"The military judge supervising the trial of accused Ft. Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was removed from the case Monday..."

"... with the military's highest appeals court ruling that his 'duel of wills' with Hasan over the defendant's beard gave the appearance of bias."

"Although the military judge here stated that [Hasan's] beard was a 'disruption,' there was insufficient evidence on this record to demonstrate that [Hasan's] beard materially interfered with the proceedings," the unsigned ruling said.

"Taken together.... the decision to remove [Hasan] from the courtroom, the contempt citations and the decision to order [Hasan's] forcible shaving in the absence of any command action to do the same could leave an objective observer to conclude that the military judge was not impartial."

The appeals court did not specifically rule on Hasan's claim that his beard was protected under freedom of religion.

"He appears to be part of the new generation of Islamic terrorists who act alone..."

"... abetted by jihadi Web sites and their own anger."

Compare to:

"Don’t worry, folks, he’s just a lone wolf like Major Hasan and Faisal Shahzad and all the other card-carrying members of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves. All jihad is local."

"I wanna, like, be the world's known terrorist."

"A lot of people need to get killed, bro, swear to God. My soul cannot rest until I shed blood.... Freaking Major Nidal, shaved-face-Palestinian-crazy-guy. He's not better than me. I'll do twice what he did... I'm going to get a gun. I'm the type of person to use it at any time.... I'll have more bodies on it than the hairs on my beard."

It's nice to be able to laugh at this idiocy.

"The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism."

A 2007 memo:

Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan's incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing....

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

Shocking, willful blindness. Even if the murders had never occurred, it was wrong to allow Hasan to serve as a psychiatrist.

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo — who is a doctor — wites:

The memo was from during his psychiatry residency (PGY = post-graduate year).

MadisonMan is quite right. [MM said: "I think this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem.] Bureaucracy alone would have kept him in gummint employ; no need to invoke PC issues.

Just imagine rolling out this sort of bureaucracy on a national scale.

We could call it the National Health Service.

Christopher Hitchens on Nidal Malik Hasan.

"[T]he three most salient characteristics of the Muslim death-squad type [are] self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. Surrounded as he was by fellow shrinks who were often very distressed by his menacing manner, Maj. Hasan managed to personify all three traits—with the theocratic rhetoric openly thrown in for good measure—and yet be treated even now as if the real word for him was troubled. Prepare to keep on meeting those three symptoms again, along with official attempts to oppose them only with therapy, if that. At least the holy warriors know they are committing suicide."

Read the whole thing.

Nidal Hassan had business cards identifying him as: "soldier of Allah."

"It doesn't say he's about to go out and shoot a bunch of people, but there's something not quite right for an Army major to self-identify that way."

Obama at Fort Hood: "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy."

"But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor.  For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice — in this world, and the next."

A fine speech. Read the whole thing. Based on this quote, I'll raise one question. Did Obama purport to know what God thinks?

On first reading, my answer was yes. He was saying that God disapproves of the massacre — which means, implicitly, that Hasan's (apparent) religious beliefs are false — and that God will punish Hasan in the afterlife.

On second reading, I saw the room to deny that Obama purports to know what God thinks. If "no just and loving God looks upon [the massacre] with favor," it is still possible that God is not just and loving. Perhaps Hasan's (apparent) idea about what God likes is correct, in which case Obama is critical of God. And "the killer will be met with justice" in "the next" world, but what is "justice"? Hasan presumably believed that God would be pleased, in which case, God's justice would be a reward.

Now, I am not saying this because I think Obama secretly shares Hasan's evil beliefs about God. I'm saying it because I appreciate the subtle way in which the speech avoids claiming to know the mind of God. That is elegant and beautiful. Good religion.

"The FBI knew for nearly a year before his murderous Fort Hood rampage that psycho Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had repeatedly contacted al Qaeda..."

"... but the blundering agency last night admitted it dismissed the lead."

For nearly a year? Then it's Bush's FBI too.  Disgraceful.

The FBI said Hasan -- who faces a court-martial -- first turned up on its radar in December 2008.

That's when he sent 10 to 20 e-mails to several terror-related Islamic figures, including Anwar Aulaqi, a radical imam from Virginia who has been openly propagandizing for al Qaeda in Yemen and who had ties to several of the 9/11 hijackers...

