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UTUBECENSORSHIP
November 08, 2009

Fort Hood shootings: Nidal Hasan's quiet manner hid hostility to US armyMajor who killed 13 on receiving end of anti-Muslim feelings Buzz up! Digg it Chris McGreal in Silver Spring guardian.co.uk...

Fort Hood shootings: Nidal Hasan's quiet manner hid hostility to US armyMajor who killed 13 on receiving end of anti-Muslim feelings
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Chris McGreal in Silver Spring guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 20.05 GMT Article history
Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Photograph: Getty

At the Silver Spring Muslim community centre, Nidal Hasan was a face in the crowd. The army major who shot dead 13 people at a Texas military base the day before he was to be deployed to the Middle East gave no hint of determined views on America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if he had raised the issue he would have been discouraged at a mosque sensitive to what the neighbours think.

"He was a private person," said Arshad Qureshi, chairman of the centre's board of trustees of the mosque in a Maryland suburb that serves as a commuter community for Washington. "He really didn't say very much. I saw him a few times. Some people here knew he was in the military but I never saw him in uniform.

"We don't know what motivated him. This is one of the beauties of America, that people are free to believe or say anything. But this is not a place where we encourage such discussion."

Hasan may not have said much to his fellow congregants during his attendance at the mosque until he moved to Texas in July. But a picture is emerging of a soldier who was increasingly disenchanted with army life, to the point of trying to leave, amid deepening anger at the continued conflicts in the Middle East and his personal experience on the receiving end of anti-Muslim sentiment.

Investigators waiting to interrogate Hasan, who was shot four times by a policewoman at Fort Hood and remains in hospital, will have a host of questions. But they will be exploring whether warning signs about the 39 year-old major were already there, and the impact of his work as a psychiatrist treating soldiers who suffering trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The army will also be questioning the wisdom of sending a man so openly hostile to America's wars in the Middle East to serve in one of them.

Hasan was born in Virginia to Palestinian parents from a village in the occupied West Bank. He would later list his nationality as Palestinian at the Silver Spring mosque, in what appears to be a statement of loyalty.

He grew up in a small town in central Virginia, where his parents ran a restaurant and a shop, and he attended Virginia Tech, the scene of its own notorious massacre two years ago when a student killed 32 people on the campus.

Hasan earned a medical degree in 2001 at a Maryland military university and spent most of the past six years working as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed army hospital north of Washington.

His parents were against him joining the military, his cousin, Nader Hasan, a lawyer in Virginia, said. "He said: 'No, I was born and raised here, I'm going to do my duty to the country'," he told the New York Times.

But Hasan's desire to serve soon began to wain. In the wake of al-Qaida's attacks on 9/11, he faced hostility from within the military. His superiors regarded his work in treating soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for trauma as short of exemplary, and he received job counselling. Still, Hasan earned promotion to major.

But it is likely that listening to soldiers accounts of fighting in Baghdad, and hearing some of the attitudes towards Muslims that combat is likely to have engendered, made its own impact on Hasan.

His aunt, Noel Hasan, who lives in Virginia, told the Washington Post he wanted to leave the army in part because of harassment after 9/11. She said Hasan offered to repay the cost of his medical training but the army would not let him go. She said her nephew "did not make many friends".

His cousin, Nader, said that counselling soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder was part of the reason Hasan did not want to serve in the Middle East. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw."

But it is clear that Hasan's opposition to serving in the region went beyond that. His hostility to American military involvement in the Middle East was open enough among fellow soldiers for it to have been noticed to by his superiors.

Category: Education

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Alleged Shooter Have PTSD ABC News major hasan fort hood shooting lying abc news martha raddatz robin roberts

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pfrizzle101 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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in the military there are severe consequences for traitors and murderers.. execute him. by firing squad

pfrizzle101 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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first of all HE HAD NEVER BEEN DEPLOYED how could he have ptsd.. i'm in iraq right now and i can tell you this man never had ptsd because he has never been in combat.. SECOND he was picked on?!?!?! he was a fucking major in the army almost a luitenant cl. nobody in there right mind would try to pick on someone of that rank.. this is bull shit this guy had links to TERRORIST organisations..

32bigpimp (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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maybe ptsd is contagas? like aids? or the flu? give me a fucking break he was a terroist. kill him now. period. has america lost its mind? are we that weak? weak leaders equals weak country.

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davetileguy (3 weeks ago) Show Hide

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ABC news JOKE!!! PTSB MY ASS! HE HAD MUSLIM SYNDROM!!

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