Lieberman’s Hunt for a Lone Wolf?
Jim White has two important diaries on Joe Lieberman’s promise to hold hearings on the attack on Fort Hood. In the first, Jim notes that such a hearing will whip up anti-Muslim hysteria. In the second, Jim raises concerns about Nidal Hasan’s interrogation.
I think both of Jim’s diaries raise important concerns. But I’d like to add a third to the list: that Lieberman will use this case to advocate for expanded authorities under the PATRIOT Act.
Check out how Lieberman describes Hasan:
WALLACE: A lot of people are wondering — you talk about all the statements he made. There were a lot of warning signs out there. I know hindsight is 20/20, but were there enough signs that — enough red flags that authorities should have stepped in?
LIEBERMAN: Well, that’s a very important question. And I would say, Chris, that while the Army and the FBI are conducting the criminal investigation about exactly what happened and what Dr. Hasan should be charged with, the U.S. Army — the Department of Defense has a real obligation to convene an independent investigation to go back and look at whether warning signs were missed, both of his — the stress he was under, but also the statements that he was making which really could lead people to believe that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist.
A couple of years ago, after a two-year investigation, my committee put out a report that said the new face of terrorism in America would not just be the attacks as 9/11, organized abroad and sending people in here. It would be people within this country, home- grown terrorists, self-radicalized, often over the Internet, going to jihadist Web sites.
And there’s concern from what we know now about Hasan that, in fact, that’s exactly what he was, a self-radicalized home-grown terrorist. [my emphasis]
Even while Lieberman feigns an attempt not to jump to conclusions, he seems interested in holding a hearing precisely because he sees Hasan as a self-radicalized terrorist.
Cato’s Julian Sanchez had a piece a few weeks ago talking about the problems with the Lone Wolf provision.
The extraordinary tools available to investigators under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed over 30 years ago in response to revelations of endemic executive abuse of spying powers, were originally designed to cover only “agents of foreign powers.” The PATRIOT Act’s “lone wolf” provision severed that necessary link for the first time, authorizing FISA spying within the United States on any “non-U.S. person” who “engages in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor,” and allowing the statute’s definition of an “agent of a foreign power” to apply to suspects who, well, aren’t. Justice Department officials say they’ve never used that power, but they’d like to keep it the arsenal just in case.
[snip]
Courts have generally been extraordinarily deferential to the executive in the realm of foreign intelligence, and have suggested that the Fourth Amendment’s protections against warrantless searches apply only weakly, if at all, in this context. But when it comes to domestic national security investigations, a unanimous Supreme Court has ruled that the usual restrictions remain largely intact. The court clearly saw the involvement of a “foreign power” as providing the distinction between the world of the criminal law’s Fourth Amendment protections and the hazy arena where the executive enjoys far greater latitude. The “lone wolf” provision recklessly blurs that line, defying the common sense meaning of an “agent of a foreign power,” and giving investigations that belong in the first world a dubious statutory foothold in the second.
But here’s one of the biggest concerns: as Julian’s piece makes clear, the Lone Wolf provision would not, currently, apply to Hasan. It applies only to non-US persons, not to US citizens like Hasan.
Which is where I worry that Lieberman is going with this. The House Judiciary bill (but not the Senate one) allows the Lone Wolf provision to sunset because of the legal concerns that Julian raises in his piece. But if a hawk like Lieberman showcases what he has pre-determined to be a self-radicalizing terrorist, it might provide just the thing people like Lieberman need to further chip away at civil liberties of US persons.
I’m not saying this guy shouldn’t have been investigated–he clearly should have. But it’s not clear that we need to expose all citizens to snooping expeditions to keep ourselves safe.
Update, from ABC: US intelligence was aware months ago that Hasan had tried to contact al Qaeda.
Update: Note Isikoff’s source explicitly called this a Lone Wolf attack.
To some in law enforcement – including the one who spoke to Newsweek — the purchase of the high-powered gun, the Internet writing and Hasan’s alleged shouting of “Allah U Akbar” (Arabic for “God is Great”) during the attack – suggest that the Fort Hood shooting should be viewed more as a terrorist act by a “lone wolf” Muslim extremist than as the work of a troubled physician who “snapped” under pressure.
