“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” — Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
On January 27, 2010 First lady Michelle Obama stood with Kimberly Munley, and Mark Todd of Killeen, Texas, on Capitol Hill in Washington, prior to the start of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. This was one of those Obama moments where he or Michelle use people for props in order to boost their personal popularity or sell a policy. It’s an example of their cynical and selfish use of people for their own purposes.
So who are Mark Todd and Kimberly Munley? They are the two federal officers who
The Secretary of the Army Award for Valor was awarded to police officers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd, for the roles they played in stopping the shooter. But there’s more to the story.
Associates raised repeated questions about his strange behavior but were squashed by what they call the Pentagon's "political correctness." A devout Muslim, Hasan was in extensive communication with al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, printed up business cards that read "Soldier of Allah," dressed in Islamic martyrdom garb, and handed out Korans the morning of the attack. He screamed "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire.
Nevertheless, Obama refuses to deem the largest attack on a U.S. military installation in history a terrorist assault, insisting that it was to be classified "workplace violence." Hasan's victims have been denied Purple Hearts. Fort Hood hero Kimberly Munley told ABC News that Obama "betrayed" her and the other victims. "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact, they've been neglected."
Michael Scheuer, the retired former head of the Bin Laden Issue Station, and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey have called the event a terrorist attack, as has the terrorism expert Walid Phares. Retired General Barry McCaffrey said on Anderson Cooper 360° that "it's starting to appear as if this was a domestic terrorist attack on fellow soldiers by a major in the Army who we educated for six years while he was giving off these vibes of disloyalty to his own force.
A spokesman for the Defense Department called the shooting an "isolated and tragic case", and Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged that his department would do "everything in its power to help the Fort Hood community get through these difficult times." The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, and numerous politicians, expressed condolences to the victims and their families — but have done nothing to relieve their pain and continued suffering.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated "we object to—and do not believe—that anti-Muslim sentiment should emanate from this This was an individual who does not, obviously, represent the Muslim faith." Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. said: "I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers . Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.
"Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline. According to February 12, 2013 report by ABC:
"Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."
There was no immediate comment from the White House about Munley's allegations.
Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier, and 32 others shot in the November 2009 rampage by the accused shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, who now awaits a military trial on charges of premeditated murder and attempted murder.”
…
“Munley, since laid off from her job with the base's civilian police force, was shot three times as she and her partner, Sgt. Mark Todd, confronted Hasan, who witnesses said had shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire on soldiers being processed for deployment to Afghanistan.
As Munley lay wounded, Todd fired the five bullets credited with bringing Hasan down.
Despite extensive evidence that Hasan was in communication with al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki prior to the attack, the military has denied the victims a Purple Heart and is treating the incident as "workplace violence" instead of "combat related" or terrorism.”
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“Some of the victims "had to find civilian doctors to get proper medical treatment" and the military has not assigned liaison officers to help them coordinate their recovery, said the group's lawyer, Reed Rubinstein.
"There's a substantial number of very serious, crippling cases of post-traumatic stress disorder exacerbated, frankly, by what the Army and the Defense Department did in this case," said Rubinstein. "We have a couple of cases in which the soldiers' command accused the soldiers of malingering, and would say things to them that Fort Hood really wasn't so bad, it wasn't combat."
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the Department of Defense is "committed to the highest care of those in our military family."
"Survivors of the incident at Fort Hood are eligible for the same medical benefits as all service members," said Little. "The Department of Defense is also committed to the integrity of the ongoing court martial proceedings of Major Nidal Hasan and for that reason will not at this time further characterize the incident."
Secretary of the Army John McHugh told ABC News he was unaware of any specific complaints from the Fort Hood victims, even though he is a named defendant in the lawsuit filed last November which specifically details the plight of many of them.”
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"These guys play stupid every time they're asked a question about it, they pretend like they have no clue," said Shawn Manning, who was shot six times that day at Fort Hood. Two of the bullets remain in his leg and spine, he said.
"It was no different than an insurgent in Iraq or Afghanistan trying to kill us," said Manning, who was twice deployed to Iraq and had to retire from the military because of his injuries.
An Army review board initially classified Manning's injuries as "combat related," but that finding was later overruled by higher-ups in the Army.
Manning says the "workplace violence" designation has cost him almost $70,000 in benefits that would have been available if his injuries were classified as "combat related."
"Basically, they're treating us like I was downtown and I got hit by a car," he told ABC News.
