Destination, Death Row? Fort Hood Shooter Arraigned Today

He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.

~ ancient Hebrew adage 

His crimes sound almost cut and dried in news reports, like that in the NY Times: "Major Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder."

At his military Article 32 hearing (roughly equivalent to a civilian grand jury hearing) held last November at Fort Hood, people who were the victims of the shooter's attempted murder didn't find them so:

And neither did those who also mourn the unborn baby of Private Francheska Velez, who also was murdered that day.

At today's arraignment, Nidal Malik Hasan's trial date was set for March 5, 2012.

Also at today's arraignment, Hasan announced that he had changed his defense team of lawyers by "releasing" his sole civilian lawyer, John P. Galligan, a retired Army colonel and military judge, who holds that Hasan can't receive a fair trial at Fort Hood. Perhaps Hasan would like to meet those 72 virgins as soon as possible.
 
The NY Times has reported:

If convicted, Major Hasan will join a handful of other men on the military’s death row, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Although the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment in the military in 1996, military executions are rare. The last time the military carried out a death penalty sentence was on April 13, 1961, when John A. Bennett, a 26-year-old Army private convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl, was hanged at Fort Leavenworth.

I hope the military manages to hold onto Hasan. Under the current administration, this country's jailers--both military and civilian--aren't having much luck holding on to terrorist murderers and their accomplices. Take, for example, the releases of:

• Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors and injured 39 others;
• Ahmed Gailani, killed 224, injured 4,000 at American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania;
• Abdullah Gulam Rasoul (alias Abdullah Zakir, aka Mullah Abdul Qayam Zakir), head of the reconstituted Taliban in Afghanistan;
• Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, bomber and murderer of Iraqi soldiers;
• Ali al-Shihri, suspected planner of the gruesome massacre of two nurses, an engineer and his wife, and a doctor and his young children.  

That list, which includes about 60 others, will be growing by one if Eric Holder gets his way and succeeds in springing al Qaeda financier and wanna-be assassin Abdurahman Alamoudi from the slammer.

The real victims in all these cases are the victims of the terrorists who have enjoyed the favor of progressive bleeding hearts and the politicians they elect and support.

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