Sen. Levin: Fort Hood shooting rampage was likely a terrorist attack

[babylonsister]

I'm disappointed in Levin; why doesn't he wait for some experts to diagnose what happened? Cause Lieberman said so?


Sen. Levin: Fort Hood shooting rampage was likely a terrorist attack
By Roxana Tiron - 11/20/09 04:17 PM ET

The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said the shooting rampage at Fort Hood could be labeled a terrorist attack.

"It sure looks like that," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in an interview on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program that will air Sunday.

"It probably could be labeled as a terrorist attack. I am not uncomfortable with thinking that's the likely outcome here or the likely accurate description," Levin added.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, has been charged by military authorities with 13 counts of premeditated murder in connection with the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5. More than 30 people were also injured when Hasan opened fire on the Army base.

Hasan, a Muslim, had communicated with a radical Islamic cleric before his attacks, which has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers.

Levin's comments come after another key senator, Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), said on Thursday that the incident, "based on available evidence, was a terrorist attack."

more...

http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/68919-levin-fort-hood-shooting-likely-a-terrorist-attack

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

1. If Levin is saying this, there must be more yet to unfold from this story.

Comparing him to Lieberman is just so very wrong.

[babylonsister]

3. He could have held his tongue, because he could easily be wrong.

He has no clue.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

5. Time will tell.

I support my Senator.

[EFerrari]

9. Good luck with that. It looks like Hasan was so out there that no terrorist group

wanted him.

[merh]

2. The problem with the left is we let the right control our vocabulary.

Liberals are bad.

Socialism is bad.

Terrorist equal evil muslims.

It was an act of terrorism, it was the act of a terrorist. Just as McVeigh was a terrorist, just as the Olympic bombings was a terrorist act and the killing of Dr. Tiller was the act of a terrorist.

What is not known is whether it was a terrorist act ordered by AQ, if he was a one man cell.

I believe that our intelligence communities (DOD and FBI) knew about him and were hoping to use him to get to AQ once he was in Afghanistan. They didn't realize how unhinged he was.

[babylonsister]

4. Wow. That's the first time I've heard or even considered that. I tend

to think the guy was unhinged and because he was a warm, educated body, no one cared.

Maybe the definition of 'terrorist' needs to be redefined. Is every act of violence terrorism?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. Not IMHO

Was Columbine a "terrorist attack"? Will every mass shooting be henceforth defined as a "terrorist act" Or do we label it such only if the shooter's religion is Islam? I guess we can fully expect the "terrorist attack occurred under President Obama" BS that the Republicans are trying to push to gain more credence now?

What is Levin thinking? I thought he was smarter than this. Lieberman's mind has definitely become addled but Levin? C'mon!

:wtf: :banghead:

[merh]

10. That is allowing the other folks to define terrorism.

The question is not "was Hasan a terrorist" - it is "was Hasan a AQ sponsored terrorist?".

He was a copycat terrorist, he was acting on his own and without direction. Not all Christians support the fellow that killed Tiller, only the fanatics do. But that murderer is still a christian terrorist, someone who used violence and fear to promote his political agenda.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

14. O.k. Point taken

The problem is that, unfortunately, most people probably don't think of it like that. They just hear "terrorist" and "muslim" and they're already thinking that this might have been an AQ-sponsored attack and may, with a load of prompting and encouragement from Republicans and Fox News, blame President Obama (incorrectly) for "failing" to prevent this from happening. Of course, nobody calls anti-choice abortion doctor killers "terrorists" nor do they ever hold any of the leaders of that movement accountable but then again they're all "Christian", so people don't naturally think of them as "terrorists"- just fringe zealots that don't represent the vast majority of anti-choice folks. :eyes:

[merh]

15. As I said, the left has always allowed the right to control the vocabulary.

Ewww, liberals are evil

community workers are just lazy people who want the world to be lazy and addicted to welfare

They control the conversation.

What should be asked is why our largest military installation was so vulnerable - and yes, Obama is ultimately responsible for that now. He is CnC and those responsible for our security are all fighting overseas. That is why private police are providing security on the bases around the country.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

16. I agree with that point

I wish that somebody working in the bowels of the DNC or a progressive think tank or somewhere would start working on dealing with this problem. As long as they control the vocabulary, people won't really *hear* what we have to say.
As to your other point, yeah, he may be "responsible" by virtue of being CNC about the general security of our military installations but that is more a structural problem that's going to have to be dealt with over the long term and, again, most people are probably going to see the situation as President Obama somehow "failing to prevent" a terrorist attack on American soil. Remember, Fox News and other corporate media whores were out in front from the beginning pondering whether or not the shooting was "Obama's 9/11". :banghead:

[merh]

17. He beat Bush's record.

He effectively beat Bush's record on 9/12/09.

I think he is trying to change the conversation, the he is trying to prove that we can deal with terrorists without the need for unending wars.

It can't happen overnight and it is not an easy thing to do, he is trying.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. Agreed on all counts

Good conversation
:hi:

[merh]

19. isn't it refreshing?

To have a conversation without the snark and biting.

thank you for taking the time :hi:

[Proud Liberal Dem]

20. You're welcome

:-)

It's VERY refreshing considering the level of discourse I've seen here at DU as of late.

[merh]

8. Any one who uses violence or terror for a political purpose is a

terrorist.

