The System Worked: Terrorism Task Force Ignored Nidal Hasan Emails to Radical Cleric

Barack Obama still hasn't declared the Fort Hood massacre an act of terror and we figure he'd just rather be golfing.

But hey, he gets a B+ and the buck now stops with him or something like that. I suppose if we had a system of checks and balances someone in the government would look into this.

The case of crotch bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wasn't the first time the government's fumbling intelligence agencies failed to connect the dots.

In yet another stunning lapse, the terrorism task force keeping an eye on the Fort Hood killer decided to ignore a series of e-mails he was exchanging with the same fanatical imam linked to Abdulmutallab, according to a Pentagon report given to the White House last month.

Unhinged Army Maj. Nidal Hasan exchanged 18 e-mails with radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki some time before the November 2009 massacre. Those e-mails were intercepted by the FBI and watched under a court-ordered wiretap.

But amazingly, the task force stopped reading the missives after determining that Hasan, a psychiatrist, was not a threat, according to CBS News.

The FBI investigators also left a note on his file -- "comm" -- to warn the Pentagon that he was a commissioned officer, the network reported.

But in another blunder, the Pentagon understood the abbreviation to mean "communication," missing a key warning sign about the extent of al Qaeda's reach into the military.

Hasan had been in contact with the hate-spewing imam for more than a year before he slaughtered 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian, injuring 29 others.

In one of the screeds, the killer wrote: "I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife, according to an investigator who read the maniacal notes.

He also allegedly asked whether jihad is appropriate and whether God permits the murder of innocent people in suicide attacks. The notes weren't all boom and doom, though.

"Hasan told [Awlaki] he couldn't wait to join him in the discussions they would [be] having on non-alcoholic wine in the afterlife," the official told ABC News.

Since Hasan was in contact with Awlaki for more than a year it's still safe to blame Bush. Obama's crack team would have connected the dots except Bush hid the dots on them.