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McCaul says suspect had special training in shooting, parents hailed from Jordan

By W. Gardner Selby | Thursday, November 5, 2009, 05:40 PM

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who has been briefed on the shootings at Fort Hood, said one suspect, Nadal Malik Hasan, was a physician who was born in Virginia to parents who hailed from Jordan.

He said he didn’t yet have the names of two other suspects.

“The background of these individuals is going to be critical,” McCaul said.

Hasan, McCaul said, “took a lot of advanced training in shooting.” He said he’s not sure why.

He said Hassan, with others, acted at Fort Hood using handguns.

“They did a tremendous amount of damage,” he said, considering they did not have AK-47s.

“It’s clear this was a coordinated attack,” McCaul said, adding that some have attributed it to the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, though it’s premature to say so. “It’s too early to jump to any conclusions.”

McCaul said he also has been told that Hasan had undergone rehabilitative alcohol counseling.

“Whether it was domestic or foreign, clearly when a U.S. military base is attacked in this kind of fashion, that is an act of terror in my book,” McCaul said.

If you remember The Godfather, you may remember that Michael Corleone was also the child of immigrants whose parents didn’t want him to go into the military. The fact that may have been born in Virginia doesn’t mean this isn’t an immigration story.

Fox News has an interview with a cousin of the deceased shooter, Major Hasan, called Nader Hasan.

A shooting rampage Thursday afternoon at the Army’s Fort Hood in Texas killed 11 and wounded 31 before the gunman was killed and two suspects taken into custody.

All three of the people believed to have carried out the shooting were soldiers, Lt. General Bob Cone told reporters Thursday evening, though the motive remains unclear.
…
The shooter’s cousin, Nader Hasan, told Fox News that their family is in shock.

“We are trying to make sense of all this,” Nader Hasan said. “He wasn’t even someone who enjoyed going to the firing range.”

He said his cousin, who was born and raised in Virginia and graduated from Virginia Tech University, became against the wars after hearing the stories of those who came back from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nader Hasan said his cousin, who was raised a Mulsim, [sic] wanted to go into the military against his parent’s wishes and was taunted by others after the terror attacks of Sept. 11.[Emphasis added.]
….

President Obama called the shooting a “horrific outburst of violence” on members of the nation’s armed forces. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil.”He said he doesn’t yet know all the details but promised the government would get “answers to every single question.”
…[Sources Identify Major as Gunman in Deadly Shooting Rampage at Fort Hood Fox News, November 05, 2009 ]

Note the bit about his father not wanting him to go Army, and him being “taunted” by family members after the September 11 attacks. Assimilation? Not hardly.

A doctor rating site says that Dr. Hasan, a Major in the US Army, got his basic medical training at

Faculty of Medicine, Damascus University or Faculty of Human Medicine, Damascus University
Completed: 1990

One of the assessments says:

Reviewer: Pvt J. Hammond

Although he was hard to understand (strong accent) this doctor helped me come to terms with my conscientious objector status.While I am still not thrilled about being deployed to Iraq, I at least understand how doing so to protect my fellow soldiers is a good thing.

The comment is dated Nov 5, 2009. (Via Lileks.)

Damascus is the capital of Syria, which the State Department considers, and has considered since 1979, a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

NYT on the shootings (Pictured right, Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, MD)

An Army psychiatrist about to be deployed to combat zones overseas killed 11 soldiers and wounded 31 others on Thursday afternoon at Fort Hood in Texas, the authorities said. The gunman, who was identified as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was then killed by police forces.

Mr. Hasan, 39, had been promoted in May, was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, according to military officials. He had previously worked at Walter Reade Army Medical Center.

Mr. Hasan, who was carrying two handguns, opened fire at 1:30 p.m. central time at a deployment center where soldiers received last-minute medical attention and instructions before being shipped out overseas.

Mr. Hasan “opened fire, and due to the quick response of the police forces, he was killed,” said Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the commanding officer at Fort Hood.

