Army More Concerned With Bad PR Than Jihadis in Their Midst; Promoted Hasan After Al Qaeda Contacts

Why connect the dots when this is all you need to tell you alarm bells should have been ringing loud and clear?

The mad major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood reportedly told senior Army doctors Muslim soldiers should be released as conscientious objectors to avoid "adverse events" in fighting other Muslims.

In late June 2007, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, then a senior psychiatric resident, delivered a lecture to supervisors and about 25 other medical staffers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center about threats the military could expect from Muslims fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported.

"It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims," Hasan said in the presentation.

"It was really strange," one staffer told the newspaper. "The senior doctors looked really upset."

A Walter Reed spokesman declined comment.

It is unclear if anyone reported the briefing to intelligence or law enforcement authorities, the Post reported.

By the way, why doesn't the media report it was 14 people killed? After all, one victim was pregnant. Doesn't the fetus count?

Anyway, despite the obvious signs this Hasan was a ticking bomb, there was more concern about bad PR than locking up or, at the least, discharging this maniac.

Psychiatrists who worked with Hasan at the Walter Reed were troubled by his work. The hospital's director of psychiatric residents, Scott Moran, discussed trying to kick him out of the program because he consistently underperformed, NPR News reported Tuesday.

One key official told NPR the hospital's policy committee, which oversees residents, got reports that Hasan had tried to convert a patient to Islam, telling the patient his religion would save him. Supervisors warned Hasan he needed to improve his performance.

Moran would not comment.

One source says the Policy Committee also discussed that it might be a bad public relations move to remove one of the few Muslims from their program.

Yes, one really wouldn't want any bad PR resulting from exposing one of their own as trying to contact Al Qaeda. Heck, let's promote the guy! Then he'll like us!

Counterterror agents intercepted messages between the Army shrink who killed 13 at Fort Hood and a radical imam in Yemen with ties to Al Qaeda - but decided they were harmless, U.S. officials said Monday night.

Critics want to know whether the feds - and the military - underestimated Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. And FBI Director Robert Mueller has launched an internal probe into whether his agency botched the case.

Accused mass murderer Hasan and radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki exchanged 10 to 20 "communications," sources said. Hasan caught the FBI's eye in December 2008 as part of another investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Agents pulled Hasan's military records, but the FBI in a statement said his contact with Awlaki was "consistent with research" he was doing "as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center."

"There was no indication that Maj. Hasan was planning an attack anywhere at all," a senior investigator said last night.

The FBI shared the info with Army brass, who not only refused to boot Hasan from the service but promoted him - even after colleagues were stunned by his views on the wars abroad.