PETA has terrorists, the militias have their terrorists, there are environmental terrorists. As I said McVeigh was a terrorist, the olympic bombings was the act of a terrorist, the abortion clinic bombings are acts of terrorism. Phelps and his group are terrorists.

I truly do believe the military intelligence folks were going to try to use him. Why did they send him to Afghanistan and not Iraq or Kuwait or the German hospital? They made him a major so he would be someone coveted by AQ, AQ would have one hell of a PR prize, a major who could tell the world how fucked up our soldiers are because of the war.

They wanted him to break, go AWOL and join up with AQ and they wanted to track AQ by using him. They didn't expect him to snap so soon.

[EFerrari]

12. You give these people a lot more credit than I can.

I don't think they cared about him and I don't think they care about AQ. They care about their funding.

They've known for years about AQ in Pakistan, about where Omar is living and they haven't done squat but support Bush's bs wars.

After Tora Bora, there was no AQ threat in Afghanistan, even if it went down the way we've been told, which I also doubt. bin Laden has never been a good enough commander to put up a fight like that.

[merh]

13. AQ didn't need to do a thing.

When we rejected the Taliban's offer to hand over OBL and removed them from power, we made AQ stronger. We gave them an ally with a common purpose, hate for the USA. Just as Saddam and OBL hated each other, they found a common purpose in their fight against the USA when the USA invaded Iraq.

I think the military doesn't know if there are strong pockets, existing training camps. I think they were hoping Hasan would lead them to any that existed.

The PC crap in the military is just that crap. Military folks have no rights the way we do. If Hasan was emailing and carrying on as it appears he was, he was being allowed to do so. They wouldn't have kept in the military and his family have said he was trying to get out.

[EFerrari]

26. We know there are training camps in unincorporated areas in Pakistan.

Ahmed Rashid has been reporting on them for a long time.

I agree about the PC cr2p. It's not like his computer access couldn't have been ordered off limits at any time.

It looks like FBI didn't fully brief the people at Ft. Hood, though. As per usual. I can't remember who said the other day that the FBI, which is full of Irish American guys and Italian america guys, did great against the IRA and the Mafia but doesn't have the same advantage against this new bunch of targets and can't even pronounce their names. Maybe that was Lawrence Wright in his CSPAN interview re his book, The Looming Tower.

He had some pretty surprising things to say about bin Laden's competence.

[merh]

27. I think the DOD knew exactly who and what he was.

It wasn't up to the FBI to let Fort Hood know about him, it was up to the DOD to let the Fort Hood folks know about him.

All the DOD had to do was plant a chip in him and let him go AWOL and then track him. Then, as he sat cozy in some AQ hidey hole, they would bomb the place using his coordinates.

The DOD knew all about him. Instead of discharging him, they promoted him and deployed him directly into the arms of AQ. Problem was, he really, really didn't want to be deployed.

[bertman]

21. No. It's only if it has an intended coercive political purpose. Just wanting to see people dying and

suffering is not sufficient to make it a terrorist attack. But, if you want the dying and suffering to have the effect of turning people toward your way of thinking--or against some other way of thinking-politically, then it's terrorism.

Anyway, that's the definition I am most familiar with.

So, just being angry at the Army and taking it out on others on an Army base would not qualify. Whereas, if one killed others on an Army base to strike fear into the populace or to arouse political sympathy or hatred it would be terrorism.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

25. So if he commited the murders to helpo end the war sooner he'd be a terrorist?

[TorchTheWitch]

22. The long standing original definition does just fine

A terrorist need not be a card carrying member of any terrorist group. A terrorist is a single individual. A terrorist group is a group of like minded individuals that support a particular political agenda and use acts of violence to further that agenda either individually or coordinated with other members of the group. If one plans or commits a violent act for the purpose of causing fear in the hope that fear will cause their particular agenda to receive support or even recognition then that person is a terrorist.

In determining whether a mass shooting is an act or terror or not depends on the REASON the individual(s) committed the mass shooting. If Hasan did it because he's a nut and was mad that he was going to be deployed then he wouldn't be a terrorist. If he did it because he believed the act would influence people to support his particular political agenda or because his particular political agenda deemed the act to be supportive of that agenda then he would be a terrorist. It all comes down to WHY he did it, and there is enough information available about him that supports that he is more than likely a terrorist in that he committed the act in support of his particular political agenda.

[Blue For You]

6. Thank God McCain wasn't President!!!

He'd probably just call the shooter "my friend"...

[Barack_America]

11. The only politician I trust is Carl Levin.

He does not allow himself to be swept up in such things, and was one of the last voices of reason in the IWR debate.

Him saying this makes me listen.

But, I respect your opinion too. The AIPAC connections of both Lieberman and Levin are not lost on me. I've not found Levin to take his orders from AIPAC in the past and would be very sorry to learn he is doing so.

In the end, I'm not sure what to make of this.

[alp227]

23. C'mon, Senator Levin, Bush isn't in office to intimidate you!

A Democrat parroting the right-wing talking point that the Fort Hood shooting was a terrorist attack. Surprising for someone who the National Journal ranked on the 80th liberal percentile in 2009 and 76th in 2007.

[question everything]

24. He terrorized his victims, didn't he?

If you were there and faced with a man with two guns shooting in all directions, wouldn't you be terrorized?

But, hey, sitting safe and secure in your warm place clicking away, what do you care? How can you possibly imagine the victims' last thoughts?