But no alarm bells went off because the communications were consistent with Hasan's research into how US combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan affect civilians, officials insisted. The e-mails never made explicit threats or discussed plots, they added....

Federal sources admitted that Hasan was so off their radar by that point that they hadn't even been aware of his gun purchases in Texas in August.

Investigators say they were still operating on the theory that Hasan, 39, acted alone.

Yeah? And what are they missing now?

"Packed into cubicles with 5-foot-high dividers, the 300 unarmed soldiers were sitting ducks."

Details of the Fort Hood massacre.

Around 1:30 p.m., witnesses say a man later identified as Hasan jumped up on a desk and shouted the words "Allahu Akbar!"—Arabic for "God is great!" He was armed with two pistols, one a semiautomatic capable of firing up to 20 rounds without reloading....

Those who weren't hit by direct fire were struck by rounds ricocheting off the desks and tile floor.

I've been trying to understand why all those soldiers — I know they were unarmed — were not able to stop Hasan, how minutes passed, and it took the arrival of the civilian police to end the carnage. I thought that after the Virginia Tech shooting, it was well-known that the shooting would go on and on and that waiting was not a good strategy. Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, the police officer who did take Hasan down, "had trained on 'active shooter' scenarios after the April 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University." Why weren't the 300 soldiers also able to respond? How could our soldiers be set up as "sitting ducks" — arrayed and accessible to a man who had made it known that he wanted to kill them?

***

The headline of the story is "But for heroes, bloodbath could have been worse."

Pfc. Amber Bahr, 19, of Random Lake, Wis., tore up her blouse and used it as a tourniquet on a wounded comrade. It was only later that she realized she'd been shot in the back, the bullet exiting her abdomen.

Great. I'm impressed. But I'm not distracted. The bloodbath could have been worse. Noted. But couldn't it also have been less bad?

"I just can't believe that he's the one who killed all those people."

"You know, he tipped every girl as she came off the stage after her dance. He was a really good tipper."

So Nidal Malik Hasan liked to pass time in a strip club. Are we supposed to be surprised? I don't think it's surprising. He didn't know what to do with women:

He steered clear of female colleagues, co-workers said, and despite devout religious practices, listed himself in Army records as having no religious preference....

"He came to mosque one or two times to see if there were any suitable girls to marry," Khan said. "I don't think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions. He wanted a girl who was very religious, prays five times a day."...

A co-worker at Walter Reed said Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos. Co-workers would find a solo photo of Hasan and post it on the bulletin board without his permission.

Men who don't know what to do about women.... we should be more suspicious of them than we are. And by the way, why was an Army officer allowed to be openly discriminatory toward women in the workplace? Some inane idea about diversity and celebrating difference?

"U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda..."

ABC reports:

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures....

One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts....

On Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

We are lucky it is Joe Lieberman who is in the position to force this investigation.

Investigators want to know if Hasan maintained contact with a radical mosque leader from Virginia, Anwar al Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen and runs a web site that promotes jihad around the world against the U.S.

In a blog posting early Monday titled "Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing," Awlaki calls Hassan a "hero" and a "man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

In war, traitors are heroes to the other side.  But it is a challenge for us to remember that we are at war. Of those now in power for us, Joe Lieberman manages to remember. Who else? Leon Panetta? Have we heard a peep from him in the past week? Apparently, not.

Hasan "should have been gone," says Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

Lieberman promises to ask the hard questions about why Nidal Malik Hasan was tolerated despite warning signs. And let no one be in denial: The warning signs were beyond clear.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe....

Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a "Muslim first and American second."

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

Another, Dr Val Finnell, who took a course with him in 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, did complain about Hasan's "anti-American rants." He said: "The system is not doing what it's supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty."

It is pathetic not to be able to distinguish between discrimination again Muslims and seeing that something is wrong with a particular individual who is a Muslim. It is thoroughly inept to think you have to choose between fighting terrorism and avoiding invidious discrimination.

It would seem that the Army was vulnerable to Rule 4 of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals":

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.

Of course, we should live up to our own rules. The key is to have good rules and not to distort your own rules out of fear of erring in one direction when there are multiple interests at stake. I imagine that Hasan thought his colleagues were complete idiots to let him get away with the outrageous things that he — a psychiatrist! — said.

The Fort Hood massacre was rhetorical flourish as Obama urged House Democrats to vote for health care.