Isikoff is notoriously well sourced in FBI. So I guess that’s where this is going.
Update: Spencer asks a question a few below have asked: why didn’t our crack data mining program alert the right people to Hasan?
That is an excellent update from ABC.
So, US Intelligence was aware fookin’ months ago that Hasan had tried to contact al Qaeda.
And US Intelligence choose not to do anything.
After all, Hasan wasn’t purchasing any beauty products. That would have been a trigger for an arrest for US Intelligence.
No, Hasan was just purchasing a gun, and that’s not unusual (at least in this country), but downright patriotic!
Buying a gun and trying to contact al Qaeda – what’s to worry about?
Don’t believe everything that Brian Ross reports. We’ve been down that road once before.
On Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.
“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance,” Lieberman told Fox News Sunday.
Zero tolerance for what? Extremism of any kind, like this?
“I heard some guys were vandalizing mosques,” Humphrey says. “Spray-painting ’em with crosses.”
The rest of that Easter was spent under siege. Insurgents held off Bravo Company, which was called in to rescue the men in the compound. Ammunition ran low. A helicopter tried to drop more but missed. As dusk fell, the men prepared four Bradley Fighting Vehicles for a “run and gun” to draw fire away from the compound. Humphrey headed down from the roof to get a briefing. He found his lieutenant, John D. DeGiulio, with a couple of sergeants. They were snickering like schoolboys. They had commissioned the Special Forces interpreter, an Iraqi from Texas, to paint a legend across their Bradley’s armor, in giant red Arabic script.
“What’s it mean?” asked Humphrey.
“Jesus killed Mohammed,” one of the men told him. The soldiers guffawed. JESUS KILLED MOHAMMED was about to cruise into the Iraqi night.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488
Or maybe ask this guy about extremism – Blackwater, the private mercenary company owned by Erik Prince…On August 19, the New York Times revealed that the company was, in fact, a central part of a secret CIA assassination program that Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. The paper then reported that Blackwater remains a key player in the widening air war in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it arms drone aircraft. These disclosures follow allegations–made under oath by former Blackwater employees–that Prince murdered or facilitated the murder of potential government informants and that he “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090914/scahill
Who are these people and where do they all belong?
The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1
in 4 people in the world practice Islam, according to a report Wednesday
billed as the most comprehensive of its kind.
Pew officials call the report the most thorough on the size and distribution of adherents of the world’s second largest religion behind Christianity,which has an estimated 2.1 billion to 2.2 billion followers.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox/browse_thread/thread/43f30d4f537da22e?pli=1
The scary part – both groups have nuclear weapons. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…what a world.
Where we are headed with this is to further evisceration of the 4th Amendment and Constitution as a whole and at least a partial return to the Red Hunting days of McCarthyism. Except it will be Brown Hunting and will not only focus on Muslims, but will be adopted and incorporated by the anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican crowd too. This is exactly where we are headed.
My second point is that I wonder if Der Lieberweasel is being fed under the table intel pieces (I think it’s called raw meat) deliberately, perhaps from Senate Repugs on SSCI, in order to bolster their interest in not only maintaining the “lone wolf” provision, but any and all attempts to lessen or limit Patriot Act provisions on 215s, NSLs, US citizen minimization, etc.
I often view Der Lieberweasel’s antics as a picture directly into Repug Central.
And I’ve not been surprised how often that has turned out to be correct.
who better to give it cover?
Though arguably, if they DID know of contacts with AQ but didn’t tell DOD about it (we’ll see whether that’s the case), then it undermines their claims that their data mining is working. It woudl instead suggest they’ve got so much data that they can’t even follow up on allegedly extremist statements from a member of the military with Secret clearance.
Ahhh, but you must keep in mind the Repug 1st and 2nd Commandments: “Heads we win, tails you lose” and “Even when we lose, we win!”
Not so Grasshopper! Instead, it wiil be used to buttress the Repugs’ claim that we need to do more datamining.
To Repugs, failure is only delayed winning.
