"This is Fort Hood, and it goes on for miles and miles and miles." Director Nancy Schiesari's riveting documentary, "Tattooed Under Fire," about the River City parlor in Killeen, Texas, and the soldiers who patronize it, was already being hailed as one of the great unreleased films of the year when it finally got picked up to air this month on PBS. But in a grim piece of poetic timing, suddenly the world is looking to understand how the largest military base in the country could become the site of one its worst mass murders, an attack that left 13 dead and 30 injured.
Much will be written in the days to come of the mind-set of the alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist who counseled military personnel and was reportedly distressed over his own imminent deployment. Though Schiesari's film predates the horrifying violence at the fort yesterday, it reveals a military culture rarely seen. By following both returning and deployment-bound young soldiers and the stories told on their bodies, she gets under their skin.
Maj. Hasan had worked as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed for six years, where he allegedly received a poor performance review, before transferring to Fort Hood in July. So when River City's senior tattoo artist Diamond Glenn says, "The ones that came back unscathed physically still have serious psychological issues, which from what I hear, are hardly being addressed at all, if at all. They're just putting them back on the street," he's speaking of a trauma factory that Hasan was intimately familiar with. "They're kids," Glenn says. "They're babies."
Watching clips of the film now, seeing young, fuzz-headed men and women describe their motivations for getting inked with caskets and corpses, one begins to get a feel for the intense experiences that become fodder for their body art. One solider gets an hourglass flying through a storm. Another gets a Norse tree of life extending into the underworld. A patron who's served already in Iraq and is heading back says, "I had two friends burnt up in the back of a Bradley. Like, melted into the structure of the Bradley. You look on the news, some poor soldiers got blown up. Some poor other guy, who knew them, had to scrape what was left of them out of the inside of the vehicle." Then there's Travis, who explains his career path as, "It was either go to jail or go to war, so I picked to go to war." He gets a fetus in a blender, because "He's fixing to get all chopped up and chewed up and turned to mush, and I guess there's a possibility of that happening to me."
Shot around Fort Hood between 2005 and 2008, "Tattooed Under Fire" isn't a retroactive explanation for the shootings of Thursday. But Schiesari's film is unnervingly prescient in its depiction of the stress and anguish of military duty, of the horrors of war even in the relative comforts of home. As one soldier explains, "The more times I go over, the more of Iraq's going to come back with me."
The film will begin airing on PBS stations starting Nov. 8. It airs on Texas's KLRU, which co-produced the documentary, at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10.
The Pentagon will investigate its procedures in light of the Fort Hood shooting rampage, looking at how all the military services keep a watch on potential problems in their ranks, officials said Tuesday.
The probe is still in the planning stages, but would be a broad examination beyond the particulars of Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, officials said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants a unified probe that hits all corners of the Pentagon, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said.
"This is shaping up to be a DoD effort," Morrell said, using shorthand for the Department of Defense.
"This is larger than the Army. There are issues that need to be looked at department-wide, and the focus at this point is trying to figure out some of those questions," he added.
The investigation would consider some questions Morrell described as immediate, although he would not be specific, and some he said will take longer to frame and sort through.
Another official said there will be a fast look at whether the military has missed red flags that might signal there are other potentially dangerous service members out there. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still being organized.
The Army has also been preparing to launch its own internal probe. The Pentagon review could supersede that, although it is not clear whether the Army will still go ahead separately.
Though it's still undecided who would do such a review and exactly what it would include, officials are working to make an announcement on it soon, a senior defense official said Tuesday on condition of anonymity because plans are still fluid.
Morrell said there has ben no decision on the structure, time line or staffing for a review.
"He's trying to come to a resolution of this as quickly as possible, but this has not been nailed down quite yet," Morrell said of Gates.
Hasan, an Army major, is accused of killing 13 people in the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at the Texas base.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey had said earlier that the service would take a hard look at itself following the Nov. 5 shooting.
Any new review would be have to be careful not to interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation, defense officials said. And so it could look at things outside that realm such as personnel policy and practices and whether there are adequate health services for troubled troops, one official said.
A top priority, this official said, likely would be to look at red flags missed in Hasan's case, with an eye toward ensuring there are not other similar missed cases out there waiting to happen.
