RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ten-years-after-115-lloyd-billingsley/

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Major Nidal Hasan, a self-proclaimed “soldier of Allah,” gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. Yelling the familiar “Allahu akbar,” Hasan chased down the wounded and shot them in the back. The major would have killed many more if police officer Kim Munley had not fired on the shooter. For the more than 30 the Muslim major wounded, the troubles were only beginning.

The 11/5 Fort Hood massacre was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

For the president of the United States formerly known as Barry Soetoro, it was only “workplace violence,” not even “gun violence.” That prevented the survivors from getting the medals and medical treatment they deserved. For his part, Major Hasan never should have been in a position to attack them.

As Robert Spencer notes, Maj. Hasan told colleagues infidels should have their throats cut, heads chopped off, and boiling oil poured down their throat. He told students Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution and suicide bombings were justified. Hasan’s jihadist tilt was well known but his Army superiors “kept promoting him” even as the FBI tracked his terrorist contacts.

As a 2012 congressional hearing revealed, Hasan openly communicated with Muslim cleric and terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki. In one email, Hasan told al-Awlaki, “Please keep me in your Rolodex in case you find me useful, and please feel free to call me collect.” Even so, under FBI boss Robert Mueller “the case was dropped until November 5, when the media began circulating reports of the massacre” and at that time the FBI agents “knew exactly who the perpetrator was.”

These revelations emerged in September, 2012, at the height of the presidential election, but Republican candidate Mitt Romney failed to cite them as ways the incumbent had transformed America into a more dangerous place. POTUS 44 refused to link Islam with terrorism and his FBI bleached manuals of any such connection. Willful ignorance of Islamic terrorists was already a reality by the 2009 11/5 attack.

In a proclamation honoring the victims, the president referred only to “the tragic events at Fort Hood,” and in his eulogy at the base days later, POTUS 44  failed to use the word “terrorist.” In March of 2010, the president urged Congress to hold off on any investigation of the Fort Hood “terrible tragedy” and referred to “the alleged gunman.” Four years later, the Muslim’s motive was still in doubt.

On April 9, 2014, the president appeared at a memorial service for the Fort Hood victims. “Once more, soldiers who survived foreign warzones were struck down here at home, where they’re supposed to be safe,” the president said. “We still do not yet know exactly why, but we do know this:  We must honor their lives, not in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.” The president did not use the word terrorism or terrorist but said, “as a nation, we can do more to help counsel those with mental health issues, to keep firearms out of the hands of those who are having such deep difficulties.”

Days later, the White House declined a request from Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who took seven bullets from Hasan, to explain how the government has mistreated the victims. “As you may know, the president and high-ranking members of the military promised me, my family and the other Fort Hood terror attack survivors that the federal government would ‘make them whole.’ After more than four and one-half years, however, the government has yet to make good on this promise,” Lunsford wrote.

The African American wanted only ten minutes, but the White House denied the victim’s request. Attorney Reed Rubinstein, who represented Lunsford and other Fort Hood survivors, told reporters, “The idea that the Fort Hood shooting was workplace violence is a lie. They know it’s a lie. Everyone knows it’s a lie.” More lies and evasions were yet to come.

In the Chattanooga terrorist attack on July 16, 2015, Kuwaiti-born Muhammad Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines at a Navy operations support center, and a fifth sailor later died of his wounds. Again the president failed to use the word “terrorism” even though vice president Joe Biden tagged the killer a “perverted jihadist.”

In December, 2015, after Muslims Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down 14 innocents in San Bernardino, the president said “terrorists turn to less complicated acts of violence” and it was “this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009, in Chattanooga earlier this year and now in San Bernardino.” The president still could not bring himself to name Nidal Hasan nor acknowledge his deadly attack as Islamic terrorism.

Major Nidal Hasan was sentenced to death in 2013 but the sentence was never carried out. The convicted mass murderer has expressed support for the Islamic State.

Ten years after 11/5, President Trump has good reason to bring the Fort Hood survivors to the White House and let them speak their minds. If they call for President Trump to carry out Hasan’s execution it would be hard to blame them, but this is hardly the only unfinished business on Ford Hood.

Who were the FBI agents who monitored Hasan’s emails to al-Awlaki? Who gave the order to drop the case? Are any of these agents till on the job, and what are they doing now? Were any whistleblowers ignored or punished? What did the president know, and when did he know it?

President Trump needs to get all that, and more, out of the dark and into the light. The people have a right to know, and as Democrats say, nobody is above the law.