I’ve often thought that with 20 very bright and creative people sitting in a warehouse anywhere in the world they would have the computers at NSA smoking hot looking into dead end postings that used certain key words and markers that are programmed as “terrorist” warnings. Is that illegal? Following Sibel Edmonds story tells me enough to think that we are being led by reactionary dimwits….but how can this be? For in the Great Chain we’ve been told that kings, princes, and nobles, are between the commoners and angels. Our best and brightest, what a world.
Lets put the SIGINT boys on heartmedication.
A. Its doable
B. you can go further than that but that in some cases would be braking some small part of the LAW but the name of that small game of the playbook would be “you use the federales as a tool” and if done correctly you could OUST just about everybody, and the beauty of it, unless court red handed nobody would be the wiser…but i always walked away from it knowing its like torture, then i would be going into the moral abysse that im trying the damn
to oust among my own people
Did i just identify a major security risk with the way biznes is done by defence guess so, not that i haven’t been saying it for years but theres always the “we whant new toys typo’s”
My take
Leave it up to the FBI decide, balls do get dropped on occasion we all fumble.
Actualy this is not new stuff but became “common knowledge” when a US study in as to why the figterpilots of the Vietnam war turned off al there warning “thingys” The warning gadgets simply distorted “situation awareness”
What im trying to say…you nailed that one for all to se
firt of all these kind of events do happen from time to time, people snap under the pressure, thats why I for one turned in my personal piece years ago, if i can’t outsmart the dirtbags its time to do another job I to have a shit load of ghost in the closset… not one of us dosen’t that’s the down side, the up side is that we tend to focus our energy in to not making the same mistake twise….
Thats why I take pride in my focus on: Did small soldiers learn something today? if so does it makes us better soldiers? if were better soldiers are we happier soldiers?
All that we can hope for in these type of events is that somewere theres a “munley” and partner doing the job they were suppose to be doing In this case it seems like a “above and beond” thingy…..
Secret clearance?
Most all active military have secret clearances (unless they screw up after going on active duty and get all clearances revoked)
Secret clearance means whomever did the “investigation” called all the PDs in the towns listed in the application to see if the person was telling the truth about never having been arrested, and a check of things like credit history. It’s not completely superficial but it is also not that much in-depth either.
Just another excellent article, EW. Lieberman’s investigation will be useful in bringing attention to Lieberman, chipping away at our Bill of Righs, as you said, diverting attention from more salient issues, including the ones 1der presented, and so on. What a narcissist; what a tool!
Zero tolerance? So that means the government will go after anyone who has said anything threatening towards the President?
I wonder how much of the “evidence” is being made up as we read it?
It also looks bad to have Lieberman the voice on this. Why was it Lieberman who stepped up on this? I have my thoughts…
Thanks for this, EW. I think that your fears are entirely justified.
But what do you think Lieberman will use as the wedge to distinguish the Hasans from the Timothy McVeighs? That they’re scary brown people? Or that they practice Islam? or they have scary unAmerican names like Hasan (or Barack Hussein Obama)? IOW, some kind of racial profiling?
And which is worse– the racial profiling aspect, or to *not have* a racial profiling aspect (i.e., any of us could be a target)?
Bob in AZ
And how do I think the right wing is going to respond to the premise that the one thing that should have been picked up was Hasan’s purchase of a “cop-killer” gun.
Yup. We all have to give up our Fourth Amendment rights, but keep your grubby fingers off the Second.
Which is where I worry that Lieberman is going with this.
You know, Korematsu has never actually been overruled. Camp Lieberman?
edited to add /s, since I don’t do well with gauging when something will be taken as sarcasm and as meant vs. a for real comment about round up conspiracies.
Why should snark be attached to this thought? I take it at fairly close to face value.
This is how I get in trouble, *g*
I certainly hope (remember “hope”?) that Lieberman plans to spend a part of his hearing tracking down who didn’t do their job to the extent that we ened up with over 4700 dead and many more maimed and traumatized, in Iraq.
Especially the front end of the remark. No, it hasn’t.
Wow. I’ll bet you are right about Lieberman reincarnating the lone wolf, and probably with even bigger teeth this time around.