"A tragedy like this certainly gives this institution an opportunity to reflect on whether we are doing everything that we can and should to prevent something like this from happening," said Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said Gates has not made any decision on a defense-wide review.
Two military officials said Tuesday that Casey is looking at forming an investigative panel. It would look at Hasan as a whole, his career development and at what point someone should have or might have raised an alarm, one of the officials said. The other said the terms of what the panel would do have not been defined.
The proposed Army probe would focus on Hasan's six years at Washington's Walter Reed Medical Center, where he worked as a psychiatrist before he was transferred to Fort Hood in July, one said.
The doctors who oversaw Hasan's medical training had discussed at a meeting concerns about Hasan's overly zealous religious views and strange behavior months before the attack, a military official told The Associated Press last week. Hasan also was characterized as a mediocre student and lazy worker, but the doctors saw no evidence that he was violent or a threat. The military official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting.
The FBI learned late last year of Hasan's repeated contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. President Barack Obama already has ordered a review of all intelligence related to Hasan and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday will hold its first public hearing about the incident. Obama on Saturday urged Congress to hold off on any investigation, pleading for lawmakers to "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater."
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Department of Defense http://www.defenselink.mil
Army http://www.army.mil
Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to "lose it." Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, "One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire."
They weren't talking about Marines suffering from a tangle of mental and religious angst, like news reports suggest haunted the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The risk they reported at Camp Lejeune was broader and systemic. Upon returning home, troops suffering mental health problems were getting dumped into an overwhelmed healthcare system that responded ineptly to their crises, the men reported, and they also faced harassment from Marine Corps superiors ignorant of the severity of their problems and disdainful of those who sought psychiatric help.
As Dr. Kernan Manion investigated the two Marines' claims about conditions at the North Carolina military base, the largest Marine base on the East Coast, he found they were true. Manion, a psychiatrist hired last January to treat Marines coming home from war with acute mental problems, warned his superiors of looming trouble at Camp Lejeune in a series of increasingly urgent memos.
But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy's behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story.
While military officials and the media examine whether the Army missed warning signs that might have indicated an unhinged Nidal Hasan was capable of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Manion's Camp Lejeune story is a cautionary tale of what happens to those who blow the whistle on conditions for military personnel with mental problems.
Manion says the April incident with the two Marines was just one of a series of disturbing events and serious problems with mental healthcare he saw at Camp Lejeune, a base that may be best known for a water contamination scandal that led to high rates of cancer and birth defects among Marines and their families who lived there. He was particularly concerned to see that troubled Marines were stricken with the overwhelming impulse to commit suicide or murder, telltale signs of severe combat stress.
In a telephone interview from his Surf City, N.C., home, Manion talked of overburdened staff and inadequate resources at the Naval hospital at Camp Lejeune. The psychiatrist charged that medical officials failed to study and discuss violent events among returning Marines in an effort to prevent further, similar events, and did little planning to improve handling distraught Marines who were killing themselves and others in shocking numbers. In 2008, for example, 42 Marines committed suicide and 146 attempted to do so, according to the Marine Corps.
Coincidentally or not, within 12 hours of Hasan's shooting spree, Camp Lejeune officials discovered the body of one Marine and took into custody another Marine, Pvt. Jonathan Law, who is accused of killing his colleague. Law, who had served a seven-month tour in Iraq, was suffering from self-inflicted wounds when arrested.
Mirroring reports from military installations across the country, Manion also reported harassment of Marines seeking mental help. The psychiatrist began to worry about the possibility of a major outburst of violence on the base.
"A significant number of Navy medical officials and Marine commanders do not get it," a frustrated Manion said about the situation at Camp Lejeune. "They do not understand the implications of what happens if somebody loses it," explained Manion, who has 25 years of experience as a psychiatrist and who also specializes in traumatic brain injury -- exactly the kinds of skills needed so desperately at military hospitals, because mental problems and brain injuries are the signature wounds of the ongoing wars. "People either commit suicide, commit homicide, get drunk, beat up the wife, all these things. I've seen it," he added. "That is how serious this is and they just don't get it."
