Back in the mid-nineties, I did a few months at Fort Leavenworth. Relax, I was there for an Army school, not an involuntary stay at the military penitentiary. However, while there I did tour the prison facility.
The death house sits at the bottom of a set of stairs and sort of resembles a medical facility. Two walls are one-way mirrors. One is for government witnesses. The other is for victims’ families. The ceiling is made of those institutional acoustic tiles.
The condemned is strapped to a table that looks like a cross. Army medics then start IV lines in each arm that run through holes in the wall into a matching pair of closets. On the wall in each closet is a pair of lights-red and green if I recall correctly-and a homemade wooden contraption that holds a container of liquid. One is normal saline. The other is something far more sinister.
At the appointed hour the warden reads the charges against you. He then lets you speak for three minutes. He actually has a stopwatch. There is a microphone hanging from the ceiling to capture your macabre soliloquy for posterity. After three minutes he leaves the room and the lights change in the closets. The two executioners then upend their respective bottles. Neither one knows who administered the real juice. When the time comes for you to die you die in that antiseptic room alone.
It may sound a bit ghoulish, but I climbed up on the table. I just lay there for a while staring at those ceiling tiles. It felt a bit like being at the dentist. The monster we will discuss today will eventually die on that very table staring at those very ceiling tiles. The story of what brought him to that point is quite a cautionary tale.
The Origins of the Beast
With the crystalline clarity of hindsight, Nidal Malik Hasan never was quite right. Born in Arlington County, Virginia, to Palestinian immigrant parents, Nidal was raised alongside his two brothers in the Muslim faith. He was purportedly fairly tepid about Islam during his formative years. He grew up in Roanoke where his father established and operated several successful businesses. Both of his parents died relatively young, his mother when Nidal was 31.
Hasan entered the US Army upon graduation from High School and eventually earned a degree in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech. He was commissioned as an officer in the Army Medical Department in 1997 and accepted into the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS—pronounced “U-shoes” in some circles). Up until this point, on the surface at least, Nidal Hasan personified the American dream.
It took Hasan six years to complete the four-year curriculum at USUHS and earn his MD degree. He spent most of that time on academic probation. Hasan then did a residency in psychiatry at Walter Reed.
During his final year in residency Hasan made a presentation to his fellow Army physicians titled, “The Quranic World as It Relates to Muslims in the US Military.” Considering the author was a commissioned Army officer and his audience was comprised of similar folk the content of this presentation was fairly outlandish. Here are a few quotes:
The Department of Defense “should allow Muslims [sic] Soldiers the option of being released as “Conscientious objectors” to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.” He explained in a previous slide that “adverse events” could be “refusal to deploy, espionage, or killing of fellow soldiers.”
“…the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor“, referring to American soldiers. In retrospect, somebody obviously should have seen such stuff for what it was, but no one wanted to be labeled a racist. By 2009 CPT Hasan had been promoted to Major.
Just prior to his promotion Hasan received a poor performance review. He was stationed at Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood, Texas, and apparently lived in a fairly squalid part of nearby Killeen. In the summer of 2009, he legally purchased an FN Five-seveN handgun.
Apparently, Nidal Hasan was a fairly sensitive soul. He purportedly fainted at his first exposure to childbirth during medical school. I bet that was awkward. After treating emotionally traumatized US troops returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan he became disillusioned and bitter. Though military records stated that Hasan was unmarried, in 1997 he had two kids living with him whom he described as his sons.
In December of 2008 US intelligence services intercepted email exchanges between Nidal Hasan and Anwar Al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki had previously served as the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University and was once considered a moderate Muslim. Al-Awlaki was eventually fully radicalized. The FBI reviewed these email chains and determined that they were consistent with authorized research Hasan was doing to assist in his mental health treatment of Muslims serving in the American armed forces. Once again, no one wants to be branded a racist.