@MadDog: Yes, Lieberman is indeed being fed raw meat. But there’s a caution here in that the story is from…Brian Ross. That tells me that this is the story the CIA currently wants us all believing. I would consider this to still be a very fluid situation and that we are a long way from a picture of what has taken place. I find it interesting that we now have the “competing” stories of potential contact with actual 9/11 hijackers and a recent “attempt” to contact al Qaeda. I don’t see how these fit together fully; if there were real contact in 2001, you would think he would have maintained a viable route of contact.
Hmm – Brian Ross you say? Funny you should mention him as I just happen to have posted a diary called Cheer-leading for War on Daily Kos here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/9/790746/-Anthrax-and-Iraq-Part-I:-Cheerleading-for-War
that takes as its starting point his previous stellar performance on the Anthrax mailings case and how Anthrax was used to whip up public fear against Saddam Hussain and bolster support for an invasion.
But it might not necessarily have been the CIA doing the whipping, and Brian Ross wasn’t even the worst media offender…..
I don’t know if this qualifies as a further update or not, but TPM
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/cia_calls_abc_report_that_it_refused_to_brief_cong.php?ref=fpa
is reporting that the CIA has denied it refused a briefing, ABC has changed one of its “one senior lawmaker” references to now reference Hoekstra, and it sounds to me as if CIA is trying to pass a buck on to FBI or some other entity as being “lead” on the Hasan matter:
and FBI/DOJ is trying to toss back
If this was a trial and a jury was being selected would Liarman be allowed to sit on that panel? I doubt it.
there should be an investigation into just where the “homeland Security” funds are channeled to under Liebermann’s direction. Several years back I had been reading about just where those millions of dollars were going.
Another deep investigation into the “why’s” of Hasan losing it. Six years at Walter Reed dealing with hundreds of soldiers who have returned from the war that Liebermann promoted, voted for and still support with out limbs, brains, integrity, sanity. Liebermann should investigate how Hasan’s time counseling those who served in Bush/Cheney/Liebermann’s war have been effected.
I am not in anyway condoning what Hasan did but the brutal and horrifying tragedies that occur as a direct consequence of the decision to implement a war based on a “pack of lies” is obviously long reaching.
Liebermann, Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rice….Pack of Wolves
When it serves his perceived electoral interests, Holy Joe confuses “American” and “Israeli” citizens and their national interests. As Glenn Greenwald frequently points out, he would give more latitude to Israelis to critique their government than he would allow to citizens of the US. Like Obama and the banksters, he seems to think that the billions in American tax dollars that annually flow to Israel should come with no strings attached.
Joe Lieberman is an avid builder of the national security state. One of the few missing planks in its platform is the open and legal ability to apply foreign intelligence gathering standards to domestic criminal investigations. Blurring the line demarcating foreign spying powers and constitutionally limited police powers that can be used against US citizens would be a way to install that plank in dead of night.
Now I am just a bit pissed off right now. Having spent a good hour yesterday with a young man (a friend of my youngest daughter) who was on the edge of flipping out. He did 3 tours in Iraq, I am sure was a really good soldier bright and capable. But the changes in this young man from are astounding. Most of his friends went off to college when he went off to Iraq coming back to this town after his third tour of Iraq trying to fit in with friends who ask him all the time “did you kill people”
He wakes up every night in cold sweats, has violent thoughts, feels as though he is in very surreal scenes here in the states compared to what he witnessed in Iraq, has talked with three VA counselors(not on of them had ever been in the military or served). He has said that counseling with the counselors at the VA does not help, he is on a boat load of anti depressants etc. Sits up town in our local bars drinking. There are hundreds of thousands of these mostly young soldiers dealing with these same issues across our nation.
Hasan was in Walter Reed for six years trying to counsel returning, injured soldiers. I think Liebermann, Cheney, Bush, Rice should all have to spend the rest of their lives working at Walter Reed to witness just a slice of the disastrous results of their war based on a “pack of lies”
Yeah, –after serving 3 consecutive deployments.
Did you see Moyers’ tribute to veterans last Friday? IIRC, one of the Vets said that the whole point of training was to get you to make your first kill, and after you’d become a killer, then you were more on your own to decide when to kill and when not to. And then if you decided that you didn’t want to kill innocent civilians anymore, they accuse you of being a pacifist.
