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On January 15, a report on the Novermber 5 Ft. Hood shooting was released by the DoD. The full text of the report can be found here: http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/DOD-ProtectingTheForce-Web_Security_HR_13Jan10.pdf
The purpose of this thread is two-fold:
1. Discuss the findings of the report.
2. Contrast the reporting of the Ft. Hood shooting with the reporting of the Christmas day airline attack.
Some excerpts (unfortunately, I can't seem to copy and paste from the report...):
Frankly, this is a shocking deficiency, existing on two separate levels:
1. Just as individual commanders monitor their troops for signs of suicide or domestic abuse, they need to be able to deal with signs of potential violence against their comrades. It may not be common, but nor is Ft. Hood unique.
2. The Ft. Hood incident was partially an intelligence failure. The FBI had information about Hasan's extremism, but didn't investigate enough.
And obviously, the integration of these two levels is also key. If the commanders who were whitewashing Hasan's performace reviews were aware that he was contacting a known extremist Imam in Yemen, perhaps they would have reacted more strongly. If the FBI had known Hasan was giving off-topic presentations justifying terrorism in his med school classes, perhaps they would have taken the contacts with the Imam more seriously. From the report:
An example of the first level is the killing of 5 troops at a Baghdad stress clinic in May of 2009. From an article on the incident:
That incidnet was a soldier who was referred to a counseling center, but the counseling is where the issue stopped. The response to the threat itself was insufficient and not integrated up and down the chain of command.
The second level is more difficult because it is a purely intelligence operation and essentially involves spying on our own troops. That makes a lot of people squeamish, but it doesn't make me squeamish as a civilian and for soldiers, your entire life is owned by the military. Monitoring and reporting needs to be done.
The report dealt with the whitewashing of the performace reviews. That's both an individual failure on the part of the commanders who did it (and there will likely be consequences for them) and a cultural failure by the military. Frankly, it appears that the military is afraid of being honest about the threat due to the PC culture in the US. More on that in the second secion, though. For here, simply put, Hasan should have been deemed unfit for miltiary service and separated:
One criticism of the report was the lack of usage of the word "terrorism", Islam or Hasan's name:
Reading the report, I'm less concerned than I initially was at hearing of the omissions: they aren't so much a flaw, just a limitation of the report. The report a good discussion of the flaws in military policy that caused Hasan's extremism to be missed, but it is not report about the Fort Hood shooting. Basically, it is a report about what the military did (a broad report, but a good one), not a report of what Hasan did. So we still need a report about what Hasan did. And that leads to the second section...
The purpose of this thread is two-fold:
1. Discuss the findings of the report.
2. Contrast the reporting of the Ft. Hood shooting with the reporting of the Christmas day airline attack.
Some excerpts (unfortunately, I can't seem to copy and paste from the report...):
In other words, the DoD simply doesn't look for "internal threats". They monitor troops to see if they may be suicide risks or beat their wives, etc., but they don't have a methodology for identifying and dealing with people who might commit violence against the military, from within the military.DoD force protection policies are not optomized for countering internal threats...Current efforts focus on forms of violence that typically lend themselves to law enforcement intervention (eg., suicide, domestic violence, gang-related activities rather than on perceptions of potential security threats)...
Frankly, this is a shocking deficiency, existing on two separate levels:
1. Just as individual commanders monitor their troops for signs of suicide or domestic abuse, they need to be able to deal with signs of potential violence against their comrades. It may not be common, but nor is Ft. Hood unique.
2. The Ft. Hood incident was partially an intelligence failure. The FBI had information about Hasan's extremism, but didn't investigate enough.
And obviously, the integration of these two levels is also key. If the commanders who were whitewashing Hasan's performace reviews were aware that he was contacting a known extremist Imam in Yemen, perhaps they would have reacted more strongly. If the FBI had known Hasan was giving off-topic presentations justifying terrorism in his med school classes, perhaps they would have taken the contacts with the Imam more seriously. From the report:
We believe a gap exists in providing information to the right people. The mechanmisms for sharing potential indicators of internal threats with appropriate command channels are limited.
An example of the first level is the killing of 5 troops at a Baghdad stress clinic in May of 2009. From an article on the incident:
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65452The report found that the Army doesn’t emphasize command involvement and responsibility for behavioral problems, and instead the brunt of the responsibility rests with chaplains “when it should be a Command, and Commanding Officer Program.”
The chaplain served as “de facto” behavioral health advocate, which contradicts MNF-I policy that states “chaplains cannot serve as suicide prevention officers nor will chaplains assume coordinating authority for the commander’s suicide prevention program.”
Majors through lieutenant colonels “need more than awareness training. They require precise instruction in effective suicide and behavioral problem remediation measures to effectively support our behavioral health professionals,” the report states.
At the unit level, “there is no real conception of when to command refer a soldier for assistance.”
That incidnet was a soldier who was referred to a counseling center, but the counseling is where the issue stopped. The response to the threat itself was insufficient and not integrated up and down the chain of command.
The second level is more difficult because it is a purely intelligence operation and essentially involves spying on our own troops. That makes a lot of people squeamish, but it doesn't make me squeamish as a civilian and for soldiers, your entire life is owned by the military. Monitoring and reporting needs to be done.
The report dealt with the whitewashing of the performace reviews. That's both an individual failure on the part of the commanders who did it (and there will likely be consequences for them) and a cultural failure by the military. Frankly, it appears that the military is afraid of being honest about the threat due to the PC culture in the US. More on that in the second secion, though. For here, simply put, Hasan should have been deemed unfit for miltiary service and separated:
That's from the executive summary - I'm having trouble finding more in-depth discussion of it. However, page 16 says that commanders need training in recognizing religious fanaticism or "self-radicalization" and differentiating it from "appropriate" religious practices.We conclude that though the policies we reviewed were generally adequate, several officers failed to comply with those policies when taking action regarding the alleged perpetrator. We recommend taht you refer matters of accountability for those failures to the Secretary of the Army for appropriate action.
One criticism of the report was the lack of usage of the word "terrorism", Islam or Hasan's name:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1954960,00.htmlThe U.S. military's just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission.
Reading the report, I'm less concerned than I initially was at hearing of the omissions: they aren't so much a flaw, just a limitation of the report. The report a good discussion of the flaws in military policy that caused Hasan's extremism to be missed, but it is not report about the Fort Hood shooting. Basically, it is a report about what the military did (a broad report, but a good one), not a report of what Hasan did. So we still need a report about what Hasan did. And that leads to the second section...
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