This website documents my PGR experiences and therefore reflects the nature of my participation. For example, there are no Welcome-Home stories because I don’t do Welcome-Homes. I do funeral missions. With rare exception, the PGR funeral missions are for American warriors, usually soldiers.

And so it is quite appropriate that this page commemorates the death of an American soldier. American by birth, his parents immigrated from a Palestinian village in the West Bank, near Jerusalem. An officer and a Medical Doctor, he joined the United States Army immediately after high school and was fully vested in his army pension when his career came to an abrupt end. He is unusual in that he spent his entire career within this country – he never deployed.

While not all Muslims are our enemy, our enemy is all Muslim. So he is also unusual among these pages because he is a Muslim. As both soldier and doctor, he is doubly unusual in championing suicide-bombers. And he us unusual among these pages because he is not dead yet. But he will be soon, though not soon enough.

USA Major Nidal Malik Hasan, Virginia Tech graduate, is an Islamist sleeper. According to the Pentagon, Hasan never sought release from the army as a conscientious objector or for any other reason. There is no record of him filing a complaint of harassment for his faith. He saw himself as an enemy of our army but he didn’t want out of it.

In an attack that will (eventually) result in his death, he did more damage than most suicidal Islamic martyrs. He killed twelve adult soldiers, one adult civilian and one unborn American. He wounded 43 others; 9 of them gravely. He was stopped only when a police officer shot him repeatedly, even as she was shot repeatedly by Hasan. He fired about 100 rounds.

Before he began shooting, he dressed in a “shalwar-kameez” which is the traditional attire of the Pashtun tribe. The Pashtu are originally from Pakistan but have also settled in southern Afghanistan. They filled the political vacuum after the Soviets were expelled and became the Taliban. This is what they wear and this is an example of what Hasan wore:

This is significant because Hasan was an American. We don’t dress like that. Even his parents were Palestinian – they don’t dress like that. In fact, most Afghans don’t dress like that. There is only one group other than Pashtuns who dress like that: Islamists who travel to Afghanistan for jihad and want to show solidarity with the Taliban.

In 1963, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) was founded at the University of Illinois by immigrant activists from the Muslim Brotherhood with Saudi money. From that start, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood bolstered by Wahhabi funding and influence have become pervasive in this country.

The Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Political Affairs Council and the Muslim American Society all have roots in hateful, anti-western Wahhabi-Salafi Islamist ideology. The MSA (which lionizes Osama bin Laden) has more than a thousand college chapters in North America.

Hasan was a member of Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Virginia. It is one of the largest and most radical mosques in the country. Anwar al Awlaki was a spiritual leader there in 2001 and ministered to three of the 9/11 hijackers. Hasan’s mother’s funeral was held at that mosque on May 31^st of that year (his father died in 1998) and Awlaki presided at that funeral.

Awlaki is American-born but left this country in 2002. He now operates a website in Yemen on which he wrote that American Muslims who condemn Hasan’s attack are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion. He also wrote that the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal (Hasan)."

On a Thursday morning, Hasan called a neighbor named Willie Bell and left a message on his answering machine: “Nice knowing you, old friend. I’m going to miss you.”

He dressed in a white shalwar-kameez and white kufi prayer cap and went to a 7-Eleven near Fort Hood where he purchased coffee and a hash brown. He entered the 100,000 acre base.

At 1:30 he entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center. It is primarily a large room filled with many small cubicles defined by 5-foot high dividers. 300 unarmed soldiers were trapped. Hasan shouted Allahu Akbar! and began. Witnesses said the fire was continuous, methodical and well-aimed.

The soldiers were trained-up for deployment and all soldiers are trained in the treatment of traumatic injury: “PFC Amber Bahr, 19, of Random Lake, Wis., tore up her blouse and used it as a tourniquet on a wounded comrade. It was only later that she realized she'd been shot in the back, the bullet exiting her abdomen.”

Of the 12 soldiers killed, five come from hometowns within 130 miles of my home. Unfortunately, because they all died at the same time, many of their funerals are simultaneous. I am able to attend two, however.

PFC Michael Pearson, 22

PVT Francheska Velez, 21

These two and the ten other soldiers, the retired CWO and the baby were not killed in a terrible accident. They were not victims of a tragic error. They were not crime statistics.

They were soldiers. They were facing the enemy. They fell in battle.

They knew the enemy was Islamic, armed and suicidal. They knew the enemy was treacherous. And they knew the enemy wanted to kill and destroy simply because he hates Western Civilization.

They didn’t know they would confront him within a Texas army base.

We knew Hasan was Islamic when he joined our army as a teenager. Apparently he became an Islamist later. But the sequence really doesn’t matter. The simple fact is that Hasan is a home-grown Islamist who infiltrated our military. He embraced a faith that offered him not religious comfort but political sedition.

Hasan believes that this is a religious war. It is time for the rest of us to understand that too.

The names of the dead were released two days after the shootings, the day that the President gives his weekly radio address. He urged us not to jump to conclusions, but instead to celebrate the diversity of the army:

I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes today about the tragedy that took place at Ft. Hood. This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers.

It is an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred anyplace in America. It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it’s all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims.

The SRP is where our men and women in uniform go before getting deployed. It’s where they get their teeth checked and their medical records updated and make sure everything is in order before getting shipped out. It was in this place, on a base where our soldiers ought to feel most safe, where those brave Americans who are preparing to risk their lives in defense of our nation, lost their lives in a crime against our nation.

Soldiers stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world called and emailed loved ones at Ft. Hood, all expressing the same stunned reaction: I’m supposed to be the one in harm’s way, not you.

Thursday’s shooting was one of the most devastating ever committed on an American military base. And yet, even as we saw the worst of human nature on full display, we also saw the best of America. We saw soldiers and civilians alike rushing to aid fallen comrades; tearing off bullet-riddled clothes to treat the injured; using blouses as tourniquets; taking down the shooter even as they bore wounds themselves.

We saw soldiers bringing to bear on our own soil the skills they had been trained to use abroad; skills that been honed through years of determined effort for one purpose and one purpose only: to protect and defend the United States of America.

We saw the valor, selflessness, and unity of purpose that make our servicemen and women the finest fighting force on Earth; that make the United States military the best the world has ever known; and that make all of us proud to be Americans.

On Friday, I met with FBI Director Mueller, Defense Secretary Gates, and representatives of the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what led to this terrible crime. And I’ll continue to be in close contact with them as new information comes in.

We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing. But what we do know is that our thoughts are with every single one of the men and women who were injured at Ft. Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy. And our thoughts are with all the Americans who wear – or who’ve worn – the proud uniform of the United States of America; our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast guardsmen, and the military families who love and support them.

In tribute to those who fell at Ft. Hood, I’ve ordered flags flying over the White House, and other federal buildings to be lowered to half-staff from now until Veterans Day next Wednesday. Veterans Day is our chance to honor those Americans who’ve served on battlefields from Lexington to Antietam, Normandy to Manila, Inchon to Khe Sanh, Ramadi to Kandahar.

They are Americans of every race, faith, and station. They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers. They are descendents of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is a patriotism like no other. What they share is a commitment to country that has been tested and proved worthy. What they share is the same unflinching courage, unblinking compassion, and uncommon camaraderie that the soldiers and civilians of Ft. Hood showed America and showed the world.

These are the men and women we honor today. These are the men and women we’ll honor on Veterans Day. And these are the men and women we shall honor every day, in times of war and times of peace, so long as our nation endures.

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