At last, a chance to right a wrong after the ‘workplace violence’ slaughter at Fort Hood by an Islamist fanatic.
There has finally been a significant upturn in the case of the 2009 Fort Hood terror attack in Texas that took the lives of 13 Americans—a saga drenched, since its inception, in official lies and evasions. Not to mention the Defense Department’s studious indifference to the fate of the more than two-dozen survivors, many suffering serious wounds, but who discovered themselves ineligible for the Purple Heart and medical benefits given to military personnel injured in combat. Thanks to strong bipartisan support, the House agreed last week to an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2015 that would provide such benefits for Fort Hood’s and other military victims of terror attacks on American soil.
The provision is now given a good chance of passing the Senate. The question remains whether President Obama will veto it as he has, in the past, threatened to do with any such bill.
In the repeated pronouncements of the Defense Department and the office of the president, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan ’s shooting spree at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center—while shouting “Allahu Akbar!”—could not be categorized as a terror attack. Therefore the surviving servicemen and women could not be said to have suffered combat-related wounds.
Army spokesmen declared that Hasan’s assault should be considered a “criminal act” by a single individual. Or, in the classification soon to become famous, a case of “workplace violence”—an infuriating description that would stick, burning, in the throats of Americans with a memory of that day every time they heard it.