2074 Pages… And senators will have a full three days to read it before voting.

President Barack Obama on Saturday urged Congress to hold off on any investigation of the Fort Hood rampage until federal law enforcement and military authorities have completed their probes into the shootings at the Texas Army post, which left 13 people dead.

On an eight-day Asia trip, Obama turned his attention home and pleaded for lawmakers to “resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater.” He said those who died on the nation’s largest Army post deserve justice, not political stagecraft.

“The stakes are far too high,” Obama said in a video and Internet address released by the White House while the president he was flying from Tokyo to Singapore, where Pacific Rim countries were meeting.

I had a tear in my eye when I finished reading this post!

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Uncle Jimbo:

He has already had the advice of his entire military chain of command with a near unanimous call for for reinforcements to move to the strategy that won in Iraq. We have watched as he has heard from the deep wisdom of Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel. We have seen him dither and quibble and show a completely ineffectual and uncommitted face to our enemies and the rest of the world. Now months after his hand-picked commander has told him the situation is bad and getting worse, our troops in the field fight and die without the support of their Commander in Chief. He sent 21,000 more brave men and women there and now they are flappin’ in the breeze. How can a squad leader look his men in the eyes and tell them to saddle up and head out on a patrol, perhaps to be the last to die for a cause their President no longer believes in.

You can’t set the circumstances for victory before you commit to trying to win one. You can’t set your strategy based on the hope that quality government will just spring up in the midst of chaos with no security.

Allahpundit has more

God Bless

Would it normally be considered a national-security problem if a high-ranking military officer had tried to contact an enemy of the United States during wartime?  ABC News reports that the FBI knew that Major Nidal Hasan had attempted to contact al-Qaeda and its associates months before Hasan went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, killing 13 people.  Did the FBI tell the Army about it?  That gets rather murky

UPDATES

Feds dropped inquiry into Hasan’s contacts with jihadis because … he didn’t seem violent

Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and earlier this year between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings. But federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding the messages warranted no further action, government officials said on Monday.

Maj. Hasan’s exchanges with Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Maj. Hasan worshipped, indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but left him in his post. It is not clear what was said in the exchanges, believed to be e-mail messages, and whether they would have offered a hint at the major’s outspoken views or his declining emotional state…

But federal officials briefed on the case said their decision to break off the investigation was reasonable based on the information about Maj. Hasan that was compiled at the time, which they said gave no indication he was likely to engage in violence.

The officials said the communications do not alter the prevailing theory that Maj. Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim.

George W. Bush just emailed me, asking where the apologies from the media are for blaming him for eight years for failing to have “connected the dots.”

David Horowitz diagnoses Gen. Casey’s p.c. debilitation.

You have to view this segment of the Meet the Press interview with Army chief of staff General George Casey to believe it — to believe that our army could be led by someone as incompetent in national security matters as this man showed he was, first by claiming that the army hadn’t “missed anything” in regard to the in-your-face warning signs exhibited by Major Hasan that he was a fanatical Muslim jihadist and an imminent threat to massacre our troops, by admitting that the army’s diversity policies had trumped its security policies, and worst of all by making this statement: ‘As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.’”

Matthews on Ft. Hood Suspect Warning Signal: ‘That’s Not a Crime to Call al Qaeda, Is It?’

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE – News; NYSE:FRE – News), the second largest provider of U.S. residential mortgage funding, on Friday posted a loss of $5 billion in the third quarter and predicted it would need more government support amid a “prolonged deterioration” in housing.

CNN Video of Hasan This Yesterday Morning

13 dead, 30 others in stable condition. Heard this morning two of the dead were civilians. Also this from the AP (and commenters in the thread), “Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, the base commander said Friday”

Nidal Hasan: Ft. Hood Shooter Participated in Homeland Security Disaster Preparation

The gunman who killed 12 people today at Ft. Hood appears, based on current media reports, to be Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan who was listed as a participant in a Homeland Security Policy Institute’s presidential transition task force last year.

The task force was not officially affiliated with the White House. It was a project of the Homeland Security Policy Institute, an independent thinktank housed at George Washington University, aimed at drafting policy recommendations for the incoming Obama administration.

'ALLAHU AKBAR'
WHY DID HE DO IT?
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan...
Was about to be deployed to Iraq, was 'upset about it'...
Gunman Made 'Outlandish' Comments Condemning Foreign Policy...
Strange behavior that morning...
'Emotional carnage'...
Dramatic photos from the scene...
Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting...

With Fox News exposed as a political advocacy organization and not a news channel, that leaves msnbc as the #1 most watched news channel on cable.

But with bad news for the Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a funny thing happened on the way to the bonus Hour of Spin. Keith wasn’t there!

Where in the world was Keith Olbermann?

MSNBC boasted that on election night they would present a “special live edition of Countdown” at 10:00 pm. But with bad news for the Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a funny thing happened on the way to the bonus Hour of Spin. Keith wasn’t there! After a live update (not from Olby but from Lawrence O’Donnell) A-Mess-NBC (”the place for politics”) proceeded to rerun the 8:00 pm showing.

Keith had obviously left the building. But why? Where in the world was Keith Olbermann? We don’t know yet, but we think we have a pretty good idea:

Is Jake referring to Keith in this Tweet: NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” is at the White House tonight. This is not a joke.