Major Hasan was slated to deploy to Afghanistan on November 28, 2009. Twenty-three days prior to his deployment Hasan gave away most of his furniture to friends and acquaintances. A fellow Muslim officer who prayed with him that morning claimed, “He appeared relaxed and not in any way troubled or nervous.”
At 1334 local time Major Nidal Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center (SRPC), a facility where troops receive routine medical treatment both before and after deployments. He bowed his head momentarily, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and opened fire with his Five-seveN handgun.
The Weapon
Introduced in 2000, the FN Five-seveN pistol was developed alongside the P90 Personal Defense Weapon. Both guns fire the radical bottlenecked 5.7x28mm cartridge. A delayed-blowback, semiautomatic, polymer-framed pistol that fires via a concealed hammer, the Five-seveN is unnaturally lightweight. It weighs a mere 1.3 pounds empty or 1.6 pounds with a loaded 20-round magazine. Feed is via 10, 20, or 30-round boxes.
Milspec SS190 armor-piercing rounds push a 31-grain bullet to around 2,100 fps out of the Five-seveN pistol and can penetrate a NATO CRISAT vest at 100 meters. This round will penetrate a PASGT (Personal Armor System Ground Troops) vest out to 300 meters. The Five-seveN exhibits roughly 30% less recoil than a 9mm parabellum and is exceptionally flat-shooting.
Because of its ability to defeat certain types of body armor, there has been a concerted effort to restrict the availability of the Five-seveN pistol to American shooters. FN limits the sale of AP ammo to military and Law Enforcement organizations. Civilian 5.7x28mm rounds have not been classified as armor piercing by the BATF. Concerted efforts by the Brady Campaign and Democratic members of Congress to have the gun banned by name have sold countless thousands of them to American civilian shooters.
Hasan’s Five-seveN was purportedly equipped with two Lasermax laser sights, one red and one green. I can’t really visualize how he might do that. He also carried an older model Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver but never fired it.
The Rest of the Story
Hasan “sprayed bullets in a fanlike motion” into the accumulated troops before targeting individual soldiers. Throughout his attack, he passed up opportunities to shoot civilians in favor of uniformed military personnel. Coming across a group of five civilian employees hiding under a desk, he swept his laser sight across them but let them be.
CPT John Gaffaney charged Hassan but was mortally wounded. A civilian Physician Assistant named Michael Cahill rushed him with a chair but was shot and killed. SPC Logan Burnett threw a table at him and was shot in the hip but survived. Per Army policy, none of the soldiers were authorized to carry personal firearms. In the middle of the largest active duty armored post in the US housing some 40,000 trained American warriors Major Nidal Hasan, homegrown radicalized terrorist, had found himself a gun-free zone.
Base civilian police officer SGT Kim Munley engaged Hasan outside the SRPC with her Beretta M9. Hasan hit her twice in the leg and took her out of the fight.
Base police SGT Mark Todd then arrived, and the two men engaged in a fierce exchange of fire. Hasan emptied his pistol, and Todd shot him five times while he scrambled for a fresh magazine. Over the course of about ten minutes, Hasan killed thirteen and injured another thirty.
Investigators recovered 146 shell casings from inside the SRPC and another 68 outside. Hasan was still carrying another 177 live rounds when he went down. He packed a total of sixteen magazines for his FN. One of SGT Todd’s 9mm rounds damaged Hasan’s spine and rendered him paraplegic.
Anwar Al-Awlaki was pulverized in an American drone strike in Al Jawf, Yemen, on September 30, 2011. As Al-Awlaki was an American citizen some complained that his targeted killing without due process violated his constitutional rights. These same woke sensitive souls are likely not overly burdened by restrictions on my 2nd Amendment rights. As regards Al-Awlaki’s death, I’m not personally too torn up over it.
