Allen West, GOP Candidate: Ft. Hood Shows "Terrorists Are Infiltrating Military"

Hours after 13 soldiers were shot to death in a massacre at Fort Hood, a Republican candidate for Congress (and former Fort Hood commander) is warning that terrorists are infiltrating the military and brainwashing U.S. soldiers.

Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret), who is running for Congress in Florida's 22nd District, released a statement on Friday morning that heavily insinuated that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the soldier responsible for the Fort Hood killings -- was a Muslim extremist.

"This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up," West said, in a statement titled "Terrorists Are infiltrating Military". "Our soldiers are being brainwashed."

While admitting that more information was needed about Thursday's tragedy, West nevertheless called for a renewed effort on the part of the military to prevent Islamic extremism from penetrating its ranks.

"The most importantly thing right now is that we objectively assess this situation," West said. "But it is imperative that we take steps to make sure this does not happen again."

In releasing his statement, West appears to be the first politician to claim a link between Malik Hasan's shooting rampage and Islamic extremism or terrorism. Reports on the incident aren't 100 percent clear. But they generally suggest that Malik Hasan was acting out of intense stress over a pending deployment to Iraq. That said, authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on the behest of an unidentified radical group. Hasan was a lifelong Muslim who worked at a psychiatric hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, West ran and lost a race for the 22nd Districts House seat in 2008. In 2003, he was forced to resign from the army, just shy of 20 years of service, after soldiers under his supervision (and he himself) were accused of assaulting an Iraqi detainee. West claimed his actions (which included firing a 9mm pistol close to the man's head) helped prevent a planned ambush by Iraqi insurgents.

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Comments

[dwedge]

09:46 PM on 11/07/2009

If Hasan is all that West claims he is, this is a terrible indictment of his superior officers. He had actually demonstrated some questionable behavior, so why did they promote him?

[Guitanguran]

06:55 AM on 11/08/2009

Not my quote but: "Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism."

You think the Army is any less vulnerable to PC pressure not to single a soldier out until...

The information is out there. Our PC media ignores it. At least there are some journalists doing some digging, and what they've found is scary.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6521758/Fort-Hood-shooting-Texas-army-killer-linked-to-September-11-terrorists.html

[dwedge]

11:29 AM on 11/08/2009

How come they can discharge gays so quickly and publicly? And BTW, what are the odds on a political candidate tapping into the anti-muslim sentiment resulting from the Fort Hood incident?

[teepeeyoyo]

11:52 AM on 11/07/2009

This is why the security clearance process is a joke....now surely this clown had a clearance.

[captain dave]

10:39 AM on 11/07/2009

Allan West is a good man. I just donated to his campaign after doing more research on his views. We need more of him-quickly!

[silverball]

11:52 AM on 11/07/2009

dave...pleeze turn off faux nooze.....

[Gidster]

04:59 PM on 11/07/2009

Need more knee-jerk evangelical bigots? I think not!

"The most importantly thing right now is that we objectively assess this situation," West said after he less than objectively called the man a terrorist infiltrator.....

There is a cognitive disconnect there.....

[jnutlfam2]

08:56 AM on 11/07/2009

"Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

....and I'll make them the scapegoat for all my hate ramblings

[S1m0n]

07:57 AM on 11/07/2009

Going postal is the quintessential modern american crime.

[GYRainforest]

12:32 AM on 11/07/2009

Allen West has a point. You jokers, stop being politically correct. You have absolutely no idea, of the evangelistic drive of the Islamist fundamentalist. Will you believe that infiltration has occurred and is occuring when an entire state is wiped out?

Arthuride, what utter bunk.

"The criminal element is the evangelical extremists in Christianity that are attempting to convert everyone who is not a bible-thumping miscreant Christian who believes that God wrote the Saint (King) James Version of the Bible. "

[1differentdrummer]

06:13 AM on 11/07/2009

I'm sure you have reasons for thinking as you do, but the Klan has been in the Army for many years. Terrorism, a tactic, has been there since at least Viet Nam when there were riots caused by racists attacking blacks.

[Rogan]

08:11 AM on 11/07/2009

If the massacre at Fort Hood, had been perpetrated by an entire squad of Muslim soldiers, acting together as a squad, you might have a point.

And yes, in some senses, we DO have to wait for something on a larger scale to happen, or for direct evidence in some other way, before we leap to the paranoid conclusion, that "terrorists are infiltrating our military."

[Philclock]

11:05 PM on 02/13/2010

That what you tell the relatives of the soldiers massacred at Ft. Hood?

