Fort Hood Muslim Terrorist was a known al Qaeda suspect – Why didn’t the US Army act months ago?

“U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.”

…from ABC News Officials: U.S. Aware of Hasan Efforts to Contact al Qaeda

Why didn’t the US Army or Intelligence Agencies do something about Major Nidal Hasan?

Was it political correctness? Fear of making a decision? Whatever it was, it looks like some person or persons made a decision not to take steps to remove Major Hasan from the US Army even after it was known that he was contacting al Qaeda.

This should be a lesson to government authorities, law enforcement and military leadership everywhere in the West: If there are signs that a Muslim employee has gone fundamentalist, ACT to counter the threat!

Further Reading

Sudden Jihad Syndrome? Muslim terrorist yelled “Allahu Akbar!” during mass murder at Fort Hood.

Chinese-equipped Cuban Secret Police beat Award Winning Global Voices bloggers

“I was arrested along with Orlando L. Pardo and Claudia Cadelo they carried us off sicilian style. Knocks. We were left lying in a corner.”

Cuban blogger Yoaní Sánchez (wikipedia link) in an SMS text message to Spanish blogger Rosa Jiménez Cano, who works at the Spanish news daily El País

Photo: Three Men Who Excuse Murder & Oppression of Cubans

Translation of the account posted by Yoaní on her blog

Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. ‘Yoani, get in the car,’ one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence.

The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same ‘aggressors’ called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.

I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, ‘Help, these men want to kidnap us,’ but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, ‘Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.’

In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, ‘What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.’ I imagine the answer from the other side was unequivocal, because then came a flurry of punches and pushes, they got me with my head down and tried to push me into the car. I held onto the door… blows to my knuckles… I managed to take a paper one of them had in his pocket and put it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so I would return the document to them…

(snip)

We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, ‘What has happened?’… ‘A kidnapping,’ I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

Full story at Global Voices – Cuba: Yoani Sanchez & Other Bloggers Seized

Further Reading

Along the Malecon blog: We are all Yoani