Manion believes he likely prevented a "Columbine-style attack" late last April after the two Marines who warned that someone might "lose it" directed him to a third Marine who seemed on the verge of violence. Manion also provided his superiors with documentation showing troubling incidents and neglect for the needs of returning Marines that could easily precipitate violence. Maybe not on the scale of the massacre at Fort Hood, but more like the rampage by a frustrated Sgt. John Russell, who gunned down five fellow soldiers at a military mental health facility in Baghdad last May.
Manion provided to Salon a stack of correspondence with superiors, a virtual crystal ball predicting dire consequences if mental healthcare at Camp Lejeune isn't immediately improved.
In an April 24 memo to his superiors, including Cmdr. Robert O'Byrne, head of mental health for the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital, Manion describes a frustrated Marine punching a telephone pole with his bare fists outside a treatment clinic, then storming around, cursing, with a piece of lumber with a nail in it, though nothing was done to ensure he didn't hurt himself, again, or others. In another case, a severely homicidal and suicidal Marine pounded his fists into a table and stormed out of treatment. Yet the hospital, Manion complained to his superiors, made no efforts to discuss these cases or how to better handle similar events in the future.
"There was -- and continues to be -- no means of discussion of high-intensity/dangerous cases such as this," a desperate Manion wrote on April 24. He warned of "immediate concerns of physical safety" at the base's mental health facilities. Manion wanted to set up special protocols for handling intense situations, such as having specially trained MPs ready to intercede if things got bad, and a plan to hospitalize potentially violent patients quickly. "They dragged their feet on that," he told me.
Within days that April, Manion intervened with the two Marines who'd warned of colleagues potentially losing it. They directed him to a third Marine who they believed was going to go on a shooting rampage. Manion worked hard to get that Marine into treatment, possibly averting bloodshed. The two Marines involved also reported harassment for working limited duty while seeking mental healthcare for themselves. They heatedly claimed that two noncommissioned officers had recently told them, "I don't care why you are on [limited duty]. You are nothing but worthless pieces of shit," according to an April 29 e-mail Manion sent to O'Byrne and others, complaining about such attitudes.
Like many healthcare providers at military bases across the country, Manion technically worked for a military contractor, Spectrum Healthcare Resources, a subcontractor for NiteLines Kuhana LLC.
On June 24, a supervisor for the contractor warned Manion to stop making trouble. "Kernan Manion, it is requested that you cease and desist all further correspondence with the government," the supervisor with NiteLines, Pamela Friend, wrote to Manion.
But Manion was still frustrated that Camp Lejeune did not seem to be taking these risks seriously. On Aug. 30, he appealed to a series of military inspectors general in a written complaint. He warned of an "immediate threat of loss of life and/or harm to service members' selves or others" if conditions did not improve. He complained of a "complete disregard for ... implications for patient safety and well-being." He decried that officials at Lejeune had ignored "repeated overt and emphatically stated concerns about the very safety and overall welfare of the affected patients." And he warned that "many patients' lives are imminently at risk."
Four days later, the contractor fired Manion "effective immediately," according to his termination e-mail. The note provides no reason for the firing. Manion was directed to clean out his office the next day, under the watchful eye of a chief petty officer, and have no further contact with his patients.
In a statement to Salon, NiteLines said the Navy wanted Manion fired, but did not explain why. "The treatment facility at Camp Lejeune notified (Nitelines) that Dr. Manion did not meet the Government's requirements in accordance with the contract, and they directed he be removed from the schedule," it reads.
Salon e-mailed the spokesman for the Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, Raymond Applewhite, with details of this story and then described some of these facts with him in a follow-up telephone call, requesting an interview with O'Byrne. The Navy did not respond further.
Manion left Camp Lejeune after he got fired, but he did not stop worrying about the potential for violence there. In mid-September, Manion filed a 14-page complaint with the Department of Defense inspector general. On Sept. 29, he warned the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery inspector general in writing of "serious mismanagement of post-deployment mental health services that was both endangering patient, staff and community safety as well as severely compromising the quality of care" for returning Marines. Manion noted that the poor care at Camp Lejeune continued despite "the ever present threat of life-threatening violence by distraught service members towards themselves or others."
Finally, Manion wrote President Obama that same day. "Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness -- literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience," he wrote to the president. Manion added, however, that at Camp Lejeune, that immense problem was being met with "inadequate treatment" and "callous indifference."
