Hasan’s pattern of misbehavior

We all remember how the other day the government explained away the “benign” emails between Fort Hood murderer Hasan and the radical cleric Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Well, in an exclusive report, the Washington Times reports that Hasan had other contacts with several other Islamic extremists.

Fort Hood shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been in contact with numerous Muslim extremists — some of whom are under federal investigation — before last week’s rampage, two U.S. officials told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

Maj. Hasan made some of the contacts while visiting known jihadist chat rooms on the Internet, according to one of The Times’ sources, a senior FBI official. He said that several people with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact had been the focus of investigations by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

And no one thought there was a problem?

The military intelligence official said, “Those connections, except for Awlaki, could be explained innocently. But all of them together form a very concerning picture.”

“I may run into contact with shady people through coincidence, through social events, etc.,” he said. “But at some point you start saying like, ‘Huh? Why are you coming in contact with all these charming people?’ ”

“Huh?” indeed.

The Washington Post reports on the discussion of Hasan by his peers at Walter Reed;

The idea that Hasan attend the lectures, which he did late last year or early this year, came up during discussions among the psychiatric staffs of the hospital and the Army’s medical university about what was perceived as Hasan’s lack of productivity and his constant interest in Muslims whose religious beliefs conflicted with their military duties.

“You’re at an institution of higher learning. He seems to want to do work in an area no one knows anything about,” the staff member, who also requested anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak publicly, said of the order. “You don’t want to close him down just because it’s different.”

So everyone is concerned about Hasan’s behavior, so what do they do about it? Promote him and send to a unit that’s about to deploy him to the war. Makes perfect sense to me. It certainly explains why I didn’t become Sergeant major of the Army – I couldn’t meet the high standards that the Army apparently uses for promotion criteria.

Category: Terror War