swinging lhianne’s Neighborhood

Is the media being overly sensitive and too politically correct?  Are they trying too hard to explain away the acts of a lone gunman bent on killing as many Americans as possible?  Has the press been pressured into denying the obvious? Namely, the murderous act of the FT Hood shooter may have been a terrorist act?  As more is known about this tragedy, terrorism may be the only explanation.

There is only one term that adequately describes the massacre at Fort Hood: a terrorist attack. The media tries to avoid this term, but the more that is known about the killer, the more it becomes clear that this premeditated and deadly attack on unarmed soldiers and civilians was driven by his belief that Islam should rule the world.

The FT Hood massacre raised questions about the murderer.  Who was this man Hasan?  Was he on a mission of terror?  Did he have a mental breakdown?  Was he a Muslim Fundamentalist who felt it was his duty to kill all Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?  More to come on this story.   

After being posted to Walter Reed Hospital as a psychiatrist, Hasan called the Muslim Community Center his local mosque. It’s just a short drive away from Walter Reed. 

“So many times I talked with him,” said Akhter, a community leader who is sort of like a mosque gadfly, challenging congregants to reject literal, rigid interpretations of Islam. “I was trying to modernize him. I tried my best. He used to hate America as a whole. He was more anti-American than American.”

Despite all the conversations, Akther said, “I couldn’t get through to him. He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim.”

Warning signs were everywhere, but no one confronted Hasan.  Why?

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - In retrospect, the signs of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's growing anger over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem unmistakable.

But even people who worried his increasingly strident views were clouding his ability to serve the U.S. military could not predict the murderous rampage of which he now stands accused.

In the months leading to Thursday's shooting spree that left 13 people dead and 29 others wounded, Hasan raised eyebrows with comments that the war on terror was "a war on Islam" and wrestled with what to tell fellow Muslim solders who had their doubts about fighting in Islamic countries.

I pray for the families who lost loved ones at Ft Hood Texas. Was Hasan a Muslim first and an American second?  There appears to be evidence that Hasan saw the American military as the enemy of Islam.  And, one could argue that a free medical education was his primary motive for being in the military.  More information to come on this.  

Dr. Val Finnell, a classmate of Hasan's at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, attended a master's in public health program in 2007-2008.

Finnell says he got to know Hasan because the group of public health students took an environmental health class together. At the end of the class, everyone had to give a presentation.

Classmates wrote on topics such as dry cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, but Finnell said Hasan chose the war against terror. Finnell described Hasan as a "vociferous opponent" of the terror war. Finnell said Hasan told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second."

President Obama addresses the shooting at FT Hood in a way that makes one wonder who is writing his speeches.  The idea that a Native American conference is more newsworthy that a tragedy at FT Hood mystifies me.

The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks.

At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner."

Well well, this is another fine mess. The UN wants more of our money to pass out to countries that despise us.  The last time I checked, we were being criticized for being too heavy handed in our foreign relations.  However, it seems that potentates from all over the world still want Americans to give them money.  The Millennium Development Goals is just another way of saying, "the UN wants more money from American tax payers".

Millennium Development Goals:

In line with the Monterrey Consensus, developing countries will need to
expand their domestic resource mobilization to finance MDG-based poverty
reduction strategies by drawing on government revenues, household contributions,
and private sector investment to the greatest extent possible. In many
low-income countries, and practically all Least Developed Countries, domestic
resources alone will not be enough to meet the Goals

To finance these investments, we assume a major increase in domestic
resource mobilization by increasing government expenditures on the Goals by
up to four percentage points of GDP through 2015. These added resources will
likely need to be raised through a broad-based revenue source such as a value added
tax, as well as by rechanneling current low-priority spending into higher
priority MDG investments.

Well well, this is a fine mess.  The UN is continually working to establish themselves as a taxing and governing authority.  Even though America contributes heavily to fund the UN, it seems that UN wants more.  Since we supply about 25% of the funding for the UN, it would seem that world community would appreciate us more.  However, just the opposite is happening.  The world community despises us most of the time.  Is it important for America to continue being part of the UN.  Maybe we should withdraw from the UN and spend the billions we send to the UN on feeding our own hungry and homeless population.