Right to Opine

After a year of studying the incident—in which Muslim Army Major Nidal Hasan ruthlessly murdered a dozen fellow soldiers—and the events that lead up to it, the Army and Dept. of Defense have come out with their findings. The report focuses on information sharing between the military, FBI, etc.

The focus of the findings and recommendations in the Information Sharing area was the lack of policy, procedures and systems for the sharing of threat related information between the Services, Combatant Commands, DoD and other federal agencies such as the FBI.

Unsurprisingly for a government investigation, they reached exactly the wrong conclusion.

The Army report says no single action would have prevented Fort Hood.

And, of course, the Army notes changes which, while welcome, are still not the single action that could be taken to avoid a repeat.

The Army says it already has implemented changes, including having first responders move in quickly to respond to a shooting rather than cordoning it off and awaiting special teams.

And

[Military Police] are now authorized to use jacketed hollow point ammunition to reduce the risk of injury to innocent bystanders.

Those are certainly commendable, but they don’t address the real issue. Why not?

Major Hasan was able to carry out his murderous rampage for exactly one reason: he knew there would be no one able to return fire before he had accomplished his mission. You see, even though we trust soldiers with high-powered weapons in the field, they are not allowed to carry weapons on stateside bases. Just a few miles away, civilians walking the streets of Killeen have the ability to lawfully defend themselves with a firearm, but the very soldiers whose oath includes defense of the Constitution are denied the protection of the 2nd Amendment while on-base.

The DOD could take one “single action” which would with almost 100% certainty guarantee that such an incident is not repeated—allow our servicemen to carry sidearms on stateside bases. That the report does not include this recommendation (at least according to more than a dozen articles I read) is not surprising, but it is damnable.

A flight from Washington, D.C. to Denver was disrupted last night when a passenger lit a cigarette onboard, creating a disturbance that resulted in an F-16 escort and the attention of the TSA, BATFE, and FBI.

Quiz time. The man’s name was:

1. William
2. James
3. Mohammed

Turns out the perp is a diplomat from Qatar and so can’t be charged with anything. Shamefully, the current White House has not insisted that the man be escorted permanently outside our borders. Diplomatic immunity is not intended to protect this type of criminal activity—it is to prevent the summary execution of diplomats caught in the act of espionage. We should be insisting that the Qatar embassy either wave his immunity or close its doors and leave the U.S.

As in, gun control means hitting your target. There was another terrorist attack by a nutjob plowing a bulldozer through a couple police cars and into a bus full of schoolgirls. What slowed the goblin down long enough for the police to finish him off? A civilian taxi driver carrying a concealed handgun.

Self-defense works, folks, because even when the police are present, they sometimes can’t respond as quickly as an alert, armed civilian.

Though they do enjoy playing the victim card, Palestinians aren’t at all serious about peace with Israel. Since the IDF withdrew from Gaza a month ago more than 100 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza…around 3 a day. Where’s the outcry from the world demanding that the rocket fire cease? Of course you won’t hear any. The liberal media can’t even call this what it is, naming the aggressors “militants” rather than what they are. When you target civilians, as in the latest attack which hit a school, you’re not a militant but a terrorist.

The US Navy has nabbed a group of pirates in the Gulf of Aden after receiving a distress call from the ship they were trying to commandeer. ‘Bout time we had some good news in that arena!

In a rather surprising statement, an EU official lays the blame for the destruction in Gaza on Hamas rather than Israel. I really didn’t know they had it in them. The Europeans, I mean.

Humanitarian aid chief Louis Michel called the destruction left by Israel’s offensive “abominable”, but said Hamas bore “overwhelming responsibility”.

In a stronger and even more surprising follow-up:

He said there would be no dialogue with with the “terrorist” movement until it gave up violence and recognised Israel. […] “I intentionally say this here – Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such.”

We can’t even get our own government to use such honest language. Kudos would be in order, but the EU still hasn’t seen the light entirely.

Mr Michel said people in the EU were sick of paying for the same infrastructure being destroyed over and over again in Israeli military action.

Yes, but you’re still sending 60 million euros in aid. The only way to keep the money from being completely wasted is, simply, not to send it. Until Hamas, and the Palestinians, stop their senseless terrorism against Israeli civilians Israel will have no choice but to keep going back in and wreaking havoc.

Still, this Belgian sees things a lot more clearly than anyone in our new government I’m afraid.