He still worries. "I don't like seeing these guys mistreated," Manion said. "This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to," he added. "These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, 'next, next, next.'"
The conventional narrative of the Fort Hood shootings, one week later, has been distinguished by the reporting of unconfirmed -- and sometimes incorrect -- details and the drawing of dubious conclusions. The only thing that suggests the current story will withstand the test of time better than the initial Pat Tillman myth (that he died in combat, rather than by friendly fire), or the overheated tale of heroism by Jessica Lynch in 2003 (which Lynch herself protested), is that two basic facts seem clear: The shootings certainly happened, and given the number of eyewitnesses, it's almost certain that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan did it.
The fact that it was first incorrectly reported that Hasan died in the shootings, and that he was in cahoots with other perpetrators, may well be fairly chalked up to confusion during that first chaotic day. Other details, however, continue to unravel a week later. The media debate provoked by the Hasan incident is equally off-topic and unreliable. As someone who's been asked to talk about the shootings because of my work covering the poor psychological care given to returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, I've had a front-row seat on the way preconceived biases are distorting the debate.
First, the ongoing factual unraveling of the narrative. As the New York Times reported this Thursday, initial information seized on by talk shows that Sgt. Kimberly Munley, a petite police officer, bravely brought down Hasan in a hail of gunfire in which she was also wounded was, well, also not true. Munley, it seems, just got shot. Senior Sgt. Mark Todd actually shot Hasan to the ground and cuffed him after Munley had already been wounded.
Also on Thursday, the Washington Post raised solid questions about previous reports that Hasan had tried to get out of his military service because of what he saw as a growing schism between his religious and military duties. While Hasan's aunt has said he wanted to get out of the military, the Post quotes an Army source who claims Hasan "did not formally seek to leave the military as a conscientious objector or for any other reason."
Despite some print publications attempting to keep track of these kinds of facts, a lot of media folks continue to ask the wrong questions and/or provide some of their own unlikely, or unsubstantiated, answers.
The Monday after the shootings, I got my first taste of how the story was embarking on a life of its own as I settled into a chair at one of MSNBC’s Washington studios to do Dylan Ratigan's “Morning Meeting.”
“One question being asked, among many, is whether political correctness stalled the response to possible warning signs from Maj. Hasan,” Ratigan said in his introduction. Ratigan then asked me if there had been “too much tolerance in this instance.”
Too much political correctness in the military? You know, the place where they fire you if you admit you’re gay? The Army has its share of challenges, but in a decade of covering the military, I certainly haven’t come across any evidence that the institution is somehow paralyzed by the burden of gratuitous political correctness. And while that might provide a convenient way for Army officials to explain, anonymously, why nobody prevented Hasan from killing 13 people -- “We are just too afraid of criticizing Muslims” -- I haven’t seen a shred of evidence to suggest this might be true.
The cover of Time magazine depicts another befuddling sideshow to the Fort Hood story. The cover is a picture of Hasan with the word “Terrorist?” over his eyes. “It is a story about why Maj. Hasan is a terrorist,” Time managing editor Richard Stengel explained on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” one week after the killings.
I’d heard this one before – the debate about whether we should label Hasan a terrorist, or the shooting as an act of terrorism. Right-wing media host Laura Ingraham railed at me on this subject on her radio show this week after I had referred to Hasan as being partly motivated by a “religious thing,” but I had failed to use the word "terrorism." “I say that you won’t call it what it is,” she shouted, “which is terrorism!” (I had called it "Muslim extremism" but that wasn't good enough for Ingraham.)
The obsession with that label “terrorist” seems beside the point. The real question is why the shootings were allowed to occur, and who, exactly, dropped the ball -- not what we call it all afterward.
Stengel explained on "Morning Joe" why he thinks that label is so important that it should grace the cover of his magazine, and he anchored his argument with some of the same tenuous logic I’d tangled with on "Morning Meeting." Once we come to terms with calling Hasan a religiously motivated terrorist, he argued, we can begin to tackle the real reason the Army failed to stop the shootings -- political correctness.
“People in the military say there is a lot of political correctness here,” Stengel explained. “There is a lot of fear of criticizing Muslims in the military and as a result, a guy like Hasan can get promoted up through the ranks. He became a major,” he explained. “I think we need to address this issue.”
