A warning that was not heeded and is not being heeded. "Army warned about jihadist threat in '08," by Bill Gertz in The Washington Times, February 9 (thanks to Doc Washburn):
Almost two years before the deadly Fort Hood shooting by a radicalized Muslim officer, the U.S. Army was explicitly warned that jihadism -- Islamic holy war -- was a serious problem and threat to personnel in the U.S., according to participants at a major Army-sponsored conference.The annual Army anti-terrorism conference in Florida in February 2008 included presentations on the threat by counterterrorism specialists Patrick Poole, Army Lt. Col. Joseph Myers and Terri Wonder.
The meeting was organized by the Army's provost marshal general and included more than 350 force protection and anti-terrorism professionals who came from major Army installations and commands from around the world, according to participants.
Mr. Poole, a counterterrorism specialist and adviser to government and law-enforcement agencies, said his presentation and that of the other two counterterrorism experts "attempted to instruct these anti-terrorism and force protection professionals not just in the indicators of Islamic jihadism, but also the strategic deficiencies in the military comprehension of the overall jihadist threat."
The shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark., in June and the November shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 people have exposed the problem of the Army's deficiencies in understanding the nature of the domestic Islamic terrorist threat, Mr. Poole said.
The incidents have raised questions about whether the Army made any effort to "operationalize" the threat warnings from the 2008 conference and develop policies to counter the threats. "The answer quite clearly is no," Mr. Poole said....
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