AP reporter Brett Blackledge should be ashamed of this lead:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
Soon after Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly opened fire at Ft. Hood, web surfers discovered some radical online comments signed "NidalHasan."
Interesting discovery. Bloggers like Steve Huff of ASSME kept this factoid in perspective:
We should really, really keep in mind the possibility that Nidal Hasan may not be as uncommon a name as the average American might assume. Still, an interesting comment was made by a “NidalHasan” on May 20, 2009 on a document published on the document hosting service, Scribd.com.
Blackledge wasn't so responsible. A casual reader would assume from the lede that Blackledge has some proof that these comments were written by the alleged shooter. Not so much:
At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.
So, Blackledge's anonymous source basically told him that the authorities had noticed the same inflammatory comments as everyone else. For obvious reasons, the FBI spends a lot of time scouring the internet for people waxing poetic about suicide bombings. People who write about suicide bombings probably know that. Which is one reason to wonder whether "NidalHasan" was the poster's real name.
The authorities admit they don't know who wrote it. Blackledge doesn't specify whether the authorities had any evidence besides the handle to link Nidal Hasan, MD of Fort Hood, TX to the posting.
It's the height of irresponsibility to imply that Nidal Malik Hasan posted those musings about suicide bombers on scribdb. We simply don't know.
There's no shortage of Nidal Hasans out there. Googling "Nidal Hasan" last night, I came across one in Nidal Hasan in Florida, one in Pakistan, and several others. There's even another Nidal Hasan, MD, an endocrinologist in Illinois. (By the time you google this, the page rankings will have changed. Items related to the alleged shooter will progressively crowd out the other Nidals.)
Let's not turn this horrible crime into an excuse for an orgy of Islamaphobia.
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