The enemy has us where he wants us, looking away in shame, and missing the weapons being drawn.
In a room full of soldiers, it still is incredible to me that that many shots got off. I one report I got emailed indicated a female officer, who was just on her way in at the time, indicated the shots sounded very controlled, not just a mass of rapid fire. Makes me think a methodical aiming was going on, which, still…how does this happen?
We’ll know, one day, after the apologists redact anything in the report that may cause backlash.
Side note: Bill Bennett commented this morning how TailHook turned the Navy world upside down for the bad judgment displayed and ruined many careers. No one is talking in such terms about this case of missing the shooter should have a similar, yet more effective and quick reaction from leadership. Maybe it’s because it’s PC in one case, and making a comment on why we should suspect the PC crowd.
We are warned not to rush to judgment as that would be a greater wrong. It seems you can only rush to judgement if a White cop and Black loudmouth square off in Cambridge,MA.
We are told that the greater tragedy would be the loss of “diversity” in the Army even as 14 lie dead (I count the unborn child even as that makes Choice advocates leery of giving an inch in there quest to protect abortion rights).
But I’ll rush anyway: This guy went over to the other side. The question only to be answered was one made more famous in another context: “What did know and when did they know it?”.
That people would be reluctant to raise a red flag and risk being run out of town by the diversity police is a logical conclusion of the stated goal of the institution chiefs that “Diversity” is such a high strategic goal (and hell will be paid to those who stand in the way).
That law enforcement and intelligence officers might think twice making a call when they see the Attorney General fighting hard for permission to attempt to put CIA agents in jail for doing what they were told to do and had, moreover, been specifically told had been judged legal at the time requires no great effort to deduce.
That this will be buried so as to never reach the light of day lest all involved look like the assholes they are likewise requires no great leap of consciousness to understand.
I am personally not in favor of the prosecution of CIA investigators who “may have crossed the line,” or better said, broke federal law. However it should not surprise anyone when a law is believed to have been broken, that there is at least an investigation despite mitigating circumstances.
Gaining intelligence, and more importantly acting upon it, is not restricted by law as much as human frailty and petty parochialism.
The Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that widely loosened legal restrictions on surveillance were not necessary to note pre-911 Al Queda’s growing strength and threat. Indeed the warning signs gathered by intelligence and other agencies of an Al Queda attack, and quite possibly against the WTC (again) were overwhelming, despite the more restrictive laws of the period.
The problem was not legal limitations on gathering intelligence. It was a combination of many different authorities’ petty distrust of each other, and either withholding or ’stove-piping’ their vital Intel. Even worse, although years of good intel and frightening warning signs were available, their was a fatal tendency to either ignore the signs, or deny that such an act could never happen… would be “unimaginable.”
Fatal denial!
While hindsight convenient helps, there were very many “in the business” who observed all the obvious warning signs of 911, and indeed spoke out… unfortunately to deaf ears. For the disbelieving, here is a link to 5 pages and 415 events that should have not only warned us, but prepared us to ultimately have avoided 911.
We don’t need to shred the Fourth Amendment. We only need to be more vigilant, more aware, and we must learn to act before, rather than belatedly after a horrendous terrorist act, with the intel. we have.
Above link is to all the denials.
Start here with this link for the 911 warning signs timeline.
“there were very many “in the business” who observed all the obvious warning signs of 911, and indeed spoke out… unfortunately to deaf ears.”
Remind me which administration was in power at the time?
Oh right, the guy we’re supposed to be missing.
Alos:
Weren’t you the one bitching about things being politicized the other day? I’m having a hard time following how your commentary (indeed if I’m so generous as to call it that) is anything other than throwing stones just for the hell of it and to politicize the discussion..
If we were talking about who was going to be President of your eighth grade class next week the juvenile sniping might seem more appropriate. That we are talking about failures that got 14 Americans gunned down in cold blood might merit a little more maturity.
When the plot was being hatched (hint: 1996), or when it was executed?
This guy may have been able to find out and know, but, he retired before they let him do his job.
This guy. Sorry, bad code.
We seem to have gotten off track. The attacks last week at Fort Hood happened post 9-11 when any blinders we may have had about Islamist terrorists have well been lifted.
The point I was making, the rush to judgment I am engaging in, is that Major Hasan, went over the the other side at some point in his Army career and left more than a few dots to be connected and that, due to a PC culture that exists, and the sanctions in the Army that are very real and visible to any member of the service who creates an appearance of not fully supporting the same, creates a climate where the guy basically was yelling, “I’m going to kill you f***ing infidels someday” and for whatever reason, was allowed to proceed until he acted out on his fantasies.
And furthermore, the intelligence and law enforcement agencies appeared to miss it as well and one can suppose that in a climate where prosecutions are championed by the head law enforcement officer of the land for those who were just doing their job as best as they could understand it based on what to them was thought to be sound legal clearance, one might infer a little less willingness to stick one’s neck out in the case of Major Hasan when he appeared on their radar screen.