His idea was: Soldiers make sacrifices for the good of the country, so congressional Democrats should put their concerns about the next election aside for the good of the country.

“He was absolutely inspiring. In a very moving way, he reminded us what sacrifice really is,” said New Jersey Rep. Rob Andrews, estimating the persuader-in-chief turned several votes.

“Sacrifice is not casting a vote that might lose an election for you; it is the sacrifice that someone makes when they wear the uniform of this country and that unfortunately a number of people made this week,” said Andrews.

“It made a lot of people feel a little less sorry for themselves about their political problems,” he added. “This is an emotional time for a lot of our folks politically, but this is politics and I think he correctly pointed out what’s a heck of a lot more important.”

I'm trying to imagine the political environment that Washington Democrats occupy. A President glibly lays out that analogy, and it is received — without any wincing or taint of disgust — as awesome inspiration. These are the minds that will be making decisions for us for quite a while.

Working the combat-stress-without-the-combat theme.

The NYT loves its theory of the Fort Hood attack.

"I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life."

What civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley twittered before her "amazing" and "aggressive performance" rushing toward the Fort Hood killer.

Munley, who is 5'4" and weighs 120, shot Nidal Malik Hasan 4 times. She was shot 3 times.

Questions about Nidal Hasan... questions about the military....

I'm reading the stories this morning that attempt to give some depth of insight into Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer/psychiatrist. There's this in the Washington Post:

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

"I know what that is like," she said. "Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay" for his medical training....

[Hasan] once said that "Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" and that the United States shouldn't be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a co-worker...

Lee told Fox News that Hasan "was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out.... When things weren't going that way, he became more agitated, more frustrated with the conflicts over there. . . . He made his views well known about how he felt about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan."

And when he talked about fighting "the aggressor," he said that his fellow soldiers "should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan," Lee said.

How was it that the military trained and employed this man in psychiatry and did not perceive his deep problems? I think that part of psychiatric training involves subjecting the would-be psychiatrist to psychological analysis. Why did this man slip through the system? His job was to treat others, in an environment full of experts in the field of psychiatry. Why did he remain an insider if he was the sort of person who could do what he eventually did? These are serious questions, not adequately answered by the idea that people "snap."

I want to know why what was wrong with Hasan was not detected? Was he given a pass because he was Muslim? Is there a fear of suspecting or offending Muslims in the military that keeps people who should see signs of dysfunction from acknowledging what they see or doing anything about it? On the other hand, if it really is the case that people in the military are harassing Muslims, that too should not be ignored. There should be rigorous equality for Muslims. It shouldn't even be necessary to point out what is obvious: Muslims in the military shouldn't experience special treatment either of a positive or a negative kind.

Let us not, out of sympathy for the victims, shy away from examining the military's failings. This should not have happened, and the sphere of responsibility extends beyond the murderer. This is not an expression of sympathy for Hasan. It is a desire for an effective military.

Here's the way the New York Times deals with the story:

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesman, was asked about reports that Major Hasan had yelled “Allahu Akbar” — an Arabic expression for “God is great” — during the shooting. General Cone said soldiers at the scene had reported “similar” accounts....

General Cone said that terrorism was not being ruled out, but that preliminary evidence did not suggest that the rampage had been an act of terrorism.

So that yelling of "Allahu Akbar," that doesn't suggest terrorism?

The rampage recalled other mass shootings in the United States, including 13 killed at a center for immigrants in upstate New York last April, the deaths of 10 during a gunman’s rampage in Alabama in March and 32 people killed at Virginia Tech in 2007, the deadliest shooting in modern American history.

Not to me, it doesn't. Hasan was a psychiatrist, working among psychiatrists. He was trusted and given access to places that are secured from the general public. And with that access he was able to kill and wound scores of military personnel. It's not like cases where some previously unexamined person bursts into a public place and starts shooting everyone.

There are a lot of questions here, and we need to be brave about asking them.

Mr. Obama called the shootings “a horrific outburst of violence” and urged Americans to pray for those who were killed and wounded.

“It is difficult enough when we lose these men and women in battles overseas,” he said. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.”

The president pledged “to get answers to every single question about this horrible incident.”

I'm going to remember that pledge. And it is long past time for the President to step up and commit to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enough with the demonstrations of thoughtful deliberation and concerned facial expressions made while saluting a flag-draped coffin. It is important for Obama to demonstrate leadership in war today.