Shame-Out: It's the little things?

Here's an interesting tidbit that I heard on NPR this morning.

Here's a link to the audio for the story

Here's the transcript


It's about the now famous Ft-Hood Shooter; the Muslim major.

1) did you know he went to Medical School courtesy of the US army? He was a podiatrist when he went into the army.


2) Apparently, when he was at school, There were some concerned people were at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. (where he attended medical school),about his performance there. Daniel Zwerdling discusses this:

...indicates deletions from transcript (my edits)...

...At the end of 2007, the government sent Hasan to the military's medical school, ...right here in the Washington, D.C. area. And pretty soon the psychiatrists and officials and professors there were very worried about Hasan and they started having a series of conversations and meetings in early 2008, wondering - is it possible that Nidal Hasan is psychotic?

And, It basically means out of touch with reality, and if doctors are using this word, they mean it in that very specific, clinical way.

It was not you know, he was not sent, puzzling enough, to a mental evaluation, but what made them wonder if he was psychotic is that one thing is that they kept telling him over and over again - and I've gotten documents that show this - Nidal, youre doing a really bad job; ...academically you are just not cutting it. And he basically would blow them off and ignore them.

Here's the kicker to this story (which to my knowledge had almost NO impact today!

We should be clear - in fact its part of your story - that there was no formal psychiatric evaluation of this man. But still, you have doctors and colleagues who are very concerned about him. I mean what did they do about it?

ZWERDLING: They sat around trying to figure out where could we sent Nidal Hasan that would do the least harm? One psychiatrist said, you know, in the military there's a long tradition - when you have somebody who is a loser or is a failure or you're worried about, you try to create a job for them where they can, ...do as little harm as possible. And they decided, lets send him to Fort Hood.

Why Fort Hood? Because Fort Hood has a bigger mental health staff than most Army bases, and they thought, you know, at least if he goes to Fort Hood and he doesn't do anything of value, theres plenty of other people to pick up the slack. But number two, there will be lots of psychiatrists around there to help him and monitor him.

But one psychiatrist said to me, you know, we were sort of hoping he'd go to Fort Hood and disappear.

Hmmm....
Another conspiracy theory anyone?

Lou? care to comment on THIS?