[stryker]

11:57 PM on 11/06/2009

So terry mcveigh, a Christian US veteran wipes out hundred in the bombing of the Murtaugh Building in Oklahoma City. Did any of these rightwing nutjobs call for a purge of Christians from the military?

[T Specter]

08:14 PM on 11/06/2009

When will we investigate the Christian White Supremacist Element in our Armed Services?

[skullman]

02:46 AM on 11/07/2009

I don't think that is going to happen.

[dimplesmile7]

03:12 AM on 11/07/2009

Never. They get a free pass on everything.

[Gidster]

05:02 PM on 11/07/2009

There is a huge contingent at the AF academy......What they are doing is converting service men and women to the evangelical Christian supremacy mind set....Fundamentalists with military training and weaponry......Who does that sound like again?

[Chumleysmom]

07:27 PM on 11/06/2009

A Republican making a fe.ar mon.gering, raci$t comment based either on incomplete information or outright fabri.cations ... why is this a headline?

Isn't such thinking now officially included in the party's platform?

[SimJack]

09:19 AM on 11/07/2009

He's running for office. Don't you want to know how your candidates think? Seems Mr. West has a selective memory and left out the part where 2 terrorists also infiltrated the executive branch in 2000. How come he doesn't mention the number of dead, wounded, abandoned and financially ruined they racked up over 8 years along with creating a new refugee class within their own country.

[Rogan]

08:04 AM on 02/17/2010

Well said!

[Bompa]

06:56 PM on 11/06/2009

While this was all going down... i was wondering just how long it would be before the wingnut-religocrazies would try and turn it into their next attempt at "cleansing" the Muslims that are trying to live peacefully in America..... didn't take long for the big broad brush to come out.....

[Ro2dawn]

05:45 PM on 11/06/2009

For those of you who knows what a dictionary is(as in Webster), I suggest you go look up the words "terror" "terrorism" "terrorize".

Terror = a state of intense fear; one that inspires anxiety; worry; violence committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.
Terrorism = the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion
Terrorize = to fill with terror or anxiety; scare; to coerce by threat or violence

If you go back and listen to Michelle Bachman's words urging her followers to go to Washington, she would fall into this category.
SO, why isn't the DC Police, Homeland Security, the FBI isn't looking into her terrorism activites?

[Rogan]

08:06 AM on 02/17/2010

Because the same "interests" that encouraged Bachman (sp?) to talk like that, also have a stranglehold on much of Washington, including, all too obviously, the Justice Department, and "Homeland Security." (A phrase that is rapidly turning into one of those oxymorons that make you giggle, alongside "jumbo shrimp," and, oddly enough, "military intelligence...")

[JDJase]

04:28 PM on 11/06/2009

Allen West sounds about as crazy as Mayor Adam West (Family Guy)

[Wallysmom]

05:52 PM on 11/06/2009

or Adam West, the B-movie actor that played Batman.

Allen West, the candidate, must be running for the Paranoia Party

[arthuride]

04:26 PM on 11/06/2009

The criminal element is the evangelical extremists in Christianity that are attempting to convert everyone who is not a bible-thumping miscreant Christian who believes that God wrote the Saint (King) James Version of the Bible. The fact that evangelicals are constantly preying on military personnel, like Sarah Palin's Adventist Prayer Warriors is ignored and the amount of stress forced on nonpracticing or nonconfession evangelicals goes beyond even the limits of free speech. Atheists, agnostics, free-thinkers are constantly harrassed in the military and military schools with the claim that an army of angels will descend to the earth and wreck greater vengeance on mortalkind than did Mohammad in the seventh century. Not until there is a full, firm, and tall wall separating state and church will anyone be free of this madness, for while Islam does have jihad (a word that is mistranslated from "spiritual cleansing" being transmogrified into "ethnic/apostate cleansing"), so too have the Christian wackos resurrected the most infamous word in the language "Crusade" which Arabs understand as "baby and woman killing" from the days of Pope Innocent III who called on the fraticidial families of Europe to send their second and later born sons to war for a piece of the True Cross--during which they slaughtered Jews, Orthodox, and fellow Catholics on their bloody march to Jerusalem.

[NorthernCross]

04:17 PM on 11/06/2009

Oh that's bull. The word Mus.lim is gets moderated while Christian does not.

[scorpioleidy]

04:25 PM on 11/06/2009

Only in America ... :-)

[NorthernCross]

04:16 PM on 11/06/2009

Test...

Christian