April 25, 2005

Witness: Akbar Attack Compromised Iraq War

A sergeant's attack on his own colleagues in the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait sidelined key personnel the unit needed for its assignment in the invasion of Iraq, a commander testified Monday.

"Everybody knew this would be a big fight," Col. Ben Hodges testified Monday at a sentencing hearing for Sgt. Hasan Akbar, convicted in a grenade and rifle attack that killed two soldiers and wounded 14. "I never dreamed my first casualties would occur inside Camp Pennsylvania and they would be caused by one of my own soldiers."

Hodges commanded the 101st's 1st Brigade Combat Team and was among those wounded in Akbar's attack. He testified for the prosecution, which is seeking a death sentence for Akbar, 34.
[...]
Hodges said Akbar's attack took out of action key personnel responsible for planning troop movements. He said that resulted in the brigade being slow to isolate the city of Najaf, allowing some Iraqi fighters to escape.

"I lost three or four positions that were the worst possible ones we could have lost," Hodges said.
[...]
Akbar's father, John Akbar of Seattle, said outside the court building that he went to church over the weekend and prayed that his son's life would be spared. The father is expected to testify for the defense.
[Doesn't Al-Presseera mean he went to a mosque to pray?
You can't make me believe that either this man or his son was born with the name "Akbar," either.--Jen]

Before the start of testimony Monday, the military judge overseeing the case said he would not allow prosecutors to introduce evidence of a fight Akbar had with a military police officer in the court building last month. Akbar secreted a weapon in an office and stabbed the MP in the neck while in the restroom, but the judge said that "opportunistic stabbing" didn't show a pattern of violence.
[Looks as if a Clintonista liberal judge snuck into this military tribunal...J.T.]

The defense has said Akbar carried out the attack but was too mentally ill to have premeditated it — a necessary condition for a death sentence. Now, the defense has the task of persuading the jurors — all of whom said they could vote for a death sentence — to spare Akbar's life.

This man not only committed the worst crime a soldier can carry out, murdering his fellow soldiers (if memory serves, he killed 2 of his commanding officers), but he did if for the Enemy: he was waging Islamist jihad as a radical Muslim against the American "infidel."
There's no question that he should receive the death penalty, particularly because he appointed himself judge and jury to carry out his "executions."
The more troubling question is how this man got into our armed forces without his true loyalties to Islamism and jihad being discovered before it was too late.
(Even allowing the argument that he was "mentally ill" to stand, how did his lunacy evade detection in the ranks then?)
It's common knowledge that Islamist clerics have penetrated our military's chaplain corps as well as those of our prisons.
Now that we're 3 and 1/2 years past 9/11 and the commencement of the War on Islamist Terror, isn't requiring a loyalty oath to America (superseding any loyalty to wage jihad) a good idea for these "men of God Allah?"