For Alonzo Lunsford, who was shot seven times at Fort Hood and blinded in one eye, the military's treatment is deeply hurtful.
"It's a slap in the face, not only for me but for all of the 32 that wore the uniform that day," he told ABC News.
Lunsford's medical records show his injuries were determined to be "in the line of duty" but neither he nor any of the other soldiers shot or killed at Fort Hood is eligible for the Purple Heart under the Department of Defense's current policy for decorations and awards.
Army Secretary McHugh says awarding Purple Hearts could adversely affect the trial of Major Hasan.
"To award a Purple Heart, it has to be done by a foreign terrorist element," said McHugh. "So to declare that soldier a foreign terrorist, we are told, I'm not an attorney and I don't run the Justice Department, but we're told would have a profound effect on the ability to conduct the trial."
Members of Congress, including the chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, say they will introduce legislation to force the military and the Obama administration to give the wounded and dead the recognition and honors they deserve.
Former Sgt. Munley says she now believes the White House used her for political advantage in arranging for her to sit next to Michelle Obama during the President's State of the Union address in 2010.
Munley says she has no hesitation now speaking out against the President or taking part in the lawsuit, because she wants to help the others who were shot that day and continue to suffer.
"We got tired of being neglected. So this was our last resort and I'm not ashamed of it a bit," said Munley. She is also raising money for a movie about Fort Hood, and says some of the proceeds will go to the victims.”
So who is Sgt. Kimberly Munley? According to a report in the New York Daily News Sgt. Kimberly Munley is one tough cookie:
“Tiny but tenacious, Sgt. Kimberly Munley was a "tough cookie" nicknamed Mighty Mouse long before her heroic takedown of the Fort Hood shooter.
"She's the happiest, sweetest, most fun-loving girl you'd ever want to be
friends with - and never want to cross," close friend Drew Peterson said Friday.
Munley, a 34-year-old mom of two, proved her mettle Thursday when Maj. Nidal Hasan launched his bloody rampage at the Army base.
Just three minutes after Hasan shot up his fellow soldiers, Munley tracked him down outside a pre-deployment facility and unloaded on him at close range.
"She fired on him twice and drew the attention toward her. He immediately spun around and charged her," said Chuck Medley, director of emergency services at Fort Hood.
"She fired a couple more rounds and fell back, continuing to fire."
Munley was hit in both legs and her wrist during the gun battle but stayed on her feet and kept firing at the charging gunman.
"She struck him a couple times in the upper torso and he went down," Medley said.
"When she rounded that corner, she made a split-second decision to put her life at risk. If she had not responded the way she had, we would have had an extremely high number of dead and injured."
Munley, a civilian cop employed by the Army, was recovering at the hospital Friday and was unavailable for comment, but she was doing well enough to take several calls from friends.
"She said one of the bullets hit an artery and she lost a lot of blood, but she sounded in good spirits," said country music singer Dierks Bentley, who met Munley at a July 4 event and called her Friday.
"She was laughing and joking."
To her friends, relatives and former colleagues in North Carolina, Munley's bravery was par for the course.
Wrightsville Beach Police Investigator Shaun Appler told the Daily News how the 120-pound cop saved him from an assailant who jumped him.
Appler was conducting a DWI traffic stop in January 2001 when he got into a heated argument with a driver and called for backup.
When Munley arrived, Appler had been tackled to the ground and was struggling to hold onto his gun.
"She actually launched on the back of this guy and together we were able to subdue him," Appler said.
'Mighty Mouse'
According to News Busters:
“It's not often that media outlets ignore their own scoops, but that's what ABC is doing. The network has (thus far) relegated to its website the latest details on the decision by the Obama Defense Department to deny Purple Hearts to the victims of the Fort Hood massacre. The rest of the networks have also skipped this story. ABC "obtained" a Pentagon position paper on the subject, but still failed to give it network coverage.
It was ABC alone that highlighted the story back in February. On February 12, Brian Ross explained the impact of the decision to deny Purple Hearts: "Former Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning, who still has bullets lodged in his body, says he has lost almost $70,000 in benefits otherwise available to those with combat-related injuries." So far, World News, Nightline and Good Morning America (as well as NBC and CBS) have failed to cover the newest details of the story. In fact, ABC has done nothing since February.
In contrast, Fox News in the last few days has highlighted the Purple Heart decision on The Five, Fox and Friends and the O'Reilly Factor. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer appeared on the Factor to discuss the case's implications and the Obama administration's claims.”