In addition, one of Stengel’s key pieces of evidence that Hasan was a terrorist was the following: “This is a man who stood up before he killed people and said ‘God is great’ in Arabic,” Stengel announced.
That may be true, though I’ve been unable to find an original or credible source for this information. The original source seems to be a question from NBC's Matt Lauer to Fort Hood's Lt. Gen. Robert Cone on Nov. 6, the morning after the shootings. Lauer cited a relative of a witness to the shooting claiming that Hasan had said "God is great" in Arabic before opening fire. Cone responded: "There are firsthand accounts here from soldiers that are similar to that." Fort Hood, however, will not confirm this aspect of the story. “We are not at liberty to discuss questions related to this case,” spokesman Chris Haug said in an e-mail when I asked about the "God is great" story. “There is an ongoing investigation.”
Meanwhile, most members of the media continue to ignore the much more mundane, but seemingly more promising, avenues of inquiry that might explain why Hasan got away with murder.
Hasan was a military psychiatrist toiling in an overburdened, desperate Army healthcare system that will hold onto any warm body with a medical degree. Remember the Walter Reed scandal? The horrific treatment of traumatic brain injury and PTSD that has gone on for years? Army medicine has been dropping the ball on these issues for a long time. Given that history, it's not hugely surprising they'd miss warning signs with Hasan and just let him go on being a doctor.
Army medical officials, at least to my knowledge, haven’t been asked even the most basic questions. Why, for example, was Hasan allowed to continue counseling troops suffering stress from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan after, for example, delivering a PowerPoint presentation in June 2007 at Walter Reed warning of “adverse events” if Muslims were forced to kill other Muslims in battle. It’s hard to imagine Hasan being particularly empathetic with his patients. Imagine coming back from Iraq with mental problems from combat, and this is the psychiatrist who is supposed to help you heal? So far, the only reaction from Army medical officials to these issues seems to have been the decision to move him to the war front in Afghanistan, so he could be even closer to the troops when they suffer adverse mental reactions. That’s odd.
As for Hasan getting promoted to major, the Washington Post Thursday suggested a more likely scenario than political correctness. They need more bodies. The Army is short 2,000 majors and the dearth is particularly acute in Army medicine. As the Post put it, “virtually all Army captains are being promoted to major.”
The passionate determination to hang the "terrorist" label on Hasan, or rail against "political correctness" in the military, are just more symptoms of media stars more excited about hot-headed debate than covering the real story. And the real story may be sadly familiar: It looks like Army medicine blew it, once again.
While some conservatives are arguing that "Jihadism" is the only relevant factor in the Fort Hood massacre, it seems others have a mind to sneak another contentious issue into the fray: fetal personhood. They have found their moment of opportunity in one of the 13 victims of the shooting spree: Francheska Velez, a pregnant woman. Now, antiabortion activists are arguing that the official death toll should be raised to 14 in recognition of the loss of her 9-week-old fetus.
I will admit that as soon as I learned about Velez's death, I gasped. There is something especially tragic about a pregnant woman -- someone who ideally embodies all of the hope and idealism of bringing a new life into the world -- being senselessly gunned down. Upon hearing the news my imagination went wild conjuring up the joy of a soon-to-be father and expectant grandparents, and all of the potential they imagined within the fetus growing inside Velez. Then I pictured the family mourning the death of both this 21-year-old woman, a baby herself in the grand scheme of things, and her unborn offspring.
That doesn't mean I agree with antiabortion activists that the victim count should be 14, though. There is acknowledging the devastating loss of a pregnancy and the profound mourning that can accompany it, and then there's equating the loss of a fetus the size of a strawberry with the death of a fully realized human being. The latter is what Michelle Malkin, the folks at LifeNews.com and other fringe outlets are doing in trying to get one more person added to the Fort Hood casualty list. Where I see a 9-week-old fetus with the potential to develop into a person, they see full-fledged personhood. Thus, they argue an additional charge should be brought against accused shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for the death of the fetus under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
Yeah, about that act. "Fetal rights" laws have long been a favored weapon in antiabortion activists' arsenal -- in large part because they appear deceptively nonthreatening. Under the guise of protecting pregnant women, they champion laws that actually take rights away from women and give them to fetuses. As Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, once told Salon: "In the name of fetal rights and protection, pregnant women have been forced to have unnecessary C-sections (in one case both the woman and fetus died), been civilly committed to mental hospitals and drug treatment programs, been arrested as child abusers for using marijuana to cope with morning sickness, and been charged and, in some cases, convicted of murder for suffering an unintentional stillbirth." The ultimate ploy here is to legally secure fetal personhood and then overturn Roe v. Wade -- because suddenly a woman who terminated her pregnancy would not only be considered guilty of an illegal abortion but also murder.
