So, we’re about to get the FullOprah™ treatment. This guy will be turned into a victim - and it’s already started - by the left. I can’t wait for his trial. Unlike the “Haditha Marines” whose innocence has been ignored by the media and the political establishment (not even GWB stood up for them against Murtha) this will be front page stuff for months.

He’ll go before a military court. He’ll certainly be found guilty of multiple counts of murder. Will he be executed?

Very little of the military are gun toters and correspondingly few really have the warrior ethic that we admire in the military. Yes, everyone does have to go through Basic and maintain some military readiness, but outside the actual guntoters and the men who lead them, the military is just another federal agency and its member are distinguished from other federal bureaucrats by the uniform and little more. I’ve worked around and with lots of retired military and they make just as good a slug in the workforce as anybody else except that many of them are very adept at and almost singly-mindedly committed to gaming the system to get another retirement vested.

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.

when his loyalty to his oath and to the United States became questionable.

is that personnel turnover is relatively quick — assignments generally run from 18 to 36 months. Some are even as short at 12 months. In that timeframe, people change jobs within their commands due to promotion, reorganization, or a scheduled mid-tour move. So a whack job could conceivably work for three different people in 18 months and then move on to the next assignment. That leaves little time to discover a personnel issue and little incentive to deal with it.

Not because we’re not allowed, for the most part, but because we feel safe there. We tend to leave our weapons in our rooms or houses when we’re on base because we feel safe. This is no longer the case.

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.

I am seeing a disturbing trend on the left in describing his reasons for going crazy and attacking soldiers.

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!