Our National Guard is being used– over-used, really– for purposes never intended, and then they pile on multiple deployments and stop-loss. And not simply for a temporary emergency, but for an on-going war of choice with no end (and by framing as a “war on terror” it is guaranteed to never end.)
Obama should factor all this in, and deny McCrystal’s request for more troops. He should change the mission in Afghanistan & Pakistan completely, and rotate every National Guard unit back home permanently, with no additional deployments.
Bob in AZ
Liebermann “did the military miss something” Uh Duh a war based on a pack of lies, lies, lies
Christ All Mighty Liarman is missing some links. Selective memory
Let’s not forget Liebermann falls into that same “chicken hawk” category as Cheney and others who went after deferments during Vietnam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lieberman
“A spokesperson told The Hartford Courant in 1994 that Lieberman received an educational deferment from the Vietnam War draft when he was an undergraduate and law student from 1960 to 1967. Upon graduating from law school at age 25, Lieberman qualified for a family deferment because he was already married and had one child, Matt.[12]”
All we seem to know is that Dr. Hasan committed multiple unlawful killings. He might have done so in an unbalanced mental state; less obviously, he might have done so to act out a political agenda. We know for certain, however, that Mr. Lieberman has a political agenda in disturbing the slumber of his underworked committee to investigate this case, while ignoring so many others.
“Domestic terrorism” is a form of criminal behavior. Its possible commission should be investigated like any other suspected crime, using the same tools and powers and subject to the same limitations. Let’s hope Mr. Lieberman is not intent on abusing the “terrorist” label merely to unlimit those police powers in order to keep us “safe”. The road to hell is paved with such “good” intentions, Sen. Lieberman.
Since Hasan was under surveillance, why was the Army was not advised to rescind the order to deploy him to Iraq?
What intelligence genius thought it would be a good idea to provoke Hasan with deployment?
If these are “serious people” who are trying to keep us safe, we should try a new tack. Standing down our defenses to see what develops – and provoking terrorism – don’t seem to be working well.
Does no one see the magnitude of the connection between driving an isolated individual to go postal and fomenting organized homegrown terrorism?
The ‘lone wolf’ IS the freaking enemy! Intel is looking for networks in the sand!
Lieberman is just a minor political actor. Our own intelligence services ought to be ashamed.
What intelligence genius thought it would be a good idea to provoke Hasan with deployment?
Maybe one who was involved in things like the Italian case or the Macedonian kidnapping to torture or the al-libi shipment to suicide or the Binyam Mohamed story that is dribbling out in Britain, etc – who could benefit from a heightened “hate all Muslims” hysteria to derail the snowballing of some of those stories?
Nah. Even more likely – left hand lacking any introduction to right hand, per EW’s observations about too much meaningless info to sort out and focus on meaningful info.
Still, I’m sure that manipulating domestic opinion is nowhere on the intel agenda. Uh huh. And their decisions won’t come back to bite us all in the butt later – when has that ever happened?
I join your speculation that Dr. Hasan might have been issued deployment orders because those were cut by someone not aware that someone else considered Dr. Hasan a possible security risk. Which suggests that should neutral competent investigators start looking, they might find all sorts of ignored warning signs and ill-made decisions.
The Westboro Baptist crew are protesting Quakers, Obama’s children’s schools and will be making their way to Ft Hood as well.
To some in law enforcement – including some anonymous guy – the rant against the Quakers and devil’s spawn, the internet writings, the posters proclaiming Obama as “The Beast” (Christian for “Satan on Earth”) during the protests – suggest that the organized assaults should be viewed more as terrorist acts by a “lone loon
mosquechurch” than as the work of derranged homophobes.Or whatever.
And did you see this?
KBR may have poisoned 100,000 people in Iraq: lawsuit
“At least 22 separate lawsuits claiming KBR poisoned American soldiers in Iraq have been combined into a single massive lawsuit that says KBR, which until not long ago was a subsidiary of Halliburton, sought to save money by disposing of toxic waste and incinerating numerous potentially harmful substances in open-air “burn pits.”‘
Link.