That's the danger in these heartstring-plucking arguments. Anyone familiar with the devastation of a miscarriage or the joy of an ultrasound can very well understand a pregnant woman's conviction that the stirring in her belly is a person, even if on an intellectual level she knows its potential for personhood is still unrealized. But these activists aren't interested in having a nuanced discussion about the emotional complexities involved in defining personhood. They're interested in one thing and one thing only: outlawing abortion.
Note to Laura Ingraham: If you are going to selectively edit my TV quotes to construct a straw man argument, don't invite me on your radio show to discuss it. The problem, of course, is that it is pretty easy to point this out when I appear as a guest. And the wonders of Google allow anybody to pull my full quotes, later, and write about it.
Of course, you could always just cut off my microphone if you don't like what I have to say about that. It worked today.
(I didn't know who Ingraham was either. She is a right-wing radio host, sort of a poor man's Ann Coulter. I say poor man's Ann Coulter because, for example, earlier on Tuesday Ingraham's Web site featured photos of Nancy Pelosi and Steven Tyler side-by-side, with a caption that reads, 'Separated at Birth?' That's so funny. Get it? Nancy Pelosi looks like a man!)
Laura outlined my role as Straw Man within minutes of my picking up the phone for the interview. My part, it seemed, was to play the lefty who denied that Muslim extremism might have played a role in the motivation behind the Fort Hood massacre. I was the guy arguing that as an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan suffered stress from counseling soldiers back from war and he snapped, simple as that.
"You are stating that you don't think religion, or the religious fervor of this particular person, Hasan, had, really, any impact on this whatsoever," she alleged early on.
Hmmm, I thought. That's strange. "No," I pointed out. "That's not what I'm saying at all. I think we have a complicated situation here."
Not complicated to her. Ingraham's investigation has already resulted in some conclusive results, which she shared with me. "What's complicated?" she stammered. "He is screaming Allah-u-Akbar! He is e-mailing al-Qaida and asking one of the procurement officers for Osama bin Laden what he can do to forward the Jihad in the United States," she announced. "And we are saying this is all that complicated?"
She then ran a quote from my appearance on "The Rachel Maddow Show" last Thursday: "I certainly have met mental healthcare providers in the military who, after sitting all day long and listening to some really disturbing tales," I said -- in part -- "and in combination with the fact that they are overwhelmed, overworked, don't have resources to do their jobs, become extremely stressed and frazzled. There is no reason to not think that this could ultimately lead to that kind of a conclusion."
Aha! Ingraham pounced. "So you did say that someone who is stressed and frazzled could be led to do this horrible act!" she said, calling my analysis "lazy."
"You never talked about the crazy Jihadi ideas," she went on, "I don't believe, with Rachel Maddow. Did you?"
"I believe I did," I responded.
What Ingraham did not say is that she had deleted the sentences I said immediately prior to the quote she used. Immediately before that Maddow quote, I had noted, "Well, it certainly could be a combination of factors. There are people who believe that this is a person who is suffering from some kind of secondary post-traumatic stress from treating soldiers," I noted. "And there are people who believe he was somehow influenced by Muslim extremism. I think it could be a combination of both."
I then noted on Ingraham's radio show that there "obviously was a religious thing" going on with the story, as I said on TV.
"I'm surprised you are saying that," she fired back. "I'm glad you are saying that."
"I've been saying that for days," I pointed out. "I've done five TV hits in the past week, which obviously you did not watch." (In fact, the day after Maddow, I appeared on "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." On Olbermann's show I said, in part, "I mean, we've got a guy who clearly had a pretty twisted version of Islam and was getting, you know, increasingly militant.")