This is not an attack on the Administration, per se, but on the climate of PC that, while not original to the current administration, certainly appears to have a champion in the POTUS who, despite his oft lauded oratorical skills, can’t say the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” in the same sentence, even when staring at a dozen empty pairs of Combat boots at his feet while he speaks.
So I wasn’t talking about 9-11 and who screwed the pooch on that one. I was talking about last week and lamenting how little we appeared to have learned about the nature of our enemy and that just perhaps, our PC culture has aided and abetted in ways even now, we fail to confront.
Just another way to contrast Dr. Utopia against GWB. When faced with a challenge nine months into his term, which had been conceived, and commenced during his predecessor’s term, I fail to recall any wailing from GWB about mops, and who should just shut up, etc.
Had he, he would have had to answer to his mother — who was his parent, vice his preening fawner.
Protester………..Preacher……….Teacher……….Businessman………..
Conman………..Politician………..Soldier………..(Reactionary or Revolutionary)
Resistance Fighter……….Protester………..Preacher………………….
Are you smart enough to connect the dots?
Perhaps not, and in any case I’m not interested in following bread crumbs. But I am smart enough to follow the tracks you’ve left elsewhere, Sedgwick. Or shall I call you “buddhaLovesPain”?
Never fails, you reach a certain threshold and all sorts of things leak through.
Strange to read through the referenced material and to continually see the notorious Col. Kurtz popping up in my mind. Eerily similar.
Darn Lee. Now you’ve got me doing it. Col. Kurtz
14 sounds excessive doesn’t it? I mean here of course, not in awful places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel or Pakistan where a serious dedicated muslim can sometimes top 100 innocent dead all by himself. We’ll just have to muddle along with the useless muslim dregs we get and really really hope that they don’t get their hands on nuclear weapons.
Isn’t that positively frightening? A muslim man like Major Hasan may right now have his paws on one of OUR nuclear weapons. See, and some of you were just worried that those 14th century dirtbags would develop their own nuclear capability. Want terrifying? 10 of you could call or email that guy’s CO with a warning and nothing would happen, except for that huge nuclear blast.
Holly Crap the trolls are out in force tonight…oh well.
In spite of a number of new “recommendations” the wall, not so invisible between Law Enforcement LE information and Counter Intelligence CI info is still very evident. The usuall workaround is to have a cleared person, in this case a DSS guy look at it and decide if theres anything to it. More often than not, they either don’t notice anything there or decide at a single point of failure that its not worth digging further. It doesn’t get shared. Something about methods and sources. Nobody wants to do the little work involved in creating a little thing we’ve all seen before called a tearline, to spread a little of the wealth, even it’s a matter of throwing out some crumbs. A little effort may have saved those souls.
Gosh Lex,
America’s big brother seems to hate you to death. I don’t know who Ann and Jeff et al are. They don’t seem to show up at Shakespeares. They’re probably not beer drinkers. You quite failed to mention that Karen and Wayne and whossname were taking you to trial. I’d have put in a good word for you you know but now that the State has condemned you, could you send us a few words about the new American Gulag? I asked my family back on Nov 4th to please not put the gulag in Alaska. I hate cold. I was hoping that when the One established a Gulag for us that it’d be in either Cuba or Puerto Rico, worst case, Guam. Key West would be pretty nice if we’re not using it anymore.
I should have seen that coming from the first. You won’t be seeing much more of that, if I can help it. And I can.
Everyone is running around saying that it isn’t MY fault that the Army didn’t get the NSA (assuming they were) intercepts, so how could they have possibly known this guy was an Al Qaeda convert? WHO CARES? The stuff he was known by the Army to be doing should have been enough — trying to convert his patients, giving the wacko PP presentations, etc. should have been enough. UNLESS the Army was oh-so-sensative and doing just what the Chief of Staff of the Army didn’t want to have happen — threatening the new holy grail — almighty “diversity”. Well, we see where that got us, huh?
And second — pardon me, but if any serving Army officer would have been attempting to contact the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City (known operating station for counter US missions during the Cold War), do you really think we would have just tossed aside the data as “legitimate research”?
I’m not interested in Flit’s and Alos’ meaningless attempts to point blame — hell, I’ll say it. It happened during the Bush administration. But the diversity bullies transcend any single administration – they are now warp and woof of the senior military class, and Casey’s mindless defense is just the latest evidence. To paraphrase that great philosopher, Waylon Jennings, it don’t matter who’s in the White House, the diversity mafia is still the king.
I’ll apologize up front for just being a po’ ole southern redneck and admittedly not the sharpest tool in the shed, but down here we don’t wait for a rabid dog or coon to bite before ya shot the damned thing to death. In this case the good major was a slobbering cesspool of hate. Others knew it, others could plainly see, many suspected, yet someone decided to let the rabid dog stay in the house. On account of no one being bitten yet. No way to run a war, or whatever it is called now.
According to reports I heard tonight, adding further to the emerging profile, the Major was on HIV drugs. Or at least he had them in his possession. Not sure if it has been confirmed if he was taking them.