In a rather nasty, “Doh!” moment, one of the gremlins formerly housed in our prison at Guantanamo Bay has turned into an al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He even

passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

And still our new head honcho wants to close Gitmo within a year. Brilliant idea there, eh? This isn’t a new problem, though. We’ve known that quite a number of former Gitmo inmates have shown up on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. When, exactly, will the left learn? I fear they won’t.

Almost half the camp’s remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program — partly financed by the United States — similar to the Saudi one. Saudi Arabia has claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.

Uh, yeah. That’s working out really well, now, isn’t it? Rehabilitation doesn’t work any better for Islamic terrorists than it does for our own domestic violent criminals. There really are only two effective solutions for them: imprisonment and death. The left’s messiah is shutting down the former. How long before the latter is cut off as well and we’re back at square one?

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After days of fighting with Hamas in Gaza, we shouldn’t be surprised that the mainstream media and the United Nations are primarily critical of Israel, almost entirely ignoring the terrorists who started this latest round in the ongoing Palestinian saga. The focus is entirely on civilian casualties, the latest coming from a school which received Israeli mortar fire after terrorists fired rockets from its grounds. The rub is that the school is run by the U.N., which is crying foul since,

…all U.N. facilities are clearly marked with flags and that the Israeli military has been given precise Global Positioning System coordinates.

Yes, but what response is expected from the Israeli military when its soldiers come under rocket fire? The real problem, apparent to any rational observer, is that the terrorists are trying once again to use civilians as a shield. They hide like cowards among women and children then protest when the return fire kills the innocents around them.

Israel has indicated that they will not agree to another ceasefire until there is an international agreement which will effectively end the Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. Hopefully they’ll stick to their rhetoric this time. If not, we’ll just see the same scenario reenacted within a short time.

Once more the U.N. proves its worthlessness.

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It’s disheartening to see the foolishness we humans can’t seem to help perpetuating. India’s government is working on two new anti-terror laws.

One of them proposes setting up a National Investigation Agency with sweeping powers of investigation.

The second strengthens existing anti-terror laws to allow suspects to be detained without bail for up to six months on the orders of a judge.

Yep, I’m sure that if these had been passed a year ago, the (then) would-be terrorists would have chosen a different path. When you’re planning to take as many innocent lives as possible before your own death there’s nothing quite like the threat of a few months in jail to give you a sincere change of heart.

This is what happens when you have a liberal, more-government-is-better mindset. Instead of trusting the populace with their own protection (India has a virtual ban on civilian gun ownership) and fixing the problems with the existing law enforcement organizations (Mumbai police cowered outside while the attacks went on) you create a new government agency to deal with the problem. India already has a number of intelligence and security agencies…none of them were able to stop the Mumbai attacks in advance.

It will be argued that:

– We did the same thing by creating the Department of Homeland Security. That, too, was an unnecessary increase in the size of our government—not surprising since Bush has demonstrated through eight years of overspending and bloating government that he’s not a fiscal conservative except on taxes. We’ve been kept safe not by the DHS, but by our brave armed forces taking the fight overseas. Aargh! Love him and hate him in the same paragraph.

– Our existing agencies didn’t stop 9/11. True, but that’s because we didn’t learn anything (still haven’t, really) from the experience of Israel, which puts armed security on every El Al flight. If we’d had a functional Air Marshal program in place, 9/11 would likely have been averted. Since it would be prohibitively expensive to put AMs on every US flight, it should be noted that the same would be true if we simply allowed people with concealed carry licenses to take their weapons with them onboard. Terrorists simply wouldn’t know who (or how many) are armed and the potential success of such a hijacking would be extremely low.

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The UN Secretary General says now isn’t the time to send a peacekeeping force to Somalia.

Mr Ban said the situation in Somalia was too risky and there was no peace to keep.

Of course even if there were, a UN force would do exactly what it has done elsewhere on the dark continent—nothing. UN “peacekeeping” forces have a proven track record of worthlessness all around the world. We wouldn’t really expect anything different in Somalia.

Of what use is an international organization like the UN when it shows such clear lack of spine and moral character? If the nations of the world were truly interested in peace they’d be willing to pony up the troops to not only keep real peace where it exists, but create it through force where it doesn’t. But, as we see, they aren’t.

What a useless body the UN continually proves itself to be. (And Obama wants us to give them more money. I just can’t wait for January 20.)

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