Las Vegas Review-Journal - Vin Suprynowicz

Maj. Nidal Hasan was not drafted. He chose to become a U.S. Army officer because that way he could get American taxpayers to finance his medical education. And because he was a medical officer, the chance he would ever have been asked to discharge a firearm in the direction of an enemy combatant — even if deployed to a war zone — would have been minimal. His job, ironically enough, would have been psychiatric couseling of American troops.

Yet Hasan, an Arab Muslim Virginian whose family hails from Palestine, worried aloud repeatedly about being sent to Afghanistan where he might be asked to take part in a war effort against "fellow Muslims."

Did we mention that he joined the U.S. Army voluntarily?

So last November Maj. Hasan bought two handguns on the civilian market, brought them onto the base where he was stationed — Fort Hood, Texas — and proceeded to shoot and kill 13 of the soldiers for whom he was supposed to be caring, all while shouting the praises of Allah.

The Army doctor who turns out to be a fanatical Arab Muslim terrorist survived and now awaits a trial ... presumably.

Meantime, what a lot of Americans wondered when the Fort Hood shootings hit the news is why none of the soldiers gathered in a big hall on base to get some required inoculations bothered to shoot back — why 13 were dead before a pair of private security guards could rush to the scene and engage the Muslim terrorist.

Turns out, despite the fact our troops are currently involved in combat against irregular Muslim terrorists in several nations overseas — that is to say, despite the fact this is de facto a time of war — as of last fall, uniformed American military personnel weren't supposed to carry weapons on base.

So Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered last week that a new comprehensive policy on soldiers carrying weapons be developed to cover all branches of the military and its bases and offices. The standardized policy would replace or buttress a patchwork of regulations adopted by each service or individual military installation.

And the goal of the new policy will be to make sure our servicemen and women will never again be "caught with their pants down," standing there unarmed with their thumbs up their butts when a wahabi terrorist opens fire on "friendly territory" ... right?

Ha! Not been paying attention, of late? Welcome to the America of bow-to-the-sheikh Barack Obama and the "how soon can we surrender?" Democrats. Turns out Secretary Gates thinks the problem at Fort Hood was not that our brave boys in beige had nothing with which to shoot back, but that the terrorist Hasan found it easier to lay hands on a handgun outside the base than inside!

"Gates ordered that an interim weapons policy be in force by June, and a permanent one is due early next year," The Associated Press reported on Tax Day, April 15. "The new policy is expected to mirror restrictions already in place at some military installations that, for example, require guns brought onto a base to be registered with military police."

Rather than allowing our trained fighters to carry self-defense weapons at all times, they're going to try to make it harder for combat-shy Arab Muslim army officers to lay hands on the guns with which they may want to shoot their own troops! Secretary Gates and the Obama brass are going to use the same strategy as the king in the fairy tale who decided to protect his daughter from the evil fairy's "prick-her-finger" curse by attempting to banish all the sewing needles from the kingdom!

(How did that work out, by the way?)

Meantime, the administration says it's going to refuse the requests of Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, leftist of Connecticut, for more information on the Fort Hood massacre.

"Disclosure of some of the material you have requested could compromise the pending prosecution," administration lawyers wrote to the two senators earier this month.

"The administration said it does not want to generate pretrial publicity that could taint a jury pool or make witnesses reluctant to cooperate, and wants to avoid a barrage of defense lawyer requests that could force the government to reveal information it wants to save for a criminal trial," The AP reported, again on April 15.

Um ... jury pool? Criminal trial? An army officer shoots down and kills a dozen of his own men during time of war, and the administration is worried about "jury pools" and "criminal trials"? And here I thought verdicts in courts martial were handed down by a small group of superior officers. Massacring your own men is no longer a court martial offense?

Are they going to try this one on The People's Court, or before Judge Judy?

One thing we can be sure of: punishment by a firing squad is out of the question. Because to do that, you see ... they'd have to give some of our soldiers guns!