On ABCNews.com, Ned Berkowitz explained:
“A Pentagon position paper, delivered to congressional staff on Friday and obtained by ABC News, says giving the award to the Fort Hood victims could "irrevocably alter the fundamental character of this time-honored decoration" and "undermine the prosecution of Major Nidal Hasan [the alleged Fort Hood shooter] by materially and directly compromising Major Hasan's ability to receive a fair trial."
In the ABCNews.com article, Berkowitz even trumpeted his network's investigation, showcasing how his colleagues got results:
[Texas Congressman John] Carter re-introduced the legislation in February in the wake of an ABC News investigation detailing claims by victims that they have been neglected by the military. In a report that aired on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline," former police sergeant Kimberly Munley, who helped stop the Ft. Hood shooting, said she felt "betrayed" by President Obama and that he broke a promise to make sure the victims would be well taken care of.
Will ABC follow-up on its own story? At the very least, the journalists there covered the allegations. CBS and NBC skipped the story at the time and still aren't reporting on it now. Imagine the outcry if a Republican White House faced such claims.”
A trio of lawmakers is again pushing the Defense Department to classify the 2009 Fort Hood shootings as a terrorist attack, calling it a crucial step in helping the victims and their families.
Lawmakers and administration officials have fought over the designation for four and a half years, ever since 14 people were killed and 32 more were wounded in the shooting at the Texas base.
Allegations that White House officials have downplayed acts of terrorism linked to radical Islamic fundamentalists surfaced again last month following the bombings at the Boston marathon.
Numerous conservative lawmakers — and several Democrats — have chastised the administration for its reluctance to call the Boston attacks “Islamic terrorism” and referenced the Fort Hood attacks in their arguments.
Witnesses to the 2009 incident said the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, shouted Muslim prayers as he gunned down fellow soldiers. He is still awaiting trial on murder and assault charges.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week, the trio of House members — Tom Rooney, R-Fla.; Chaka Fattah, D-Pa.; and Frank Wolf, R-Va. — say the decision in the days following the attack to treat it as a workplace violence incident rather than a terrorist incident “has since resulted in an embarrassing lack of care and treatment by our military for the victims and their families.”
They want the tragedy formally classified as a combat-related attack, which would make the victims and their families eligible for additional payouts and the Purple Heart. Survivors of the attack have said they could see up to $800 more a month in disability pay if the attack was considered a combat injury.
But lawmakers have tried and failed each of the last three years to classify the attack as terrorism or a combat incident. White House and Pentagon officials have said doing so could compromise ongoing legal efforts against Hasan.
Last fall, then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reiterated that he would not change the classification, despite congressional requests. The lawmakers hope a new defense secretary will mean a new decision on the matter.
In a statement, Rooney said that survivors of the shooting have told him of numerous problems receiving care for their wounds, which they attribute to the non-combat status of the attack.
“They have revealed claims of mistreatment by the Army repeated denials and delays of medical treatment for individuals with physical injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury; denials of retirement benefits; and overall negligence and disregard,” he said.
“The Department of Defense and the Army should be ashamed of the terrible care and service they’ve provided to these heroic American soldiers.”
So what, exactly, does Barack Obama “preside” over? He claims to have learned about the IRS scandal by watching the evening news last Friday. He’s got no idea what those crazy rogue operatives in the State Department and intelligence community were doing when the Benghazi consulate was attacked, or during the crucial news cycles that followed. He’s got nothing to do with the economy — he wishes for jobs with all his heart when his head hits the pillow each night, but they never come. The sequester he insisted on suddenly became a conspiracy to short-circuit his beloved super-government by trimming a few bucks off future spending increases. Why, Mr. Obama was even helpless to keep the White House open for tours!
Reporting on the Benghazi and IRS scandals, NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander wailed, “Some observers are already asking if Mr. Obama is falling victim to the second-term curse.” Falling victim to a curse? Leaving aside for a moment the inconvenient detail that Benghazi happened at the end of Obama’s first term, the idea that he’s some hapless doomed victim of malicious second-term evil spirits is pathetic. He’s a bystander to his own presidency now. It’s a crappy reality show he watches on TV.
