RUSH: From the Los Angeles Times: ‘Nidal Malik Hasan’s contacts with a radical Islamic cleric linked to some of the 9/11 hijackers were investigated but found to be mostly innocuous, officials say.’ Really? What about all this talk post-9/11 that we had to start ‘connecting the dots’ that we didn’t properly connect prior to 9/11? You know, the headline here is: ‘Fort Hood Suspect was on US
9/11 never happened? Or we’re going to reframe why it happened and who did it and for what reason and somehow it’s our fault? ‘[I]nvestigators concluded that Hasan’s activities did not warrant a more formal investigation, even though the imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, had ties to Al-Qaeda operatives and was the author of a popular website espousing jihadist activity…’ I have some of what he posted on that website about jihadist history. ‘The officials also said Hasan’s e-mails to [the radical imam] appeared mostly innocuous and not worthy of further investigation or monitoring under Justice Department guidelines.’ (snorts) Does this make you feel safer out there, folks? From the tireless defenders of the faith at Reuters: ‘Fort Hood Suspect Contacted Islamist — US intelligence agencies learned an Army psychiatrist tried to contact Islamists with suspected al-Qaeda links and relayed that information to federal authorities before the man allegedly went on a shooting spree in Texas last week…
‘While the agencies were monitoring contacts by Anwar al-Awlaki, a fiery, anti-American cleric in Yemen who sympathized with al-Qaeda, they came across some communications late last year with the shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, US government officials said. They said the information was given to federal authorities who determined that Hasan’s writings were largely consistent with his academic work, offering no hint that he was planning an attack or was following orders from anyone… The 10 to 20 communications between Hasan and the cleric continued into 2009. That prompted authorities to look into Hasan, the officials said. But they decided the matter did not warrant an investigation. … In August 2009, Hasan purchased two firearms that he used to carry out the attack, but the government officials said that US law does not permit them to connect that purchase information with the other intelligence they had.’
What? What are we doing to ourselves? What in the world are we doing to ourselves? Now, I guess a lot of this is shocking to a lot of people, unless you’ve been sitting up and taking notice for the last ten years or so. All they said was ‘the information was given to federal authorities who determined that Hasan’s writings were largely consistent with his academic work’? The sad thing is that might very well be true these days, and here’s the — I’m not going to read it all to you, but — ’44 Ways to Support Jihad.’ This is this imam from his website, February 5th of this year. Ten of them here on the PDF pile. We’ll ignore the other 33. But you have to accept the fact that this radical imam is not a terrorist and a recruiter of terrorists and a fundraiser for terrorists.
And if that’s true — if this radical imam is himself not a terrorist, not a recruiter of terrorists and not a fundraiser for terrorists — then the term terrorist has no meaning. And I think that’s what this administration is headed for. The word terrorist has no meaning. They’ve already stricken the word ‘terror’ from ‘war on terror.’ You can’t use it. Government officials cannot talk about ‘war on terror,’ and yet a major in the US Army of Palestinian extraction and Muslim persuasion raised no concerns when he repeatedly corresponded with a radical pro-Al-Qaeda imam? Those charged with protecting our security, quote, ‘decided the matter did not warrant an investigation,’ close quote? That is criminally irresponsible. This is criminally irresponsible.
The FBI, whoever it is, Department of Justice. Washington Post, a story by Dana Priest: ‘Fort Hood Suspect Warned of Threats Within the Ranks — Cited stress facing Muslims Hasan spoke at Walter Reed in 2007. … [H]e stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post. ‘It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,’ he said in the presentation.
”It was really strange,’ said one staff member who attended the presentation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. ‘The senior doctors looked really upset’ at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses.’ Now, folks, this guy was not hiding. He was not ‘on the radar,’ he was on stage! This guy was waving his arms. This guy was shouting, ‘Notice me! Notice me! Notice me!’ He wasn’t on anybody’s radar. ‘The final three slides indicate that Hasan referred to Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, suicide bombers and Iran. Under a slide titled ‘Comments,’ he wrote:
”If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the ‘infidels’; ie: enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc.’ (sic) The last bullet point on that page reads simply: ‘We love death more then (sic) you love life!” This is in his presentation! Radar? He’s on stage! ‘Under the ‘Conclusions’ page, Hasan wrote that ‘Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam,’ and that ‘Muslim Soldiers should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly — will vary!’
