Army set to discipline up to eight officers for Hasan

| February 11, 2010

In what seems to be the theme for this case, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal report that the Army has found eight scapegoats to blame for their own unwritten policy which allowed Nidal Hasan to gundown scores of soldiers on Fort Hood;

Senior Army officials said the decision to punish so many officers reflects the military’s belief that the November assault, which killed 13 people at the Army base in central Texas, could have been prevented if Maj. Nidal Hasan’s superiors had alerted authorities to his increasing Islamist radicalization.

The officials said that as many as eight officers could ultimately be censured over Hasan, mostly with letters of reprimand that effectively end their military careers.

“What you generally see is that some officers who were aware of his shortcomings didn’t take appropriate actions in response,” the senior Army official said.

“Sometimes, when you have specialists who are also officers, they can be more specialist than officer.”

Yeah, will we see FBI officials who saw the emails Hasan sent to his mentor in Yemen and didn’t mention it to the Army punished, too? Will we see the blivet heads from the Pentagon who claimed this had nothing to do with Islam punished? It’s more likely that we’ll see the shooting victims punished for not doing more to avoid the hail of bullets.

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Category: Politics

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anon

Jonn,

Damned if you, damned if you don’t. DoD really needs to make up it’s mind on this, among other things.

If I point out that MAJ Hasan might be a threat to others largely because of his exercise of the precepts of his Muslim faith, I will be branded as _________.

a. intolerant
b. ignorant
c. insensitive
d. cultural illiterate
e. all the above

But if I had pointed that out, and, God forbid, actually written an OER with some truth about his performance and his exercise of the precepts of his faith, I would now be lauded?

Ridiculous.

OldTrooper

Will a certain General be getting one of those letters, since he was more worried about losing diversity than losing soldiers???

That’s where it has to start and end. The Army as a whole was/is in PC mode, because of ticket punching fake intellectual types. The culture within the Army needs to be cleansed first, before you start handing out reprimands.

NHSparky

Typical military witch hunt…blame those nearest the explosion rather than the policy which caused it in the first place, and then they’ll act all surprised when it (not if) it happens again.

ciccio

This is reminiscent of the days I worked for a chain of retail stores. We were going through some tough times and the owner called all the top staff for a meeting, we had to cut costs. There were a dozen of us, we spent the entire day going through everything. At the end of the day there was only one immediate cost cutting result. At our distribution centre we had a handicapped sweeper, his wages were subsidized and all he did was push a broom all day. He was to be let go. The fact that the total wages for the day of those at the meeting were almost equal to this guys yearly salary did not strike anyone but me ridiculous. So it is in the army. They cannot blame anyone under him, they are going to get those at his level or slightly above, the top as usual is sacrosanct.

The Sniper

Not that amazing really. The way things are set up nowadays it’s just a gigantic CYA net for the higher ups. Officer makes a claim that some guy in his command is a nutter Al-Qaeda wannabe? Persecute him for not upholding EO. Nutter Al-Qaeda wannabe kills a bunch of people in a shooting spree? Persecute officers for not risking their careers by reporting the shooter. It’s absolute BS.

Junior AG

Politikal Kastration on steroids, ‘specialy Togo West not mentioning the “religion of peace” as a contributing factor to the massacre…