"Well," Ingraham admitted. "I don't watch MSNBC often. Nor does anybody," she said. "I did see the Rachel Maddow piece and I'm pretty sure you did not mention Jihadism."
True. I mentioned "Muslim extremism." And in the world of pixie dust, fairies and death panels, I guess that's not the same. Up is down. Black is white. I didn't say what I said.
At one point, Ingraham went so far as to suggest I was blaming U.S. troops for the massacre, since their experiences in war were so troubling. She summarized my alleged argument as, "Yeah. We suck."
Later, via e-mail, I sent Ingraham my entire quote from Maddow and asked her if what she did on her show "was an accurate portrayal of my position."
"Not playing an entire previous interview of a guest is hardly misrepresentation," she responded, though I had not sent along the full transcript.
During the radio interview Tuesday, Ingraham apparently became frustrated with my efforts to discuss this matter, telling her producer to "put down his mike or this ends right here."
I then found that my end of the conversation had become muted. I could no longer be heard on the radio -- only she could. So, I hung up. In an e-mail afterward, Ingraham recounted this as, "It was your choice to hang up before the interview was over."
Finally, something accurate. Technically.
"Oh, he hung up," she'd said on the radio after she cut off my mike. "The left really don't want to have a conversation."
Audio of the interview is below. Thanks to Media Matters for providing it.
(Updated below with video and text excerpt of remarks.)
President Obama went to Fort Hood Tuesday in order to speak at a memorial service for the 13 people killed in the attack that happened at the Army post last week.
"This is a time of war. And yet these Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great American community. It is this fact that makes the tragedy even more painful and even more incomprehensible," Obama told the grieving family members who'd come to the service, according to prepared remarks released by the White House.
"But here is what you must also know: your loved ones endure through the life of our nation. Their memory will be honored in the places they lived and by the people they touched. Their life’s work is our security, and the freedom that we too often take for granted. Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town; every dawn that a flag is unfurled; every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- that is their legacy."
The president also made very brief remarks about each of the 13 people killed, talking about their lives in and out of the military and giving a little of their history. Perhaps the most striking aspect of his speech, though, the part that will have people talking later, was the way he talked about the U.S., mentioning diversity within the Army and freedom of religion in the country as a whole.
More excerpts from Obama's remarks:
It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know -- no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next.
These are trying times for our country. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the same extremists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans continue to endanger America, our allies, and innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. In Iraq, we are working to bring a war to a successful end, as there are still those who would deny the Iraqi people the future that Americans and Iraqis have sacrificed so much for.
As we face these challenges, the stories of those at Fort Hood reaffirm the core values that we are fighting for, and the strength that we must draw upon. Theirs are tales of American men and women answering an extraordinary call -- the call to serve their comrades, their communities, and their country. In an age of selfishness, they embody responsibility. In an era of division, they call upon us to come together. In a time of cynicism, they remind us of who we are as Americans.
We are a nation that endures because of the courage of those who defend it. We saw that valor in those who braved bullets here at Fort Hood, just as surely as we see it in those who signed up knowing that they would serve in harm’s way.
We are a nation of laws whose commitment to justice is so enduring that we would treat a gunman and give him due process, just as surely as we will see that he pays for his crimes.
We are a nation that guarantees the freedom to worship as one chooses. And instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln’s words, and always pray to be on the side of God.
We are a nation that is dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. We live that truth within our military, and see it in the varied backgrounds of those we lay to rest today. We defend that truth at home and abroad, and we know that Americans will always be found on the side of liberty and equality. That is who we are as a people ....
So we say goodbye to those who now belong to eternity. We press ahead in pursuit of the peace that guided their service. May God bless the memory of those we lost. And may God bless the United States of America.
Update: Obama's speech is being hailed as one of the best he's given, perhaps his best since being inaugurated, and with good reason. You can see why in the video of his remarks below.
Jumping the Gunman
ProPublica's managing editor Stephen Engelberg takes a close look at the reporting on alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and finds a "wolf-pack approach to reporting (that) almost invariably produces stories that lack context."
You can't guard the gate when the fence is gone
Breaking News: Ft. Hood Under Attack from 3 "shooters".