“This two-year program is designed to provide military psychiatrists with expertise,” it says, “on preparing for, and responding to, mass casualty events.”

The too-sad irony is that “preparing for a mass causalty event” is precisely what he was doing.

I say we not allow this so called religion to be taught until muslim nations allow churches to be built on thier lands.

SGinNC on November 19, 2009 at 1:53 PM

Ask the Coptics in Egypt how well that worked out last year.

He has to be made to conform and made to succeed, or you, as his superior, are a failure.

Subsunk

Subsunk on November 19, 2009 at 10:10 AM

BS. This has nothing to do with walking a mile in my moccasins. It’s a system. It works. When you are the boss, you make the mission. PERIOD. This namby pamby everybody can make it to the top is pure unadulterated CRAP. Once the troopie demonstrates that he just doesn’t get it, you put him out of your misery.
 
I have read a lot of junk about how could this nutjob get where he got. The problem starts at the beginning. What hoops did he get put through to get his direct commission? That is the point of failure. How long after he started spiraling out of control did his boss FAIL to give him the straighten up and fly right speech? [we're talking 2002 and the position would be RATER] For the civilians reading here, Nasan was required to be rated every year. If he got less than a picket fence [picture a straight line of 1s] twice in a row. HEEEEES OUTA THERRRRRRE! If you want to know who failed, go to the source, who gave him a pass?
 
Oh the PC crowd won’t like this. 14 people are DEAD because someone IDIOT was afraid to make a small ripple. I hope you sleep well after swallowing the pills, IDIOT.
 
My personal favorite was the “come to Jesus” meeting. I count myself fortunate to have never been on the receiving end of one.

Follow the link for reminiscences about him “pledging allegiance to the Koran” while in uniform and an explanation as to why no formal complaints were filed by his classmates.

The military could do nothing, just as they could do nothing if a person said he pledged allegiance to the bible. Of course the problem is that our PC society won’t point out that the Bible teaches love and compassion while the Koran teaches that it is ok to murder, steal, lie, enslave, and rape as long as the person you are doing it to is an infidal. And if you thought it was hard to get out of other religions such as Scientology, just try to escape the muslim religion with your life.

I say we not allow this so called religion to be taught until muslim nations allow churches to be built on thier lands.

The easy explanation here is that the military’s so strapped for psychiatrists to treat people that even this turd made the cut,

More likely that on paper with a cursory glance, He looked like a Hope diamond of diversity that could be trotted out on display any time a group of ladies, sucking latte’s, tut-tutted some PC error somewhere.

If you think Hasan made a bad shrink, can you imagine how awful and dangerous he would have been as a surgeon, pathologist, or internal medicine specialist. Being a poor psychiatrist rarely leads to the death of patients, while mistakes as a surgeon or internist certainly does.

Hasan was “smart” to go into psychiatry, as he probably knew he would not have been able get away with such incompetence in any other medical specialty.

Why’d the military look the other way at his gross professional negligence if he wasn’t even helping out much with patients? Or need I even ask?

Because when you spend a half a million dollars to educate one man, you damn well better get some use out of him. Otherwise every pissant whiner goldbrick who wants to get an instant doctorship degree will take the education, and as soon as he passes his boards, he will claim he’s gay, or that he is mentally unfit, and demand discharge from the military immediately. It has happened in far more cases than Dr. Hasan. Once the military is saddled with bad recruits like Dr. Hasan, we have to make the best out of what we’ve got.

The Army’s leadership failed in this case. But like every other military or government servant (or even union employees who don’t work) there is a process which must be followed to wean them out of service unless they break some law somewhere. And that takes years. Bad fitness reports is only the start. It takes more than one. It takes years for counseling the goldbrick and giving him chances to fix himself, or we’d lose far more good soldiers than we do.

If a man can’t find a second chance in the military, just where the Hell is he supposed to go to get one? The system makes Men out of boys, and even patriots out of miscreants. Heroes are made from kids (including doctors) who started out with wrong thinking and some Sergeant or Major comes along who teaches them how to win and to perform under pressure.

If we are going to sh*tcan every screwup for their first screwup, then today’s military will be an awful small one. And we’ll lose every war we ever fight. Audie Murphy wouldn’t make it in that military.

