Real Clear Politics:
Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history. “After eight years of delay,” he intoned, “those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally [...]
The Hill:
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 [...]
Bloomberg:
Nov. 20 — Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for additional troops sent to Afghanistan and that NATO should provide half of the new soldiers.
An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000,” could fund more troops, Levin, [...]
FOX News:
Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez still suffers from injuries he began experiencing in Iraq three years ago — injuries caused not by bombs or guns but by a military-administered smallpox vaccine he got before he left the United States.
The shot, which the military strongly encourages troops to get, triggered a rare bad reaction in [...]
Phoenix Examiner:
Nidal Hasan, the Muslim U.S. Army Major accused of the mass killings at Fort Hood, is listed as participant in the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute’s (HSPI) Presidential Transition Task Force Report. While this is not entirely surprising, given Hasan’s former position in the Army, it raises significant questions about White House [...]
ABC News:
United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al-Qaeda recruiter, “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, over a six month period between [...]
The LA Times:
Writing From Kabul, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s inauguration today will be a somber affair. Gray storm clouds are slowly replacing the blue skies, and the sour tang of charcoal smoke hangs in the air. The mood among the internationals here is similarly gloomy. So many conversations end with the scratching [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) - Trying to avert another tragedy like the Fort Hood shootings, Defense Secretary Robert Gates named a former Army secretary and former Navy chief to review a broad range of Pentagon programs, ranging from medical and personnel policies to how well military bases are secured.
Army Secretary Togo West and former chief of naval [...]
Washington Post:
SEOUL — President Barack Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said on Thursday.
The news came as the president greeted 1,500 troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, just before boarding Air Force One and heading back to Washington after an eight-day [...]
Family Security Matters:
Marine Corporal Brian Mathews was home on a three-day leave for the 2006 Thanksgiving holiday. He had finished an eight-month tour of duty in Iraq and was planning to leave the military in June, 2007. Corporal Mathews, 21 years old, had enlisted in the Marines on his 17th birthday.
Brian’s mom, Trudy, had been [...]
New York Times:
Born in U.S., a Radical Cleric Inspires Terror
WASHINGTON — In nearly a dozen recent terrorism cases in the United States, Britain and Canada, investigators discovered the suspects had something in common: a devotion to the message of Anwar al-Awlaki, an eloquent Muslim cleric who has turned the Web into a tool for extremist [...]
BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday he is “very close” to a decision on boosting troop levels in Afghanistan and would make an announcement “in the next several weeks.”
In a transcript of the interview seen by Reuters, Obama said he did not want his successor as [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) - 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 [...]
British paper, don’t mind the typos.
Times Online:
British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with “bags of gold”, according to a new army field manual published yesterday.
Washington Post:
What a surprise — that someone who shouts “Allahu Akbar” (the “God is great” jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan’s religious [...]
The Wall Street Journal:
Grieving soldiers and families at Fort Hood, Texas, will get a visit from Sarah Palin next month as part of her national book tour, her publisher told Washington Wire.
The former vice presidential candidate, whose book “Going Rogue,” will be released on Tuesday, had already agreed to visit the Army base, according to [...]
The Wall Street Journal:
The president has been taking time thinking about Afghanistan. I cannot see why this is bad. If he’s really thinking, he’s not dithering—thought can be harder than action, weighing plans as hard as choosing and executing one. A question of such consequence deserves pondering. A president ought to summon and hear counsel [...]
CNN:
Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) — Those who knew Nidal Malik Hasan before he was a major in the Army — and the suspect in last week’s mass killing at Fort Hood — say he was long known for militant Islamist views.
Doctors who crossed paths with Hasan in medical programs paint a picture of a subpar [...]
The Hill:
The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee on Tuesday night accused the White House of withholding information on the Fort Hood attack.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) said administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman, raising “red flags” about what the White House was hiding.
“When they withhold information, you always start [...]