“There were several eyewitness accounts that there was more than one shooter,” he said. Two other soldiers were also taken into custody, he said, but the authorities are continuing to sort out what exactly happened.[12 Dead, 31 Wounded in Base Shootings, By Maria Newman, NYT, November 5, 2009 ]

There’s more to the story, but if you were wondering if they were going to talk about him being a Muslim, stop wondering. They aren’t. They’re going to talk about “backlash” later.

News stories say that Major Hasan, held in the Fort Hood shootings, is an Army psychiatrist, licensed in Virginia. Here’s his Virginia license information.

Meanwhile Twitter is full of people worrying instantly about backlash, and saying things things like

scottiemirador RT @jamesborders: His name and religion are not the issue, this is: Major Malik Nadal Hasan was an Army Psychiatrist.

TheRealCeaza7 RT @HipHop_Purist: RT @BenABaker Please judge Major Malik Nadal by his actions and not by his name.

macxprt “Shooter: Major Malik Nadal Hasan… http://tinyurl.com/yjdyrtq” -@Drudge_Report And the racial profiling stories start in 3, 2, 1…

There are a lot of posts that say “Please judge Major Malik Nadal by his actions and not by his name.”

Er, they’ve got his name wrong.

One shooter at Fort Hood is named Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone [Commanding General of III Corps and Fort Hood ]said the motive for the attack is unclear.
Here’s the ABC story:

12 Soldiers Killed and 31 Wounded in Fort Hood Shooting
Suspected Gunman Is Identified by ABC News as Major Malik Nadal Hasan
By EMILY FRIEDMAN
Nov. 5, 2009

Twelve people have been killed and 31 wounded in a shooting spree at a Texas military base by what officials believe was possibly carried out by an Army officer.

The suspected gunman was identified by ABC News as Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

The shooter was killed and two other suspects, who are also soldiers, have been apprehended, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone said.

The gunman used two handguns, Cone said. He wasn’t sure if the shooter reloaded the weapons during the attack.

The general called the attack “a terrible tragedy, stunning.” He said the community was “absolutely devastated.”

The extent of the injuries of victims “varies significantly,” according to Cone.

President Obama called the Fort Hood shootings a “horrific outburst of violence.”

“It if difficult enough to lose” soldiers overseas, but said it is “horrifying that they should lose their lives at an Army base in the U.S.,” he said.

The president said “my prayers are with the wounded and the families of the fallen.”

Cone said the motive for the attack, which took place just after 1:30 p.m. CT, is unclear.

Fort Hood, located just 60 miles north from Austin, is the largest U.S. military installation in the world, and has suffered the greatest number of caualities of all American bases in the war on Iraq.

7 Dead, 12 Wounded reported at Fort Hood, Texas. No word on whether it’s an immigrant mass murder type thing, a terrorist attack, or what. I do know that most of the victims would have been unarmed, in spite of Texas’s liberal concealed carry laws. The reason? They’re in the Army. I wrote about the Fort Dix plot that

The Fort Dix terrorists could certainly have killed many more people than Cho Seung-hui, the Virginia Tech killer.

The Federal Government likes to claim that they have security in place. But Army bases are basically unprotected. Self-defense trainer John Farnam points out that soldiers on and off base are as unarmed as the students at Virginia Tech.

The soldiers may have a “Culture of Self-Defense,” but the Army’s fanatical insistence that guns be kept unloaded (even in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan) means that an attacker would have a lot of unarmed people to shoot at before he was overwhelmed.

Updates on the shooting will be found here and here.

On Tuesday, police arrested a seventh suspect in the over two-hour long, October 24^th gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl outside of the Richmond (CA) High School homecoming dance.

“Authorities took a 21-year-old man into custody around 7 a.m. this morning….

Officials say a group of as many as ten people beat and raped the girl for more than two hours while others watched.

The man is being held on one-point-two-five-million dollars bond and will face rape, sexual battery and penetration with a foreign object.”

[Richmond Police Arrest Another In Gang Rape Case, VERTEXNews, November 3, 2009.]

