As you probably know, Major Nidal Malik Hasan -- an Army shrink at Fort Hood -- "allegedly" went berserk and shot at his fellow soldiers, killing thirteen and wounding 30. He had just discovered that he was about to be deployed overseas.
Can you believe that this is going on nearly 9 1/2 months after Obama's inauguration? Why aren't we out?
14 comments:
Couldn't he have just said no? I don't mean that as a joke. He says no, and gets booted out of the army. He still has his life, and no one else is killed either.
It's a sad, sad world we live in : (
This guy went to Va Tech..where there were also mass killings..look up Cathy O'Brien..she talsk about Va Tech!
correction.."talks"
According to a retired colleague of Major Hasan, the Major was increasingly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he was going through all possible channels to avoid the assignment to Iraq, which was scheduled for late November. Sadly, according to Major Hasan's colleague, the Major was very excited about Obama's election because he truly believed Obama's campaign promises to withdraw from Iraq.
I can't begin to imagine the stress that someone like Major Hasan was under: years of counseling those veterans returning from these illegal invasions with problems ranging from PTSD to alcoholism, with no end in sight. According to a friend of his from church, he was both a devout muslim and a patriotic member of the armed forces. These conflicts must have been tearing him apart. I feel so terribly sorry for both Major Hasan and his victims.
We've spent over $300 billion in Afghanistan alone, but we're told there isn't enough money for universal health care. I suspect we're all going slightly mad by now.
grayslady
C'mon, Joseph. You didn't really believe all that fairy tale about Obama the anti-war candidate, did you?
It was just campaign rhetoric, and bringing it up now is "playing gotcha."
It is kinda funny how all those Obots who could never, ever support Hillary because of her AUMF vote don't seem to care about the war anymore.
Kool-aid is a helluva drug.
I gotta side with the Miyq-- I'm not saying that we would have pulled out any better with HRC or MccCaine who would have found just as many excuses as O to stay in.... and to tussle with Iran on Zion's behalf..
Really, Mr. Cannon, did you really think that 9 months after the puppet named O became potus that anything would be different?
I love how people say to me, well, he 'is trying' to reform health, he 'is trying' to fix the economy.. and to that i have two things to say one is that the verb "trying" implies failure (i tried my hardest... but we lost the game) but more so-- he appears to push far to the left for health care why? because he knows that nothing will happen but appearances, same with the pull outs, he talks it, shucks it and jives it (yeah, i said it! fuck you bots, that is a shuck and jive).. its the oldest trick in the dem book-- make it look like somethings happen, start a commission, have a hearing, put out a bill that's bigger than a phone book... great. and then we will say, well, he tried.
The only shock is that anyone actually believed that soldiers would leave Iraq. PT Barnum said it best; suckers every minute-- but really, didn't Carlo Collodi write some stories about puppts who lie? Geppetto, Mangiafuoco, and the 'Grillo parlante'? Is it much different than the puppets who lie to us today? Before it was a Disney abortion, it was a satire, right?
The Disney movie was great. And the original was dead serious -- a great big wallow in Italian Cat-lick guilt, complete with a transparently-disguised stand-in for the Virgin Mary.
Not booted out; locked up in a military prison and doubtless subjected to some of the very nasty treatment he'd have been used to giving forcibly to others in his capacity as army shrink.
As someone embarking on a career in mil intel once told me:
If you can't take a joke...don't join the army. Which goes for those he shot as well as Hasan himself.
The western press is having a field day screaming in its headlines that this guy is (was?) a Muslim. Can't remember a case where they acted similarly with a Christian or a Jew.
The various cults of pyschiatry work like other cults...I call it the Jesuit model...the lower-downs get shrunk by the higher-ups, and so on up the chain. 'Course, I'm sure he was no Reichian. Army psychiatrist ain't my favourite type o'person. OK I do believe in redemption and sure, this guy should have found some other way to get out of the army. But I wouldn't put this on the same level as some GI who goes similarly crazy, in the sense of forgetting who he's supposed to murder and who he's supposed to murder with.
That said, I wonder just who actually started the shooting at Fort Hood. As a brown-skinned Muslim who didn't like the American invaders' efforts in Iraq, Hasan would have had quite a few enemies. Insane 'hero' with numerous belt-notches included, very probably.
