ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports:
A new Senate report on the 2009 Fort Hood shooting blames the FBI and Department of Defense for failing to recognize or act on alleged shooter Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s extremist views.
The report, released today by Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman Joe Lieberman and ranking Republican Susan Collins, says the FBI and DOD could have prevented the shooting if they had identified Hasan’s radical Islamist views and disciplined or discharged him before the attack occurred.
“Our report’s painful conclusion is that the Fort Hood massacre could have and should have been prevented,” Lieberman said at a press conference today.
“The fact is that both the FBI and the Army were aware of Major Hasan,” Collins said. “This is not a case where a lone wolf was unknown to the FBI, unknown to the military officials, until he struck – and that is the tragedy of this case.”
The November 2009 shooting killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.
“Although neither DOD nor the FBI had specific information concerning the time, place, or nature of the attack, they collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it,” the senators said in the report. “Our investigation found specific and systemic failures in the government’s handling of the Hasan case and raises additional concerns about what may be broader systemic issues.”
“DOD possessed compelling evidence that Hasan embraced views so extreme that it should have disciplined him or discharged him from the military, but DOD failed to take action against him,” the report said.
At today’s press conference Lieberman noted that an instructor and a colleague had each referred to Hasan as “a ticking time bomb.”
“To me it’s infuriating that a member of our armed services who expressed such radical opinions to other members of our military was not discharged,” Lieberman said.
“The Fort Hood massacre resulted because of what I would call a tragedy of errors – just one after another - by organizations that normally perform effectively. But in this case – for a host of various reasons and frankly some things that are hard to explain – just totally failed to act in a way that as you look back at the evidence with the clarity of hindsight just shouts out, ‘Stop this guy before he kills somebody!’ And he was not stopped.”
Lieberman vowed that the report would be used as a “blueprint” for reforms “so the next human ticking time bomb will be identified early and defused before the next deadly detonation.”
Replies
Simple conclusion.
Military people were forbidden from identifying Terrorist.
We were directed to in the 1960's in South East Asis, report any suspicious military person's activity.
What happened to common sense.
Of course the shooting could have been prevented if our government and crazy citizen do-gooders and greedy lawyers were not pushing the insane Political Correct (PC) nonsense. We have lost our freedom to act or even speak for fear of offending some person, religion, cult, culture, race, or sex. We let them push us into becoming our own worst enemy making us into timid cowards afraid to speak or act on behalf of ourselves and country. We have let them make PC into a weapon to stifle our freedoms including our freedom to travel. The shooting, hijackings, mosque constructions, Muslim terrorist training camps on American soil are just some of the results of trying to be PC nice guys..
Dave
Dave;
Take the approach of "To Hell with Politically Correct". I did that at 65 and explain that I have aged on past the PC point. Have a nice &%%%$#%*&@ day.
BB
There were American men in all branches of our military in WWII who spoke with German and Italian accents. Although they were allowed to serve, they were subjected to greater scrutiny than second- and later-generation Americans. It simply made sense to do so.
There really are bad parts of town, and using words other than "bad" doesn't make anyone any safer. I'm pretty sure that no one ever said, "We're not at war with the 'moderate' Nazis and Japanese; just the 'radical' ones." We have lost our minds with Political Correctness.
My painful conclusion is, ho hum we did our job so lets get on to something else. We don't have to identify those who dropped the ball or even hold them accountable. FBI & DOD, kind of like THEY in they did it, are obscure and big enough that they can obsorb this and keep on trucking without harm to anyone in their organization or the respective organization as a whole. Damn it, someone violated their oath and should be held accountable. IMHO
Semper Fi
I'm sorry but, that's not what I signed up for.
Roger the turd.
The other analogy on this one is that they tried to polish a turd to make it look good.
This is at it's face despicable that the FBI and DOJ would value political correctness over human life.
What we have here are politicians that only understand if they were to say something bout an individual's religion or race it would offend them.
Know what we have are 13 people dead due to their oversight and political correctness.
Praise GOD
Political correctness went a little too far in this instance.
The turd was so vile that no one would try to polish it or pick it up by the clean end.
While in the military, I once gave a lecture to a couple dozen officers on tumble turd management.
It goes like this, the turd is found by the bug (we call them tumble turds down on the farm) and the bug would lay eggs in the turd and roll it around until it was round, embedded with sand and could be moved.
They had to put their nose in the ground, grasp the round ball turd with their four back legs, and with their two little front legs and nose, manouver the turd to a hiding place for the eggs to mature and hatch.
They had no sense of direction on which they were rolled the turd. When they hit an obstacle, the turd would spin and the bug would get tired and roll off onto its back. After resting, it would go find the turd and head in another direction.
This repeated until the turd was hidden. The little tumble turd bugs were hatched by the dozens and Government Expanded. They still did not know what direction to go in.
That gentlemen is the end of the lecture on Government Tumble Turd Management.
(The back door was slammed to the Briefing Room, and I was immediately reassigned to a better job - because any job was better than the one I had at the time).
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