Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan Paid $278,000 While Jailed

Outrageous. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim major who gunned down fellow soldiers in 2009, has been receiving his salary while awaiting trial.  To date, he's received over $278,000. 13 people were mercilessly killed, 32 injured, it was obviously Hasan who murdered them, and yet according to some ludicrous military code he gets to keep his salary until he is proven guilty.  And yet, those wounded soldiers have been left high and dry: no pay or medical benefits that they would have received had they been wounded in combat, or had the attack been designated a "terrorist attack."

Retired Army Spc. Logan Burnett, a reservist who, in 2009, was soon to be deployed to Iraq, was shot three times when a gunman opened fire inside the Army Deployment Center.

“I honestly thought I was going to die in that building,” said Burnett. “Just blood everywhere and then the thought of -- that's my blood everywhere.”

Burnett nearly died. He's had more than a dozen surgeries since the shooting, and says post-traumatic stress still keeps him up at night.

Burnett is now fighting a new battle; only this one is against the U.S. Army.

The Army has not classified the wounds of the Ft. Hood victims as “combat related” and declines to label the shooting a “terrorist attack”,

The “combat related” designation is an important one, for without it Burnett and other shooting victims are not given combat-related pay, they are not eligible for Purple Heart retirement or medical benefits given to other soldiers wounded either at war or during the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon.

As a result, Burnett, his wife Torey, and the families of other Fort Hood victims miss out on thousands of dollars of potential benefits and pay every year.

Even though it was obviously more than "workplace violence", this is what the Army has chosen to label it. Hasan lucks out, and the wounded troops suffer.

Read the blood-pressure raising rest here.