Nidal Hasan insisted on representing himself at trial. He was convicted and sentenced to death in short order despite a furious row over whether or not shaving violated his religious beliefs. In 2014 Hasan posted a letter from prison to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi requesting he be made a citizen of the Islamic State. His signature included the abbreviation SoA (Soldier of Allah). His appeals are ongoing, but Nidal Hasan will indeed likely still get his chance to study those ceiling tiles.
The best response I’ve ever read to the military’s insane policy of disarming it’s active-duty troops was a blog post by Mad Ogre, who contended that upon successful graduation from AIT, ALL troops be presented along with the certificate a service pistol and a combat knife, to be worn with the uniform on post AT ALL TIMES, and they become his/her property on discharge. The idea that commanders are scared of their soldiers being armed on base while on active duty, even in combat zones shows how bad military “leadership” has become….
Executions must return to the public arena and be limited to firing squad or hanging. The sterile methods in secret chambers do nothing to inform the would be killer how he will pay for his crimes
A return to mandatory casteration for rapists is also necessary.
Liberalism is the cause of men like Hasan to rise up the ranks of the military as a substandard doctor. That same Liberalism turned the military into the biggest gun free zone in America. And Liberalism is the new Wokeism. And Wokeism is destroying the military one mind at a time.
Personally, I think it would be a logical standing order on any Army or Marine Corps post that all combat qualified and combat training personnel be required to carry a loaded duty weapon at all times while on-post.
However, in this age of “wokeness”, such an idea would likely terrify the current woke command structure…..
At first, I want to thank Mr. Dabbs for this excellently written article, which gave me very interesting insights about many things.
One of these insights is the fact about how an execution actually takes place, taking deadly liquids into the account. I have not known until now that there are actually two executioners, but only one is giving the deadly liquid to the condemned inmate, while the other one is just giving saline to him, yet none of the two executioners actually knows if he is the one giving the deadly liquid or not. This is very strange to me, due to the fact that these people probably have kind of volunteered to become executioners. Now, I do not know what goes on behind the curtains, but I do not believe that these guys are being forced to do this job and so I really wonder how someone wants to become an executioner, therefore knowingly wanting to take other people’s lives, yet the system, I just call it like that now, does not allow just one executioner to do all the work, so that this executioner would be giving the deadly liquid to the condemned prisoner knowingly. After all, they were ready to do this job in the first place, but feel free to correct me, if I should be wrong.
Now, a few thoughts of myself to Mr. Hasan: At first, I am also a believing person, yet an Evangelic Christian. Therefore, I can understand that it must had been kind of a tough psychological pressure for Mr. Hasan to serve in an army that often has to fight in countries that are the home of many people of his own religion. Now, I do not and will never speak nicely about what he did on 5th November 2009, but if I would be in the army and know that probably one day I will be sent to a mainly Christian country and it is my mission to shoot some of these people, or at least having to serve in the army that fights against them, I could understand what went on in Mr. Hasan’s head. Yet, the fact is that nobody forced him to join the armed forces, so I guess he must have known in the first place that it is likely the case that one day he will be sent to countries where he has to fight against people of his own faith. If he has a problem with that, and it seems to me that he actually had a very big problem with that, he could have never joined the army but kept being a civilian. After all, with a degree in Biochemistry there were many ways open for him, not just joining the armed services, I presume.