Obama is keen to expand government, but he wants nothing do with administering it. This is too bad, because he’s part of a lavishly funded operation called “The Obama Administration?” But he’s not even keen on discussing what the Obama Administration does. After he allegedly discovered the IRS scandal by watching TV on Friday night, he said nothing until the sole question permitted during his joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron broached the subject. Only then did Obama weigh in on a massive, rapidly developing scandal that threatens the very foundations of American government. He doesn’t even preside over his own mouth.
The spectacle of a non-President loosely associating himself with an un-Administration that doesn’t take responsibility for anything is particularly troubling in combination with Obama’s vision of the all-powerful super-State. Watch the Administration blather about “low level employees in Cincinnati” somehow unleashing a wave of politicized tax audits, then ask yourself how carefully the ObamaCare complaint box is likely to be monitored. The same people who targeted Obama’s political opponents for audits will be the enforcement arm of a health-care plan that’s already coming apart at the seams a plan that grants insane levels of “discretion” to the iron-fisted bureaucracy that will be enforcing scores of mandates against millions of individuals and business entities.
Even the combination of huge deficits plus non-budgeted federal spending is an evasion of accountability. There’s no requirement to sacrifice money from old programs to pay for new ones. Everyone can be promised everything. Fraud and abuse become permanent fixtures of the Leviathan State, because none of its dependents are expected to sacrifice a nickel after scam artists scurry away with billions of dollars. Politicians score points by promising to crack down on problems that never get addressed, because their failure to actually address the problem is not hurting any vengeful constituencies. It’s easy to talk about accountability when you know you’ll never be forced to eat your words at the ballot box buffet.
Obama’s vision of the total State requires an enormous level of trust from populace. The whole idea is to trade liberty for security, which the Founding Fathers did not view as a wise transaction. The State is supposed to be wiser, more compassionate, and more accountable than those horrid private-sector robber barons. People must be protected from both the ambitions of others, and the consequences of their own decisions.
That’s always been a ridiculous notion. The government’s lack of wisdom is laid bare in the ruins of Solyndra, or countless other scandals. Granting it credit for its compassion amounts to writing a blank check for endless “well-meaning” failures, and it’s foolish to criticize private industry for its alleged greed while ignoring the politician’s obvious lust for power and money. As for accountability, nothing ensures it better than a competitive environment in which dissatisfied customers can walk away. Supposedly we can keep the political class honest by threatening to vote it out of office, but that opportunity comes very infrequently, politicians have plenty of tools for escaping the wrath of angry voters, and they’re constantly telling us we have no real chance to vote against permanent “fixtures” like the progressive tax system or ObamaCare.
Isn’t it funny how “progressives” are always taking steps toward bigger government, which they insist can never be retraced… while simultaneously assuring voters they can be held accountable at the ballot box? How do you hold someone “accountable” for a disaster that can never be cleaned up? Why does anyone fall for that?
We find ourselves with an Administration that can no longer earn the minimal level of trust that would be required for a trim libertarian government, let alone reach the highly improbable level of transparency and accountability that would make Obama-sized government seem vaguely reasonable. Scandal after scandal rocks this Administration, but none of its power players are ever held to account. No one admits wrongdoing; nobody gets fired. Bloody disasters from Benghazi to Boston are portrayed as stunning surprises nobody could have anticipated, but then we learn of countless red flags that were ignored by the same government that devotes very special levels of scrutiny to law-abiding domestic political opponents. We are told to accept the authority of those who recognize no authority. We can be punished for failing to comply with their agenda, even when obedience violates our conscience, but no dereliction of duty on their part is unacceptable.
But notice that they love using the word “unacceptable.” It’s the frowny-face emoticon of political irresponsibility, a meaningless verbal gesture from people who very much expect us to accept their failures and lies. These actions of the IRS and Department of Justice belie Obama’s remarks at Ohio State University last week when he criticized those who were fearful of the tyranny of big government.
These are all examples of the duplicity and insensitivity of the Obama administration. It seems the Obama White House is responsible for nothing. The Foot Hood terrorist attack, Benghazigate, Extortion 17, the looming IRS criminal scandal, and the report of the Department of Justice illegally snooping into the phone records of the reporters of the AP are just the latest spate of scandals that Jay Carney claims the White House is not responsible for. It seems Obama is more interested in flying around the country in Air Force One making speeches to colleges and high schools than in acting like to chief executive officer of the Nation. Every time I see Jay Carney stand in front of the assembled White House press corps I think of Sgt. Schultz of the Hogan’s Heroes TV show when he would always claim “I know nothing.”
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