~Full Court Press
By COL (Dr.) Kathy Platoni
April 6, 2017
Nearly 8 years have passed since the Fort Hood Massacre. The victims have been long forgotten; the voices of the families of the fallen, the wounded, and the survivors left to tell the truths have long been silenced. The facts surrounding the largest massacre on any military installation in US history remain buried in an unmarked grave, along with the terrible truths that have yet to come to the fore: that eight civilian and high ranking military officers knew that the shooter, former Major Nidal Hasan, was a ticking bomb who had promised to do lethal harm to those who would dare to send him to war. The toll of the systematic assassinations and those left to carry the burden of unmatched survivor guilt continues to rise. Furthermore, there have been six suicides among the survivors. Four have been confirmed.
Live from his cell on death row at the Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the shooter has announced by handwritten letter, dated March 27th 2017, that he is planning a 99-pound hunger strike in order to trim down and maintain this body weight. Thirteen (13) of my fellow Soldiers lost their lives so that the shooter could give rise to deadly political statements in support of his extremist platforms, injuring 33 more of them so that his message would stick in the hearts and minds of those who carry the indelible and terrible physical and psychological scars in what remains considered, to this very day, an act of workplace violence and not an act of domestic terrorism. What does screaming “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire with the lethal force of 214 rounds fired mean to those who retain any degree of sanity and reason? This has left the bitter taste of one of the greatest travesties of justice ever to make the news repeatedly and yet the press insists on reporting that the shooter is going on a diet.
What further offends those of us left to report the bona fide truth is that this self-serving soldier of Allah continues to receive free reign to defecate on the lives of the wounded, the families of the fallen, and the survivors with his unceasing demands to be heard and to promote his cause as a soldier of Allah. Who is here to speak for the victims, long ago muzzled? That he is uninterruptedly permitted to have any say on any subject is, in itself, both a charade and a mockery of any justice yet to be granted to those who carry with them the fallout from the enormous human tragedy of this long-forgotten massacre. That we remember the name of the assassin and have expunged and disregarded the names of the victims only serves to promote his cause into perpetuity and to immortalize his brand of domestic terrorism at the expense of so many suffering souls. That the shooter is given free reign, once again, to commit yet another heinous offense against the victims of the Fort Hood Massacre is treasonous.