Unfortunately, I have seen among many Muslims how they slowly radicalize over time. It mostly takes years, but when this process is finished then it is almost impossible to get them off this road straight down to Hell. After all, we can see from Mr. Hasan’s early conclusions that he was not a friend of an Islamic State or a friend of any kinds of radical beliefs, but via time he fell for it. Now, let me tell you that I have read the entire Bible and the entire Quran and unfortunately, from my personal standpoint, I cannot believe at all that both books are from the same God. Sure, there are some tough stories and even laws in the Old Testament and Jesus himself said that he came to fulfill, not to change the actual law from the time of Moses, but the Quran sees every non-Muslim as an enemy, they call all of us “Kuffar”, allows women to be raped if they are prisoners of war, calls Jews pigs and monkeys and promises the men that die for their faith 72 virgins in heaven, while promising absolutely nothing for the Muslim women that are only being seen as birth machines, to raise the amount of Muslims and therefore strengthening Islam and spreading it all over the world by sheer numbers. The fact that not even Eve, our very supreme mother, is mentioned in the Quran already let my alarm bells ring, when I have read the book for the first time. The Bible and the Quran are as different as day and night and I am sorry if I offend anyone reading my words, but nobody can tell me that Mohammed was listening to the same God like Moses, Jesus and the other Biblical prophets did. Put into the account that most Islamic countries in the world are war-torn hellholes and you get very likely the idea that something about that book with plenty of violent verses cannot be right. Christianity did many mistakes too in history, there is no question about that, for example the destruction of the temple of Artemis, one of the seven world wonders, but there is no open war or slaughter today anymore, say between Evangelic and Catholic Christians, while Muslims kill each other on a daily basis, because everyone expects the other one to be a disbeliever and these people have no right to live, according to the law of the Quran. It’s crazy and unfortunately Mr. Hasan fell for all of this via time, although in the beginning of his life he was a promising American citizen and could have had it all.
“In retrospect, somebody obviously should have seen such stuff for what it was, but no one wanted to be labeled a racist.”
Mister Dabbs is right of what he is writing, but there is a problem, which I also cannot stand when talking with other people about this topic: Islam, or any other religion, is not a race and people that call you a racist, when you criticize this religion for questionable Quran verses, beliefs and rituals, are just plain stupid. No religion is a race and just because I am a believer it doesn’t mean that I am automatically a member of any kind of race. Not even the Jews are a race on their own. So, stand tough and say openly what you think of other religions and if somebody calls you a racist, just ask this person: “How do you come to the belief that a religion is a race?” I have already gathered a nice compilation of funny looking faces, after I have been labeled a racist and then asked this question to the ones just having called me a racist for criticizing certain Islamic beliefs and behaviors.
The fact that Mr. Hasan fainted when he had to endure his first exposure to childbirth is nothing that I personally could held against him. Now, I’ve never had the chance to be a father myself, so maybe this is why I believe that I am also very sensitive about this topic, but I am sure he was not the first or the last student in medical school that had this reaction. Just because doing gross things is part of the job doesn’t mean that everyone can do it automatically. Soldiers also have to do and see gross things, because it is part of their job and of course if nobody does this tough job then any country could be conquered by just anyone, so I am not at all criticizing them. Yet, I think we all know how many of these men come back home with posttraumatic stress disorder, after having spent months or even years in these unpredictable hellholes. I have seen very good non-political documentaries about it years ago and it is truly tough to see a family man suddenly having to leave the room during dinner, because he cannot stand anymore to sit together at the same table with his wife and children, while his entire body begins to shiver.
My last statement to this excellently written article: Having soldiers in a military base not being allowed to carry guns, not even concealed, is absolutely laughable and this stupid rule did cost 13 of them their lives, while 30 have been wounded. If this would have happened in a school I would not had been surprised, although it would had been just as horrible, but you never would expect such a massacre in a military base, which should be considered as a truly safe place, especially for the soldiers that do their service on that very base. And as long as there is no change about that, another Hasan might one day rise up again and also leave us again with such a tragedy. And I also believe that execution of Mr. Hasan cannot stop the pain for the family members of those soldiers that have been killed on that unforgotten 5th November 2009.
Another excellent account, Dr. Dabbs. I always enjoy these.
Will,
Thanks again as always for interesting postings and stories.
Secondly, upon your recommendation, I bought “Low Level Hell” by Hugh Mills. His way of describing how to fly a Loach makes me feel like I can jump in the right seat and take off. What a fantastic book!! It’s hard to believe how brave these young men were in ‘Nam. Imagine getting shot down in a Loach, then imagine getting shot down three times…..in one day! I believe the pilot was Rod Willis?