As for the Quakers, well, as we all know, they are one mighty suspicious bunch of folks.
As mary says, whatever Dr. Hasan’s motivations and mental state, this case is now all about the optics. It is inescapably a circus. It will involve the public playing out of our cherished myths, the reinstatement of civilian and military order, the restoration of discipline, and the exacting of biblical punishment for criminal acts.
A black Ivy League professor, who might have been tasered to death in an unlawful arrest, but who was luckily merely inconvenienced by a local official abusing his police powers, received national, indeed, presidential attention. This case involves an Army officer, a Muslim, a doctor and a psychiatrist bound for deployment in Afghanistan, who killed his workmates for as yet unknown reasons. This case will be milked for every electoral vote Rahm and Holy Joe can get out of it.
A finding that Dr. Hasan was “guilty but insane” would be deemed by “moderates” and the right as soft and weak, as placating liberals and other Commies. It would be deemed insufficiently mindful of the needs of victims and their families. And it would be ill-suited to the political needs of Mr. Emanuel, who needs to show the right in November 2010, that his Mr. Obama is a tough, law & order, war president.
Punishment and revenge will be the order of the day, unless the government goes to extraordinary lengths to make this case about restoring the social order according to the rule of law. I am not optimistic that a Barack Obama who chose Rahm Emanuel as his closest adviser – and who will be gearing up for mid-term elections about the time this case would go to trial – will make that effort. Our constitutional scholar president has already shown that he believes that politics always trumps the law.
While Hasan supposedly attended the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers back in 2001, his computer contains no info tying him to terrorism. Link.
Computers at libraries near his last two residences to be seized in 3,2,1…
I’d point out that, unlike churches, mosques tend to be visited opportunistically by travelling Muslims.There aren’t many mosques available in American cities, so in order to fulfill their religious duties on a Friday “any mosque will do”. Except perhaps for New York or Detroit there’s likely to be only one (non-Black Muslim) mosque. They may not stick around for a sermon or any readings. Many Muslims do their ablutions, undertake their prayers, and take off.
As well mosques serve as a sort of community center where down on their luck or travelling individuals might find community resources, someone that can speak their native language, or help finding a bed or a meal.
Essentially saying that the 9/11 terrorists used the same mosque as another Muslim means that they were in the same city in the same general time frame.
McClatchy has more about the mosque here.
The media narrative will become “The Enemy Within” and we will wind up in about five years with a Secretary of the Army saying to Senator Joe Lieberman, “At long last do you have no decency?”
People of CT, what were you thinking reelecting this clown?
I don’t get this whole thing about the “lone wolf” at all. A “self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist” is precisely THAT.
SELF-Radicalized. They aren’t going to generally reveal themselves except at the act. They belong to no terrorist group that is under surveillance because they are SELF-radicalized and a lone actor.
How could they have prevented Hasan friom acting? It wasn’t by realizing that he shouted “Allah Akhbar” at the attacks…unless the NSA actually got some positive results in those “Men Who Stare At Goat Experiments” in the ’70’s.
No…they’ll have to limit easy access to guns (Hasan’s weapon of choice) with perhaps a full-investigation of the mental and political idealogy of the purchaser.
The email re. suicide bombing WAS investigated re. its source. They found no link, despite the fact that whoever posted it even used Hasan’s name???? If they used the extended provisions of the PATRIOT Act to do this then why’d they screw up? It actually suggests it is a useless invasion of privacy in regards to this issue.
Now would be a good time to strip Joe of Homeland security after al isn’t he going to filibuster Healthcare? Lets see if Joe hates Muslims more than Americans if he’s given a choice Filibuster Healthcare and lose his attention grabbing hearings we all know Joe loves attention. Or vote to Pass WHATEVER the Dems want on Healthcare and give up all that insurance company cash?
Knowing Joe he hates Americans more. Jim Congrats on the EW shout out:)
Apologies if already added:
Conservative Christian Group Calls for “No More Muslims” In Military
Thanks for that–those guys are disgusting. I hit Twitter button on that post to send out a tweet. That article needs exposure.