I wrote about this case of crime diversity in May: Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also… African “Refugee” Kidnappers In Virginia. The trial is finished and the sentences are in — 5 1/2 years for the Africans and 4 1/2 years for the American.

The plot was bizarre, carefully planned and amateurishly executed: To make money in America, three young men from refugee families set out to find a wealthy woman, abduct her from her home and hold her for ransom.

It all unraveled as soon as Audrey Levicki answered the door to her Southwest Roanoke County home.

Suspicious that the two men were not the Red Cross volunteers they claimed to be, Levicki braced the door with her foot and then slammed it shut on the arm of the one who tried to reach inside.

The two men ran off, despite months of planning and a getaway car waiting at the end of the driveway with rope, handcuffs and other tools of a kidnapping. The duo was quickly arrested along with two accomplices, setting in motion a series of unintended consequences that culminated Monday at a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

Levicki, whose intended fate was to be held in a rundown camper until her captors could collect up to $1 million from her corporate executive husband, said that she is now a prisoner in her own home.

“My life went to hell on April 6,” Levicki said in a statement to Judge James Turk, recounting how the incident led to fearful days, sleepless nights and a loss of security so profound that she no longer ventures outside to feed the dog unless armed with a baseball bat.

For the three African natives who tried to kidnap Levicki — Luke Musa Elbino, 20; Mohammed Hussein Guhad, 20; and Joshua Kasongo, 19 — the consequences went beyond the five-and-a-half-year prison terms they received at the end of a daylong hearing.

Once they are released from prison, the three face almost certain deportation back to Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda — countries their families fled when they were boys to escape civil war and genocide.

And how diverse was the sentencing hearing? Very.

At times, the hearing bordered on surreal. On one side of the jam-packed courtroom, residents of an affluent suburban neighborhood sat in support of Levicki. Across the aisle — and from halfway across the world — sat the friends and families of the defendants. Many of them refugees, some were dressed in colorful native robes and headscarves.

Emotions ran high all day; court was recessed after Elbino’s sister fainted and fell from her seat in the gallery. At another point, a spectator pointed his finger skyward and chanted an African song.
[Bizarre case of abduction comes to end, Roanoke Times, November 3, 2009]

Theoretically, the wanna-be kidnappers could have gotten life in prison, but that wasn’t going to happen, given they were all young and had no priors. Five years in prison would be considered a tough sentence in some quarters, and it’s likely the strong victim statement was important in putting these dangerous characters in the slammer at all.

The do-gooders were shocked that such a crime could happen. “They went through terror themselves, so I couldn’t imagine them inflicting that on anyone else,” testified Barbara Smith, a retired refugee resettlement professional.

But experience has shown that war-traumatized children may grow into troubled, violently criminal adults. The Refugee Industrial Complex has no business dumping these human time bombs into American communities without proper oversight at the least.

One revealing statistic: An estimated 80 to 90 percent of Lost Boys suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, which can lead to substance abuse, depression and domestic violence. The thousands of Lost Boys, who were orphaned by war in Sudan, have been beloved among the professional do-gooders for their uplifting tale of success against long odds. However, the psychological disorders and crimes that erupt years later don’t get the headlines. Nobody wants to hear the criminal downside of cultural diversity, which is the real story.

See also the remarks on this case in Refugee Resettlement Watch.

Jeremiah Wright, Pastor to the President, is back. Accuracy In Media writes

“A new video of Jeremiah Wright has surfaced, showing Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years praising Marxism and discussing his ties to communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the Libyan government. Equally important, Wright is being introduced in the video by Robert W. McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, an organization which has come under scrutiny for its links to the Obama Administration and dedication to the transformation and control of the private media in the U.S.

In an article in the socialist Monthly Review, “Journalism, Democracy, and Class Struggle,” McChesney declared, “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.”[Controversial New Video of Obama’s Pastor, By Cliff Kincaid, November 1, 2009 ]

Wright was speaking at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in New York City. Videos below:
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