This is what should be taught in schools, politics about aside, on bravery and courage for ones country!
Now, on to ” One Day Too Long”……..
If anyone likes what Hasan did your in for a treat. With open borders and people from all over the world pouring in your gonna love whats coming. But there is salvation! CRT is being taught now in the military which is nothing but white genocide. Its ok tho’ everyone will live in harmony. Right? Uh….we will right?
Whatthehellever…….
I have it on good authority that highlighting this sort of rare instance is merely a distraction from America’s real existential threats;
Global warming and White Supremacist terrorism.
I mean really… How long can we go on ignoring the WS bloodbaths in the past like…. well, when that guy….. OK, that time that those….
ALRIGHT! I can’t think of a culture of mass murder perpetrated by WASP/OLIC terrorists but dammit…. there must be one. Czarina Pelosi says so!!!!!!
After all, the No’s 1 & 3 leaders of the Free-World said so.
Again and again and er, Hasan…. Oops, my bad there.
Todd.
I can always tell by the titles that I’m getting a Dabbs Tale, and I get all tingly in anticipation. I do wish the FBI and other alphabets would concentrate on terrorists who actually terrorize, rather than the made-up White Supremacists Biden blathers on about. I mean, I live in rural Arkansas, and we just want to be unmolested. We have no world domination religious creed. So sovereign citizens who enjoy constitutional rights are now terrorists. Despite no acts of terror. There’s some lefty logic for you.
Mr Mallory. What? My German and Irish ancestors came here in the 19th century. Should we all pack up and leave? Any non-crazy reason?
And yet, we cannot carry concealed on a military post. You can thank General “woke” Milley for slowrolling the policies for concealed carry for Army soldiers when he was CSA. I was there, and worked with the G34 who was advising Milley. He is an elitist, he was a good officer, but power comes at a price: compromise of values. He capitulated on the policy, yeah technically you can after you jump through so many hoops its not feasible and to my knowledge no one has gone through the bs to get approval to carry on base. The policy also requires renewal every six months.
Hasan will indeed die in prison. The police officer who shot him ended his life by destroying his spine. He will live out his miserable years in a wheelchair and changing colostomy bags long before the appeal process concludes. Personally, I hope he suffers and lives in throbbing pain FOREVER.
I hope he burns in hell for what he did.
He is burning in hell right now.
Hasan should have put out of his misery the day after he was sentenced. We should not be forced to pay for 3 Hots and a Cot for years for criminals sentenced to death living on death row. Once they are convicted, just do away with them. With the accuracy of DNA tests, determination of guilt is more accurate
What time in the 90s? I was a co at the USDB then.
“There are apparently those of our countrymen who actually object to our using unmanned drones to terminate such ilk as this. In my view, a Hellfire off of a Reaper drone seems somehow more cost-effective than decades spent languishing on my nickel at Gitmo. Good riddance.”
So when Biden or his handler puts you or your son on a kill list you are A-OK with that? Neither of the two men in this essay should have been in the US or had US citizenship. Neither were Americans and they never would be.
Both are examples of how all immigration has been bad for America and Americans. I take that assertion back to the 1830’s and 40’s when we were invaded by hordes of Irish and Germans.
But if you claim that they were both Americans and you don’t have a problem with the government kill list or the government using a drone strike on anyone in Yemen then you are just as big a part of the problem as these two muslims. Nothing in Yemen is any business of the US government or responsibility of the American tax payer. We would be better off with state militias forbidden from ever being used overseas than we are with this standing army we have now.
Truer words were never spoken.
So you’re OK way protecting the civil liberties of overseas-living muzzie terrorists like Al-Awlaki, all whilst FBI snipers executed Randy Weaver’s innocent wife Vicki as she held their 10 month old baby?
I guess you didn’t read the part where he was born in Virginia…? I still say he should fry, sooner than later, but try and keep your facts straight.