Second point of scepticism: is it actually true that this guy ever said he didn't want to go to Iraq? Might this just be bullshit? As in, some American soldier goes fuckin' crazy and shoots a load of people - except not in Arabia or Asia but in America itself - and oh yes, he's a Muslim, you know, and he went to the mosque (implication: what was he doing there?), and he was against the war (implication: some fucking traitors express their anti-patriotic beliefs publicly - even in the army itself - and still we let them!), and so on. The clear message being: remove the enemy within. I got fed up years ago with compulsively analysing news stories to try to form a view on what really happened. (Well, except very occasionally). More important is what's being done with the story.
And the message here is being communicated not just to Joe SixPack but, importantly, within Uncle Sam's military wing itself.
"Muslim groups fear backlash" say some headlines... Subtle, huh? Between the lines, there's the message that all Muslims have "groups" which either they belong to or which speak on their behalf, legitimately represent them. OK I know that's how a lot of people like things to be in America, and there are always 'groups' that want to gob off to the media, but it makes me think of how, in the early years after they came to government, the Nazis viewed Jewish Germans.
We get the idiotic spectacle of 'groups' 'racing' to 'condemn' the 'rampage'. As if...as if...? Who's calling the propaganda shots here? Easy for me say that, sure. But... "if you can't take a joke, don't get into politics" ? It's still the warmakers who control the press, and they are using this story...and if this isn't criticised head-on, the bastards will get stronger. Mustn't let a crisis go to waste. (Nothing like stating the obvious! :-) ).
b
OK Joe, I'll give you that--- the artwork in Disney's version is great, thanks to the brilliant Oskar Fischinger, and Grazia from Death Takes a Holiday as the Blue Fairy.
But really, aside from a great patina, they butchered Collodi's story, filleted all the social commentary; no serpents laughing themselves to death, no City of Catchfools, no terrible Dogfish.... and then if you were to consider what Disney did to the story, and compare it to Tolstoy's "The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Buratino" it is hard to say that Disney's version was "great."
Good animation, ok, but as John Kennedy Toole once wrote; Ignatius growls that the picture he is seeing is "an abomination. Hollywood, I fear, is our contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah and we best avert our gaze."
Disney took some Montasio, some Fontina, and some Caciocavallo and gave us cheese-whiz. And yet even in that pablum, there's still a puppet who lies. Just like O.
What I can't believe is Obama's "news conference" yesterday. Taking two and a half minutes to schmooze with the attendees of an Interior Department conference before even mentioning the tragedy at Fort Hood is an insult to every soldier in America.
Anonymous, your comments on the "stress" Major Hasan was under are proof positive that you've lost it completely. None of the soldiers he counseled did this, even though they were the ones with PTSD. Second-hand "stress"? Don't make me laugh.
Go post at the Great Orange Satan, where they were expressing sympathy for the shooter yesterday. You'll fit right in there.
Wait, I know the answer (and it hasn't been given yet)!
It's pretty simple, and once you read it, it's entirely dispositive of the question.
It comes down to math (my apologies!) and corrected memory, and the fact that 9-1/2 is less than 16 (to which I hope we all can agree).
-----------------------
New York Times
December 4, 2008
News Analysis
Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.
But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.
“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.
------------------
From this reporting, then-president-elect Obama claimed his prior campaign pledge was to remove COMBAT TROOPS IN 16 MONTHS, and the Times appears to agree.
XI
I agree with Bob Not Bob. As an aside, I can't recall a Jewish mass murderer-- leave out the Middle East.
"Leave out the middle east"
....as in outside of Palestine/Israel
from '48 to present? So then does King David count? When the deal was that if he kill Goliath, the Philistines would be the Israelites' slaves. But once David kills Goliath, he leads the Isseys and Hymies on a massacre 'till the Valley of Elah is flooded with Philistine blood ("and the Lord was pleased"). So does that count?
If not, what about Joel David Rifkin (killed 17 between 89-93) or Albert Hamilton Fish (1870–1936)? How about Son of Sam (or does adopted not count? because I'll tell ya this: adopted still get the tip of their schmeckeleh cut off)? Then there's The Lonely Heart Killer - Harvey Murray Glatman, and the Ruskies Kaganovich, and Yagoda? Both Jewish, both mass murderers.
And how about Kissinger? And that's not even looking at Wolfowitz or the PNAC...
I'm not saying that there is an issue of proportionality or over-representation, just sayin' that no group is above reaching the nadir on occasion.
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