Lieberman has less than zero credibility, and I think he is a disgrace to both the American people and to his religion.
Doesn’t get out of his chair to hold a meeting until a Muslim has a massive breakdown???
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/remember_dagger_john/
I bet Joe would investigate Archbishop Hughes too! I bet Joe would investigate Jews killing Nazi’s who killed Jews. Joe like many of the trolls here would just ignore the civilian deaths.
OK – so Lieberman has decided that Congress DOES, after all, have rights to demand information from the Executive? Fascinating.
Meanwhile, Hoekstra has done what the Dems and DOJers never bothered with during the Executive foray into kidnap, torture and human experimentation:
And Obama is going to do what? He’s been big on the Exec power thing as long as he had the Republicans on his side of the line. Now we see where it goes from there.
After all, it’s not like any sentient President would have any cause for concern about National Security with Lieberman and Hoekstra running the investigations.
Hoekstra’s on the case – what could possibly go wrong?
This is so nit-picky and un-American; you, um, like, think evidence ought to be preserved? Traitor!
How many Iraqi’s did Saddam kill? How many Iraqi’s have we killed? how many Iraqi’s did Saddam Torture? How many Iraqi’s have we tortured?
Who cares to ask a Muslim heck to ask a Person to look the other way as another person’s rights are taken away a defenseless Civilian mind you is allot to ask.
If we keep committing war crimes well I do not want more shootings. I would prefer the troops revolt instead of following these orders.
Joe Scapegoating
JewsMuslims who fought back is something that makesAmericaGermany and Bush proud.Sorry not modern Germany
Scapegoat? the guy killed 13 people.
Fought back? the guy shot 50 unarmed people he had never met.
It’s ok to hate JL, but let’s not give a mass murder of US soldiers a free pass.
Correct. But let’s also not conflate the actions of one disturbed military member and accuse all muslim military members of being terrorists, which is what it appears is the path the Short Ride is taking.
Or if you go that route, then let’s re-open the OK City bombing and go after all the influences that Timothy McVeigh had.
If we did what we did in Iraq kill and torture civilians during WW2 could we have expected German and Japanese troops to remain loyal?
“Zero tolerance” to extremists? This investigation intent on purging the military of anyone that might disagree with Lieberman’s views – that’s what he means by “extremism”.
Meanwhile if one is a supporter of actual WAR CRIMES then that is okay. As long as they are against those A-rabs!
This would be a good time for Reid to call Joe and tell him that if he wants to control this investigation going forward, he’ll have to stay off the tv machine with his bullshit threats! Perhaps Janet Napolitano could appoint a committe to head this leaving Deputy Droop Along out in the cold!
Watch the participation of the psychological community carefully, now that the “self-radicalization” or any “radicalization” theories are out on the table. Jim White brought up Aafia Siddiqui’s trial in the comments on his second post. The two psychiatrists who weighed in on behalf of the government to get her fitness for trial re-opened on grounds that they wished to diagnose her as “malingering” were both “experts” (from their C.V.s and published papers) on Islamic terrorist radicalization of prison populations and on subjects like the influence of the internet on creating terrorists. They were willing to use information that was suspect in its origin, and appeared to enter their interviews with the defendant with a pre-determined diagnosis of malingering. While it isn’t clear that Ms. Siddiqui should not have been found fit to stand trial (it seems solely to depend on whether or not she can aid in her defense, she obviously understands the charges), it is clear that these two psychiatrists have agendas on the “radicalization” score, and theories that would definitely make it into court in a Hasan trial if they were recruited for expert testimony. They don’t seem to be doing psychiatry they seem to be using the expert witness status that a psychiatric career gives them to battle “the Islamic terrorist threat”.
I’m sure we’ll see one or both of them, Sally C. Johnson or Gregory B. Saathoff, or their direct colleagues, at Senator Lieberman’s hearings.
Looks as if Lieberweasel is planning on running for re-election. He knows that he can’t get eiter the far right or the left- so he is trying to take the broadest possible slice out of the middle. His advantages are that he’s well known and that he doesn’t have to worry about a primary challenge..but it will be a major mistake if he goes too far right and limits himself to half the gooper vote.
