Hasan wants to put America’s misadventure in Afghanistan on trial, and Osborn has blocked that, saying that “the legitimacy of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is ‘a non-justiciable political question not before the court.'” All right. But barring him from doing this will also obscure the fact, still disputed by the U.S. government, that he is an Islamic jihadist, and that Islamic jihadists consider that their allegiance to Islam overrides any national loyalties. The idea that a Major in the American Army would murder Americans in defense of Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan would have been illuminating in many ways amid a universal mainstream media and government determination to ignore, deny, and downplay the reality of Islamic jihad. But this whole trial has been a comedy of errors and politically correct absurdities already — why stop now?
“Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan banned from arguing he was defending the Taliban,” by M. Alex Johnson for NBC News, June 14 (thanks to Kenneth):
A military judge barred Army Maj. Nidal Hasan on Friday from arguing at his court-martial that he was legally acting to protect Taliban leaders when he killed 13 people and injured 32 others in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
Hasan, who’s representing himself, has said the shootings were a premeditated “defense of others” to safeguard Mullah Mohammed Omar and other Taliban leaders in Afghanistan from attacks by the U.S. military.
Hasan, 42, a Muslim-American Army psychiatrist, faces the death penalty if he is convicted in the Nov. 5, 2009, shootings.
The judge, Col. Tara Osborn, said Friday that Hasan’s argument “fails as a matter of law” and barred him from alluding to it in any way because the legitimacy of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is “a non-justiciable political question not before the court,” the Killeen Daily Record reported.
“None of (the victims) in Fort Hood, Texas, posed an immediate imminent threat to those in Afghanistan,” she said.
Hasan is seeking a three-month delay in his court-martial, which would be held at the same base he shot up 3½ years ago. Although he fired his three defense attorneys, Osborn has ordered them to assist him anyway “” an order they’ve objected to….