Given the tragic killing of 12 soldiers at Fort Hood, I have suspended my humorous “Top 10 news of the weird” this week. Instead I have collected some actual radio and newspaper observations about the Fort Hood killings.

10 – “This the first case of arab terrorism on US soil since 9/11” (BA's observation - Major Nidal Hassan is a US citizen, and was reportedly born in America)

9 – “12 were killed, and 30 were injured. Major Hassan was armed with 2 handguns” (42 casualties with 2 handguns? At best, a handgun carries 15 rounds in its clip. He’d have to reload at some point, if this lone gunman theory has any credibility at all)

8 – “Major Hassan was a devout muslim, and felt he could not go to war against other muslims” (evidently his non-violent principles were not sufficiently strong to deter him from shooting 42 unarmed co-workers)

7 – “He had been acting strangely. It was easy to tell when he was getting upset. He’d turn red in the face and lose control” (He’s a psychiatrist – was he exempt from psychiatric assessment because of his job?)

6 – “Major Hassan was unhappy that President Obama did not end the war in Iraq” (Disagreement with the political decisions of our president is not a valid excuse for murder)

5 – “The toll of dead and injured was so high because soldiers on base are not normally armed, unless taking part in a training exercise” (In what circumstances would on base psychiatrists and medical doctors carry a loaded weapon? Wouldn’t the sight of Major Hassan roaming around the base with non-military handguns have raised some immediate questions of its own?)

4 – “It is ironic that Nidal Hassan is a graduate of Virginia Tech” (I don’t think “ironic” is the correct term here. Neither is “suspicious” or “pattern”.)

3 – “The Council on American Islamic Relations called the attack cowardly, and condemned it in the strongest terms possible”

2 – “Major Hassan’s family issued a public sapology mourning the loss of life and putting the victims and relatives in their prayers”

1 – “The White House has so far had no official comment (as of 715 AM drive time radio)” (is there some kind of debate taking among White House advisors on the need for an announcement? Or are they waiting for overnight poll results before deciding which side to take?)

(Full disclosure – BA is secular, and works in a diverse environment which includes of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and probably other faiths. Our hearts go out to the victims and families this morning)

#8: Maj, Hasan had at least one accomplice so there were more then 2 guns at the scene. It should be noted that the VT shooter also 2 handguns but used special clips that held more then 15 rounds.

#1: President Obama released an official statement immediately after the attacks condemning them.

as of 715 this morning

- NPR was saying that major hassan acted alone

- NPR made no mention of any white house response. neither did the wall street journal, or baltimore sun

"NPR made no mention of any white house response. neither did the wall street journal, or baltimore sun"

That's their problem then, because there has been footage on CNN and my local news channel since last night with Obama speaking to the press about the tragedy. My local paper also carried the same statement in print.

Or maybe some other news sources should be looked at...

after the event, and news analysis of it

<link>

President Obama almost immediately issued a statement and then follow ons yesterday by 3:00 (not even 1.5 hours after the attacks). They were eloquent and appropriately somber, calling the shootings "tragic" and "a horrific outburts of violence" also noting something to the effect that it's especially tragic as these deaths occurred on our own soil where we expect safety and peace.

I read all of that within 1.5 hours of the shooting.

baltimore aureole:

8 – “Major Hassan was a devout muslim, and felt he could not go to war against other muslims” (evidently his non-violent principles were not sufficiently strong to deter him from shooting 42 unarmed co-workers)

"Hey, you! Number 38! You Muslim? Ah, OK, step aside, can't blindly murder you."

Oh well, those crazy Texans and their love of gunplay....

This is the story I thought merited concern:

Claim: CIA Sent Prisoners Abroad to Be Boiled Alive and 'Raped with Broken Bottles'

By Daniel Tencer, Raw Story
Posted on November 6, 2009, Printed on November 6, 2009
<link>

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan's gulags "were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned -- it changed my whole world view in an instant -- to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves," Murray said.

IT'S THE PIPELINE, STUPID

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan's natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

"The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan," Murray noted.

Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built.

"There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about. It's about money, it's about oil, it's not about democracy."

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is slated to be completed in 2014, with $7.6 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank.

Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009.

Morning BO,

If you think we need to make his religion an issue here, I could agree if we could include all of the issues involved in these GD wars. How about talking about the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees? We keep hearing about the possible scenerios if we pull out. Any discussion of the scenerio if we don't pull out? We can't afford to provide health care to everyone because of the cost. Can we afford to spend even more of our scarce finances on this? Do the wars make us safer from terrorism, or make us more vulnerable? These are just a few of the taboo topics in the "mainstream press."

OK, let's debate it!

BTW, a person experienced with semiautomic handguns (I don't claim to be) can eject the old clip and reload in a fraction of a second.

Long live the Empire!

BA -- the whole point to semi-automatic weapons is that it takes a mere matter of seconds to eject the old clip and load a new one. It can be done by experts with one hand, while firing a different gun with the other hand. And some semi-automatics hold as many as 30 rounds of ammo.

Hasan was apparently carrying the guns concealed, until he started firing.

Obama did indeed release a statement shortly after the attacks -- it was on CNN when the official "death toll" was still at 4. Just because something is not on NPR, doesn't mean it never happened.

Note that this article doesn't say that the CIA used info obtained by raping prisioners with broken bottles. It just says that behavior occurred in the same country where the CIA obtained the info. "News" is only as good as the integrity of the journalist -- in this case, not very.

Sorry about the BO here and elsewhere. Not intended; I should be more careful.

L

I heard Obama's response on NPR on my way home from work yesterday (around 3:45 mountain time).

susan in warrenville:

Note that this article doesn't say that the CIA used info obtained by raping prisioners with broken bottles. It just says that behavior occurred in the same country where the CIA obtained the info. "News" is only as good as the integrity of the journalist -- in this case, not very.

Uh, well, it does say this:

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

I guess it's not the integrity of the journalists at issue, but your facility with the english language. How embarrassing to be outed as both an apologist for torturing scum, and an illiterate! And before you pick another nit to wit: receiving does not mean using-- I'm sure that's right. Because there is no purpose to using statements obtained to prevent one's children from being tortured, as it is likely to be fabricated to stop the torture. Which means we just did these things to destroy our national soul for no goddamn good reason at all.

*heavy sigh* You know, I come on DP every week to actually FORGET about life's tragedies for a little while and chuckle at stupid people's letters, not read more about them.