Fort Hood Texas

[BigStewMan]

i read this morning that he attended some mosque in maryland that was run by the muslim brotherhood and prior to that had attended a radical mosque in falls church, VA along with some of the pentagon 911 terrorists. that is where he reportedly became influenced by this anwar al-awlaki guy. Al-awlaki is the guy that was quoted as saying that muslims in the military should follow in the footsteps of nidal. it was also reported that during a conference at walter reed hospital he made public statements that the infidels should be beheaded.

so, if reports are changing that dramatcally over the past several hours--someone is definately not reporting things accurately.

[Zen Traveler]

i read this morning that he attended some mosque in maryland that was run by the muslim brotherhood and prior to that had attended a radical mosque in falls church, VA along with some of the pentagon 911 terrorists. that is where he reportedly became influenced by this anwar al-awlaki guy. Al-awlaki is the guy that was quoted as saying that muslims in the military should follow in the footsteps of nidal. it was also reported that during a conference at walter reed hospital he made public statements that the infidels should be beheaded.

so, if reports are changing that dramatcally over the past several hours--someone is definately not reporting things accurately.

I am not going to argue that these Muslim Extremist groups view him as a hero, but the Imam of his Mosque in Killeen Tx contradicted Al-awlaki in regards to fighting Muslims on KERA's Newshour, and I believe what I saw on NBC News was the Imam of the VA church you referenced condemning his actions.

[LarryC]

Oops, I focused only on the NY Times reportage and forgot to state that all that stress was in NO way an excuse or rationale for what he did. As said by others above, an Al Qaeda connection is beginning to creep into the open.

I find it hard to believe that a Muslim Therapist would be a good choice for troops having issues fighting on that front unless the doctor had a proven temperament...

A good standard for any uniformed services officer. In addition, there now seems to be a little re-thinking about "routine" deployment of embattled psychiatrists to Afghanistan (although it seemed a bit like punishment in his case).

There's been some discussion of why the Army didn't do more to discipline Dr. Hasan. Docs are often treated with added deference, and likely with serious kid gloves if it's an extremely scarce specialty like psychiatry. That probably was a added deterrent to booting him out.

Some have said that his rather high rank of Major might have been a deterrent (I don't know, not having had experience in a DOD uniformed service), and may have wondered how he advanced to Major. In fact, his rank goes along with being a relatively junior medical officer, as docs are promoted fairly quickly early in their career -- they become Army Captains (O-3) when they get the MD degree, and Army Major (O-4) when they complete residency. (He apparently had to go through a promotion board, but was promoted anyway.) After that, it's a long wait for promotion.