Fort Hood investigation and getting fair trial

West and Clark should give particular scrutiny to Hasan's career as a military psychiatrist. Such an inquiry may not be as rhetorically sexy as those involving terrorism or Islamic extremism, but it is critical to the issue of whether veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are receiving anything close to the sort of treatment they deserve from military health services.

Zwerdling quoted from the evaluation: “The faculty has serious concerns about Capt. Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.”

According to NPR, Hassan's colleagues described him as “disconnected from other people,” and more than one speculated that he might be psychotic. Several reported his obsessive fixation on Islamic religiosity; one reportedly officially raised the issue of whether that religious fanaticism might trigger an act of betrayal, and another colleague raised the possibility that he might be capable of the sort of fratricide of which he is now accused.

Now call me old-fashioned, but before we get to questions of intelligence-gathering or monitoring potential terrorists, I'd like to know how the Army allowed a possibly psychotic psychiatrist in the grip of a hostile religious mania to treat servicemen and women suffering with the most intimate wounds combat can inflict. Was the process of removing him deemed too legally burdensome? Was he given a pass because his superiors feared accusations of bias against a religious Muslim?

We need answers to those questions; we need them now — and answering them won't compromise Hasan's right to a fair trial.

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