Bill O'Reilly allows Fox News "Strategic Analyst" Lt. Col. Ralph Peters to go on a rant calling the shooting at Fort Hood "the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9-11" with little to no push back other than to say that Hasan may have had personal problems that had little to do with his religion and time will tell if his religion was the primary reason for the shooting spree. The race baiting manifested itself in full force when Peters made this statement which O'Reilly left un-countered.
Peters: Yeah, well first of all, the charge that you know, he was harassed and he broke, good god, I mean every soldier goes through a little harassment, but let me tell you from personal experience, if there’s harassment toward a minority or a religious minority in our military, man…your career is over for harassing. And this guy filed a charge that was found, there was no foundation to the charge. He’d been a trouble maker and a sad sack for a long time but because he was part of a protected species, a protected minority, the Army let him slide, just reassigned him, and what happened? 13 soldiers, fellow soldiers and civilian dead, 28 seriously wounded, a few more lightly wounded and what do we say?
Oops? No, it’s time to get rid of the PC culture in the Army, in society, in the media, and Bill I believe your viewers understand that this was an act of Islamist terror, and the media is not going to fool them and President Obama’s not going to fool them and at some point we need to quit focusing on “Oh how tormented this poor Maj. Hasan was, and remember, what…how many of the names do we know of the dead? What about the names of the wounded? Have the media covered the family lives that have been destroyed? The lives that have been destroyed? No. It’s all about poor Maj. Hasan and I am ready to puke.
O’Reilly: Alright Col. we appreciate that very much.
What sort of mindset does it take to be able to equate human beings to a "protected species”? This was truly just disgusting to watch. And while I do not disagree with some of what Peters said, such as paying attention to the fact that there are a whole lot of families out there going through what are some really horrific times right now because of this tragedy, calling this the “worst terrorist attack since 9-11” is utterly ridiculous. And I would hope that we are taking a better look at why this man snapped other than the cartoon-like stereotype that Peters attempted to paint here and using this as an excuse to demonize or dehumanize the Muslim community.
I have a lot of questions about just what happened to cause this tragic and very sad event. I don’t have a lot of faith that any of us will have those questions ever answered honestly any time soon. In the mean time, we can count on Fox News to draw their own conclusions if it means drumming up the fear factor and racial tensions in America for ratings.