‘The final page, labeled ‘Recommendation,’ contained only one suggestion: ‘Department of Defense should allow Muslims (sic) Soldiers the option of being released as ‘Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.” Here we go. Conscientious objectors. So it’s the military’s fault. Why…? (sigh) They could not connect the dots on this one? They couldn’t connect the dots? They couldn’t connect the dots? Dots? He’s on stage! Dots? We don’t even have dots. We’ve got words! We’ve got communications with a radical imam. We’ve got his own website. We’ve got the purchase of guns. We’ve got people willingly putting their head in the sand, looking the other way, hoping against hope that this was just not what it was, for whatever reasons.
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‘Federal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime, and I have directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation. The Department of Justice will work to bring the perpetrator of this crime to justice. As a precautionary measure, we will also take appropriate steps to help prevent any related acts of violence from occurring.’ They immediately dispatched the marshals to abortion clinics all over the country. Obama spoke within minutes. This was not an attack on Fort Hood, just like 9/11 was not an attack on New York City. This was an attack on America and one of its great institutions, and it’s not isolated. There have been a spate of these things: Arkansas, Fort Dix. There are people willing to look the other way for whatever scary reasons here.
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RUSH: You know, stop and think about something, folks. I went through a little timeline presentation of this Nidal Malik Hasan guy. Stop and think of this. Put at the front of the timeline 9/11. And let’s go back to that FBI agent, Coleen Rowley or whatever her name was in Minneapolis. She begged her superiors at the FBI for a search warrant to look at this guy’s computer, Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker. The FBI denied it. She wakes up and she sees the towers burning and falling down and she cringes. So we’re promised, right? ‘We’re going to get together here now. We’re going to start connecting these dots. This is serious stuff. I mean 9/11, we’re going to defend America, start connecting the dots.’ Jump forward to last week. Hell, jump forward to 2008.
The FBI, the Justice Department, have overwhelming evidence and information that a radical Muslim is in our own military, is talking to a radical imam and is going to his mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, at the same time the 9/11 hijackers were there. We are told that this guy then makes a slide presentation to fellow psychiatrists and doctors at Walter Reed in which he basically indicts the United States for its treatment of and procedures against radical Islamists. Now, if we know all of this — and I’m sure there’s more that was known. If we know all of this and don’t do anything about it, at some point don’t you think the FBI or the DOJ needs to be turned upside down and every bad apple in there shaken out?
When I started the program yesterday, I said, ‘Why did he do it? Everybody running around asking, ‘Why did he do it?’ The real question is how does a radical Islamist end up in our own military? And then become detected as one, be discovered as one?’ How does a radical Islamist worm his way into our military and then, over two years, seen for who he is, and nothing’s done about it? My friends, that is a serious question, and makes me wonder: What good is anything we’re doing, in the effort to protect and defend the country? And then the explanation is, ‘Well, the communications didn’t rise to a level of serious concern according to guidelines in the Justice Department.’ Guidelines in the Justice Department? Connecting the dots! This guy, the headline in the LA Times says he was ‘on the US Radar.’
He wasn’t on radar. He was on stage! He was broadcasting who he is. He was telling everybody who he is. He was advising his superior officers. He was making all these militant statements. They were afraid to turn him in because of political correctness and discrimination charges against them. There’s videotape of the guy in full imam garb at a 7-Eleven hours before he opened fire. It’s from the 7-Eleven security tape in nearby Killeen, Texas, I think. We know he went in and bought the guns, and we knew that happened. But we didn’t do anything about that because guidelines prevented us from making the connection to things he was saying and doing, to the purchase of the guns. So we tied our hands behind our backs.
And now after it all happens, ‘Well, let’s not rush to judgment on this. Let’s not rush to judgment. We gotta be very careful. We’re going to wait for the full investigation before we understand what happened. This is just somebody who cracked. It’s the military’s fault. There’s too much stress in the military.