A bit OT.
Our son had a conversation with us this weekend about how the rule of law should be a power that transcends politics and power. He emphasized “should”.
He wondered when politics would start to trump carrying out the rule of law in this shooting case.
He came home and read this post and got his answer.
He turned to me and asked, “Where were Lieberman’s remarks about Cheney after the release of the Cheney interview?
Mark Ames at Smirking Chimp has a good run down on his twelve favorite items of disinformation regarding the Hasan case, which he labels a cover-up.
Item 3 suggests that the FBI now claims Hasan was not under suspicion for blogging for jihadist websites, though he may have visited them. How odd that an Army psychiatrist, treating presumably severely mentally afflicted soldiers, might visit a host of websites related to his patients’ real or imagined fears and enemies, particularly in contemplation of being posted to Afghanistan.
Mr. Ames fears a massive cover-up is in the making, with full-blown psyops in play. Given the record inherited by this government, that’s a concern we should all have, particularly in light of sleepy Joe Lieberman’s sudden discovery of the oversight potential of his committee.
This doesn’t fit the devout Muslim framing…
I knew Faux News would find a sex angle. The allegation that Dr. Hasan visited strip clubs is oddly reminiscent of allegations that 9/11 hijackers did the same.
Even if the facts alleged are true, one would have to distinguish actions based on pursuing personal whims from those of an army psychiatrist who needed to know first-hand what his patients and soon-to-be patients experience to relieve their stress.
That there are strip clubs near every army, navy, air force and marine corps base in America is probably an understatement. Devout Florida has at least as many as the demon’s paradise of California or the hypocritically devout of Texas. Their absence would be unusual, not their presence or that they are frequented by officers and enlisted alike. Just ask Old Man McCain about Trader John’s in Pensacola.
As an old Jimmy Buffet song says, there’s a big difference between Saturday night and Sunday morning. It’s as true in starched Connecticut as it is in Texas, Florida or California. If hypocrisy or sexual tastes were essential terrorist behavior, all of DC would be implicated.
Could be a rendezvous site rather than a debauch, obviously.
@67 De nada compared to the big dogs’ contributions here, but thank you for being so consistently kind and supportive, fatster.
A rendez-vous with destiny, no density…never mind. I think I heard that line from the first Back to the Future film.
This case is a glory hole for Lieberweasel.
He can hone his “anti-terrorism” image and win votes from both sides…a political windfall.
Ironic indeed if Joseph Lieberman decides this is his Joseph Goebbels moment to go after American Muslims, it being the very anniversary of Kristallnacht and all.
Grab bag of reactions:
– Yes, strip Joe of his committee assignments NOW, especially Homeland Sec chairmanship; though I’d bet dollars to donuts his grandstanding over Hasan is happening exactly in order to prevent that from happening.
– Because Hasan’s name is pretty common there may have been other people out there with that same name posting things on the net, leading to identity confusion and tarring the suspect with others’ words. Look for better evidence than just a matching name.
– If records searches (and no photographic or reliable first-person evidence) turned up Hasan’s alleged weapon purchase and internet postings, then there is a chance that they could be faked/planted.
– A poster at some other site pointed out that pre-deployment is when a bunch of inoculations get administered, some of which have psychoactive effects in some patients. So there may be a biological trigger mixed in there together with any individual volition.
– Which IC agency had the info about Hasan’s alleged AQ contact?
– Are we seeing another stage of FBI vs. CIA turf war playing out? FBI is on the hook for not connecting the 9/11 dots, is CIA framing FBI for not connecting Ft. Hood dots, in order to take over this area of responsibility in future? (Super tenuous:) Hasan is from VA, so is CIA
That completes this grab-bag…
And a good grab-bag it is, too. Thnx, Hmmm.
And how many will Lieberman murder by stopping the health care reform?
holy joe gets a couple of big fucking wins … and his war on iran.
he not only uses his committee to jack up the hysteria that sets the stage for some domestic assaults that provides the rationale for expansion of the patriot act — all while cementing in the uninformed american mind that you can’t negotiate with muslims.
What an insufferable bag of hot air!