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Saturday, February 05, 2011

Senate Fort Hood report whitewashes Obama's culpability

One year ago I noted that: "All three major domestic terror attacks of 2009 were directly enabled by Obama's reverse-profiling orders, exempting Muslims from scrutiny."

First was the shooting of two soldiers at a Little Rock Army recruiting office. Shortly after Obama ordered our intelligence agencies to "back off" from investigating black Muslims, a black Muslim who had previously been under surveillance killied one soldier and critically wounded another.

The case of the Christmas 2009 "underwear bomber" indicates that Obama's "back off" command extended to ALL Muslims. According to one State Department employee, watch-list monitors were: "encouraged to not create the appearance that we are profiling or targeting Muslims." The employee admitted that this policy was the reason Abdulmutallab was not flagged for scrutiny after the British denied him a visa for trying to attend a phony school in England, proving that State Department personnel understood Obama's policy as a general order not to investigate Muslims, even when they had cause that had nothing to do with a person being Muslim.

This reverse-discrimination goes beyond counter-terrorism. The recent Civil Rights Commission report on Obama's DOJ found a systematic refusal to enforce civil rights law against minority perpetrators on behalf of white victims, and Barack "I will stand with the Muslims" Obama has made it perfectly clear that he places Muslims on the favored side of that unequal justice.

The Fort Hood massacre itself also suggests that Obama's counter-terrorism "back off" command extended to all Muslims. It came out in November 2009 that agents dropped their Nidal Hasan investigation because they deemed his communications with al Qaeda leader Awlaki to be protected speech:
U.S. officials now confirm Hasan sent as many as 20 e-mails to Awlaki. Authorities intercepted the e-mails but later deemed them innocent or protected by the first amendment.
Could such a glaring misapplication of the First Amendment have occurred if agents were not looking for ways to give Muslims special consideration? Not likely.


The Senate's "Ticking Time Bomb" report fails to mention Obama's reverse-profiling orders, or the First Amendment excuse for ignoring Hasan's emails to al Qaeda


The Senate report covers up the Obama administration's First Amendment excuse by attributing the dropped Hasan-Alwaki ball to confusion of responsibilities between regional and central Joint Terrorism Task Force offices (p. 85):
There was a fundamental disjunction between the San Diego JTTF and the Washington JTTF concerning who was responsible for investigating [REDACTED] communications between Hasan and the Suspected Terrorist. ... As a result, the FBI's inquiry into Hasan was terminated prematurely.
Sorry, but the Obamatons admitted otherwise. The Senate report does do some dancing around the First Amendment issue. Page 57 notes that investigations are required to be protective of First Amendment rights:
Also as discussed in the Guide, investigations or assessments are precluded appropriately - "based solely on the exercise of First Amendment protected activities or on the race, ethnicity, national origin or religion of the subject.
But there is no discussion about what this means and how it might apply to Hasan. To consist with what the First Amendment actually requires, the stated rule should be understood to mean that investigations must be based on concerns that go beyond what trouble someone might cause by exercising his right to free speech. Thus the question for agents should have been whether, in listening to Hasan, they found reason to worry that he would go beyond saying nasty things and start doing nasty things.

The answer to that question was a glaring "yes." Page 31 of the Senate report lists some of Hasan's worrisome conduct:
• Giving a class presentation perceived as so supportive of violent Islamist extremist conflict against the United States that it was almost immediately stopped by an instructor after classmates erupted in opposition to Hasan's views.

• Justifying suicide bombings in class at least twice, according to the accounts of classmates.

• Suggesting in writing in his proposals for presentations that some actions of Osama bin Laden may be justified.

• Telling several classmates that his religion took precedence over the U.S. Constitution he swore a military oath to support and defend.

• Stating three times in writing that Muslim-Americans in the military could be prone to fratricide.
Hasan was not hiding the fact that he was likely to go beyond just saying nasty things, but the Senate report can't be bothered to clarify what the First Amendment actually requires.

The conclusion of the report includes another brush with the First Amendment issue, finding on p. 87 that:
JTTF personnel never cited any legal restrictions as the reason that Hasan's communications were not shared with DoD counter intelligence officials.
But this finding is about the sharing of information. It is not about the failure of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to keep investigating Hasan on their own. Thus it does not cover the question of whether First Amendment concerns were the reason the JTTFs gave Hasan's emails to Awlaki a pass, as unnamed Obama administration "officials" claimed. In short, the Senate report does consider whether legal restrictions came into play, but it ignores the one such restriction that was front page news!

Given the direct evidence that the First Amendment WAS misapplied, this should have been a key subject for Senate review. Was it ignored despite the strong evidence of why the egregious misapplication occurred: that Obama had issued sweeping orders NOT to investigate Muslims? Or was it ignored because of the strong evidence that Obama is to blame?

The report notes the obvious: that "political correctness" is out of control in the Department of Defense (p. 31), but it completely ignores all that we know about WHY the politically correct thing at this point in time is to give even the most dangerous Muslim's a pass. It ignores the clear evidence that failure to investigate Muslims is a top-down policy directive from President Obama himself.

That is a dangerous whitewash, which is about what we should expect from a bi-partisan effort. Republicans should know by now: if we want to get to the truth of anything, we can't rely at any point on Democrats.

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