The line used (several variations) is as follows: “Hasan was about to be deployed and he did not want to fight against arabs and muslims, people he identifies with.”

The problem with that line is that it is wrong. We are not in Iraq to fight against “arabs and muslims”. We are in Iraq to fight against extremists and terrorists. If Hasan was finding commonality with the enemy then he was finding it with the terrorists and not the average citizens!

The use of the above line is a bit of anti-war subterfuge. While it sounds good on the surface it is a misrepresentation of who we are fighting against.

Would we expect an [enter ethnic/religious group here] cop to not fight crime when it is purpetrated a member of the same ethnic/religious group? Of course not!

Are you saying that we didn’t want to pay him for the balance of the K?

and btw, the comments and recco diaries aren’t showing up on my screen. Anyone else have that problem?

From what I understand these policies are not unique to Ft. Hood and are common to army posts.

What I find most ironic is that many of these soldiers who can’t be trusted to carry their own weapons are now standing guard outside the PX’s and commissaries with M-4′s. I assume they are loaded. I didn’t ask.

Walter Reed is too close to D.C. The C.O. there would have been politically incapable of kicking him out.
Hasan’s new C.O. would not have. All he needed is the paper trail.

That happens all the time, too. And is almost Always the case when the former C.O. does not give a transferring soldier high marks.

Why were the soldiers in that room completely unarmed?
They did not have their Army issue weapons because those are kept under close guard. There is significant worry that someone might forget his weapon, leave it lying around or that someone might decide to sell “his” weapon.

BTW Mike, good diary again.

If you’ve been a manager or supervisor in a government, Hasan’s story is an easy one to understand. First, he gamed not just a degree but also a medical doctor’s ticket out of the military, that’s seven or eight years of full time school, not soldiering beyond probably having to muster from time to time. Now, the Army has a huge investment in him and will be reticent to dismiss him because of that. Then, discrimination rules are viciously enforced in government bureaucracies because they are viciously gamed by bureaucrats. So, nobody would want to discipline him because the discrimination and harassment charges are almost automatic. And, frankly, if someone is a member of a protected class, the supervisor and co-workers are guilty until proven innocent. I’m frankly surprised that he has any negative appraisals. And since they knew they had a problem employee and they knew that they hadn’t effectively dealt with him and in the Obama climate probably could not effectively deal with him; Democrats fill the EEO slots first and give the EEO officers and investigators carte blanc to go after managers and supervisors, they were stuck with him. So, somebody in the chain of command got clever and decided to deal with him by palming him off on somebody else. The reason I’m surprised by the talk of negative appraisals is that usually supervisors give glowing appraisals to troublemakers to make it easy for them to transfer or promote. In this case, they apparently force transferred him out of the Walter Reed sinecure and into a combat unit thus making him someone else’s problem. Pretty standard bureaucrat fare and the reason there are so many whackjobs and incompetents in high places in government.

That is if the guy lives long enough to even get court martialed.