Ft. Hood Report "Sanitized"

Remember how, after the Ft. Hood shooting last October, even the liberal media were openly discussing how the Army overlooked Nidal Hasan’s blossoming jihadism because of an ingrained--and dangerous--obedience to political correctness about Islam. Now would you believe the brass at the Pentagon still have their heads in the sand?

GOP rep.: Ft. Hood report 'sanitized'

By: Jake Sherman

The Pentagon’s 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was “sanitized” to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday.

The report, released last week, says that the Army’s middle management missed signals about Nidal Malik Hasan in the months leading up to the mass shooting.

But missing from the report is any discussion of what Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said was the a “crisis” with Islamic terrorism. Hasan allegedly wore ritual Muslim garb shouted “God is great” in Arabic when opening fire on a group of soldiers on the base — facts Carter said should have been disclosed in the report to help soldiers identify such signs in the future.

A search of the report does not turn up any mentions of Islam.

“People are afraid to speak out and label someone because they’ll be accused of being a racist or accused of profiling or being prejudiced against a certain religion or race of people,” Carter told POLITICO. “But in a time of national crisis, which I believe we are in, all identifiers must be discussed.”

Carter’s complaint fits into a larger narrative that Republican lawmakers have been driving in the past few months. The Obama administration, GOP legislators have said, has been irresponsible in its handling of terrorists, from their decision to close down Guantanamo Bay to the planned adjudicating of a 9/11 mastermind in New York City.

In an election year that is already shaping up to be rough for Democrats, Republicans are sure to use such decisions to paint President Barack Obama and his Congressional allies as weak on homeland security.

“We want the world to know that we are not prejudiced, even to the people that hate us,” Carter said. “That’s craziness.”
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Even TIME magazine is incredulous at the report’s political correctness, stating that the report “not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith.” (“The Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?”)

John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 commission and Navy Secretary during the Reagan Administration, says a reluctance to cause offense by citing Hasan's view of his Muslim faith and the U.S. military's activities in Muslim countries as a possible trigger for his alleged rampage reflects a problem that has gotten worse in the 40 years that Lehman has spent in and around the U.S. military. The Pentagon report's silence on Islamic extremism "shows you how deeply entrenched the values of political correctness have become," he told TIME on Tuesday. "It's definitely getting worse, and is now so ingrained that people no longer smirk when it happens."