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.

Pro-Taliban Man Tries To Blow Up Bank To Set Off Civil War

Matthew Aaron Llaneza, the 28-year-old former marine and Muslim convert who calls himself  "Tarq Khan" who was arrested by the FBI for planning on bombing a Bank of America in Oakland, CA,  was a Taliban sympathizer.

The FBI press release states:

According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, on November 30, 2012, Llaneza met with a man who led him to believe he was connected with the Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan. In reality, this man was an undercover FBI agent. At this initial meeting, Llaneza proposed conducting a car-bomb attack against a bank in the San Francisco Bay Area. He proposed structuring the attack to make it appear that the responsible party was an umbrella organization for a loose collection of anti-government militias and their sympathizers. Llaneza’s stated goal was to trigger a governmental crackdown, which he expected would trigger a right-wing counter-response against the government followed by, he hoped, civil war.
The complaint further alleges that Llaneza subsequently selected the Bank of America branch at 303 Hegenberger Road in Oakland as the target for the attack. Llaneza ultimately specified a spot next to a support column of the bank building as a good location for the bomb, expressed a desire for the bomb to bring down the entire bank building, and offered to drive the car bomb to the bank at the time of the attack.

According to the complaint, in January and February 2013, Llaneza and the undercover agent constructed the purported explosive device inside a sport utility vehicle (SUV) parked inside a storage facility in Hayward, California. As part of the process of assembling the device, Llaneza purchased two cell phones to be used in creating and operating the trigger device for the car bomb. One of these cell phones was incorporated into the trigger device itself. The other was reserved for use on the night of the attack.
The criminal complaint alleges that on the evening of February 7, 2013, Llaneza drove the SUV containing the purported explosive device to the target bank branch in Oakland. He parked the SUV beneath an overhang of the bank building where he armed the trigger device. He then proceeded on foot to a nearby location a safe distance from the bank building, where he met the undercover agent. Once there, Llaneza attempted to detonate the bomb by using the second cell phone he had purchased to place two calls to the trigger device attached to the car bomb. Federal agents then arrested him.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, he also happened to have a history of mental illness. Mental illness + Islam = Lethal combination.

It will be interesting to see what unfolds as more information is gathered.