{"id":32530,"date":"2012-10-23T08:33:54","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T12:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32530"},"modified":"2012-10-23T08:34:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T12:34:46","slug":"pentagon-hides-behind-6th-amendment-in-hasan-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32530","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon hides behind 6th Amendment in Hasan case"},"content":{"rendered":"

We talked the other day<\/a> about the 160 victims of Nidal Hasan in the Fort Hood murders of 14 people who’ve banded together to fight against the Pentagon’s reticence to label the attack as terror, preferring the completely ridiculous “workplace violence” as if Nasan was a disgruntled employee instead of a jihadist who sought the counsel of a fellow traveler halfway around the world. Today, the Pentagon tells the Washington Times<\/a> that they won’t change their classification of the attack because they’re worried about whether or not Hasan would get a fair trial with an impartial jury if they called it terrorism;<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Defense is committed to the integrity of the ongoing court martial proceedings of Major Nadal Hassan and for that reason will not further characterize, at this time, the incident that occurred at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009,\u201d Pentagon spokesman George Little said in the statement. \u201cMajor Hassan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder, and 32 counts of attempted murder. As with all pending UCMJ matters, the accused is innocent until proven guilty.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t understand that answer. Whether it was terrorism or not, it doesn’t change the facts of the case. Why would a jury be more likely to be prejudiced against Hasan if his murder of 14 people were called terrorism? <\/p>\n

But Mark Zaid, a national security law expert who sued Libya for the 1988 terrorism bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, said he doubted the government\u2019s hesitancy to designate the Fort Hood assault terrorism was really motivated by concern about prejudicing his trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find that a little difficult to believe,\u201d he said. \u201cIf that was the case, than how in the world would the Pentagon prosecute any terrorism case? There is a process in any case \u2014 whether military or civilian \u2014 to deal with any potential bias of a juror. It\u2019s a fundamental part of the judicial system to ensure that juries are impartial.\u201d<\/p>\n

When presenting its case against Maj. Hasan, prosecutors will undoubtedly point to email chains between the defendant and al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, Mr. Zaid noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s clearly going to be terrorist angles in the process,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd calling it terror is not going to change the nature of the incident or the [jurors\u2019] knowledge about it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a continuing pattern from this administration who doesn’t want to admit to the fact that there’s a war going on in this country under their watch and they think that by mincing words, we’ll believe it. In the meantime, there are soldiers who are being cheated out of the status and medical treatment they deserve, screwed by geography and political cowardice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talked the other day about the 160 victims of Nidal Hasan in the Fort Hood … Pentagon hides behind 6th Amendment in Hasan case<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}