I won’t defend the Army’s handling of Dr. Hasan. His superiors made a terrible judgment call. But they had help along the way from a press that demonizes any racism, sexism, or politically incorrect thought about religion or ideology. A Man has a right to expect a career in the military if he does a good job and keeps his nose clean through his positive behavior regardless of how he feels about race, creed, color or religion. Too often the brass shoots down Men who speak up about something wrong in the military because it is some big shot’s cause du jour, including women in combat, gays in the military, politically correct thought about weapons, gangs, speech, and even your haircut. We are not allowed to fraternize with folks back home who are of the wrong sort either (protesters, militia friends, socialists, communists, radicals, half of the druggies we went to school with, etc….). Almost every damn cause in the press gets hammered home in training (at the expense of real warfighting training, by the way, which is the real crime here) because we can’t have any embarassing incidents which make the military look bad because of just such a witch hunt going on today. For every hour of warfighting training we get at least another hour of “don’t say bad things about xxx” training. That is the crime here, as well as not labelling radical Muslims in the military as problems for security reasons.

So his superiors had help making the wrong decisions. His immediate superiors appear to have shuttled him out of the way of doing harm to patients by sending him on boondoggles elsewhere. When his number came up to do his duty, however, his new superiors didn’t have enough time to take his full measure and institute some restrictions on his conduct before he started blasting away with live ammunition. There were warning signs aplenty, I am sure.

But not a one of the folks posting on this site has been there and had to make hard decisions about sh*tcanning a DOCTOR, for Chrissakes, from military service for believing in the usual run of the mill Islam, which we’ve all been taught so well is a “Religion of Peace”. Until you’ve been there and had to make Men out of boys, you just won’t understand that you can’t give up and kick a guy out because he’s not perfect for the military. He has to be made to conform and made to succeed, or you, as his superior, are a failure.

I hope somebody’s head rolls for this. And I hope we can finally get past this no profiling and no discrimination against Muslims just because they are Muslims. They each need to be evaluated for loyalty and performance, just like we screened out Communists in the Cold War. Where were the cries of “Discrimination” then?

Subsunk

Everyone of those incompetent cowards from the Army should be identified, disciplined and thrown out of the Service.

rplat on November 19, 2009 at 8:04 AM

+1

Logboy on November 19, 2009 at 3:38 AM

Thank you for your service.

You and our other Soldiers certainly deserved a lot better than what you posted about.

I hope and pray that these problems are being rectified.

If not than they need to be exposed along with the willful negligence involved in allowing Hasan to grow in his hate which resulted in a terrorist attack against the very people that provide us our Freedoms.

Now that we’ve covered the jihad-related red flags that were missed, we can start in with the professional red flags that were missed. How horrible was this guy at his job? So horrible that private shrinks tell NPR they wouldn’t have hired him even if they were desperate for people.

OK, here’s the new meme:

“Hasan was sending up red flags, flares and anything else he could to get the Army to stop him. By not paying attention to these things, the Army failed to protect the troops and Hasan. Religious sensitivities are important, but Hasan passed the threshold of mere practice and entered the world of fanaticism. He was crying out for help.

The Army should have overcome its (irrational) fear of PC retribution and stopped him. The whole thing is their fault. Hasan is just as much a victim as those he killed”

Coming soon to an OpEd page near you.

I wonder how the Obama administration will spin this as anything but a politically correct system that allowed a dangerous and incompetent Muslim doctor to remain in the military.

Hera on November 19, 2009 at 1:21 AM

The plan is to do a quick and dirty investigation (read white wash) where Hasan will be portrayed as a nutjob who just snapped without any culpability for anybody in his chain-of-command.

Then the DoD will do a broader “review” that glosses over radical muslim attacks within the military to focus on greater understanding of cultural differences.

Appointments to see a psychiatrist were nearly impossible to come by. My wife lobbied for months to get me in to see one for my PTSD. I was having a lot of nightmares and other issues. After my case manager begged, borrowed, and stole to get me an appointment he warned me: “Do NOT miss this appointment! You do not know what I had to do to get this!” He made sure my wife got me there (I was strung out on meds). Despite the fact I had a pretty nasty case of PTSD on top of all my other problems (missing an arm, TBI, etc) it was the first and last appointment I ever got. (Which in hindsight probably saved my marriage, but that’s another story.) They simply didn’t have enough psychiatrists to see us all. A lot of guys weren’t as “lucky” as I was to get an appointment. Before the scandal broke a few Soldiers had gone down to the little PX on the first floor of the old hospital where they still sold alcohol. They then went back to the Malogne House (where most Soldiers are housed) and used it to wash down their meds. Some just used their meds to OD. After the scandal broke they stopped selling alcohol on post. I remember another amputee telling me since he had been in the Malogne House 2-3 Soldiers had died there. A lot more had tried.

Hassan should have been seeing patients to help wounded Soldiers like me. Unfortunately he wasn’t because he was… well, you know.

I just don’t see how Hasan kept his job without the support of people high up on the food chain.

Baxter Greene on November 19, 2009 at 12:43 AM

“Nidal Hasan Part of Official Obama Homeland Security Transition Team”? Stranger than fiction?