[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 15 (Tuesday, February 2, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H455-H460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               FORT HOOD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I hail from Central Texas, and I am very, 
very proud to say that I have the largest military facility in the 
world in my district, Fort Hood, Texas. If you are in the Army, you 
know where Fort Hood is. In fact, I think if you find any 20-year 
veteran of the Army, you will find out they have been to Fort Hood, 
some of them once, twice, three, four times, because it is a huge 
training post. And it is the great place, as they call it, in Central 
Texas.
  The great place had a great disaster happen to us on November 5 of 
last year, when Major Nidal Hasan attacked and killed 13 soldiers and a 
baby in the womb, and wounded 43 others before two courageous police 
officers, responding to this violence at Fort Hood,

[[Page H456]]

came and basically shot the man and brought him down, one of them, a 
young lady, getting shot in the process. They got him captured. He is 
now the subject of much discussion around this House of 
Representatives.
  And by the way, I don't know if anyone noticed. I was very surprised 
at the State of the Union to see those two officers sitting right up 
here with the First Lady of the United States, and I was very surprised 
also that they weren't introduced to the House. But if you noticed two 
police officers sitting by Michelle Obama, they weren't introduced at 
the State of the Union, but those were the two officers who responded 
to Major Hasan when he went on his shooting rampage. We honored them, 
and the President and the First Lady were honoring them as heroes of 
the United States, and rightfully so.
  But I want us to first realize what happened at Fort Hood. And 
everybody says, Oh, come on. I know what happened. Sure, you listened 
to all the reports. But today I was talking with the mayor of Belton, 
which is actually the county seat of Bell County.
  Fort Hood sits in two counties, Bell and Coryell County. Fort Hood is 
hundreds of thousands of acres and it straddles the county line between 
those two great counties. The combined population of the two counties 
is over 300,000 people. So this is a growing area of Texas, and much of 
that growth that is in the western part of Bell County and the eastern 
part of Coryell County is military folks that have retired and come 
back to live close to Fort Hood, or they are presently serving in the 
military in some form or fashion, or they got out and went to work for 
something that is related to the military in Central Texas.
  We are a military community. We love our soldiers. I would argue that 
no place on Earth does more for the families and soldiers than Fort 
Hood, Texas.
  I love to tell the story of being in a Rotary Club meeting back in 
2003 or 2004, I don't remember what it was, but I know that the 4th 
Infantry Division was deployed overseas from Fort Hood at that time. 
And it was along about March, somewhere around that time, when I was 
going to give a talk to that Rotary Club. It is a huge club, meets in 
the morning. Hundreds of people were there. And one of the Rotarians 
got up and said, Ladies and gentlemen, I want to remind you, our 
soldiers are deployed. Baseball season is starting. Our coaches for our 
Little League, Pony, Colt, and other leagues where our kids play 
baseball are over fighting a war to protect our freedom, and we need 
coaches. So it is up to us Rotarians to stand in for those fathers and 
mothers who are not going to be able to coach their kids.
  Now, that is a community that thinks outside the box to make sure 
that the kids and families of these deployed soldiers can live as 
normal a life as they can while these soldiers are deployed. I wanted 
to tell you that story, Members, because it tells you the heart of the 
Fort Hood community in an easy story.

  But when I was visiting with the mayor of Belton today, you don't 
realize the ramifications of something like what this Major Hasan did.
  First, we very quickly realized after the shooting and the days and 
weeks that came after the shooting that you had a lot of soldiers 
saying to themselves: Wait, a minute. This guy wasn't in some other 
Army. This guy was in my Army. He was in the same uniform I wear, and 
he shot my brother and sister soldiers and killed them and he was 
targeting soldiers to kill. Now, that plays upon the psyche of 
soldiers.
  Now, let me explain to you how important this is at Fort Hood, Texas, 
because the Fourth Infantry Division deploys out of there, III Corps 
Command is at Fort Hood, and the 1st Cavalry Division, as well as 
various other organizations. All of these folks have been deployed 
multiple times. The people that are stationed at Fort Hood are war 
fighters, and they have been involved in this war since its inception, 
and they will continue to do their duty, which is a great strain upon 
their families and a great strain upon these individual soldiers. But 
they do it because it is the right thing to do and they know that.
  These are our great generation. These are heroes, real true heroes. 
And do you know what? Just doing any job that is that stressful that 
many times repetitively wears upon you even if you weren't getting shot 
at or blown up. So this is a highly stressed, highly strung-out 
community.
  When this happened at Fort Hood, first responders from all the 
surrounding communities headed to Fort Hood. SWAT teams headed for Fort 
Hood. And if you recall, if you were listening during the play-by-play 
as it was being developed, you heard people say there are some who say 
there were three shooters, and so they are looking for the other two. 
What I didn't realize until I was talking to the mayor of Belton--and 
Belton is like 26 miles from Fort Hood--he said that, because they 
didn't know if the other shooters had gotten out of the post and were 
loose in the community, they locked down all the schools where there 
were soldiers' children just in case this was a plan to spread out and 
kill family members.
  And so we had, from high school down to elementary school, children 
locked down in the schools, and we were keeping people out and their 
parents couldn't pick them up. And the first responders' communications 
systems were overwhelmed with concerned parents from two full counties, 
300,000 people.
  So what this man did at Fort Hood that day frightened all the kids in 
two counties. And there are tens of thousands of kids going to those 
schools in those counties, multiple high schools. These are our largest 
high schools in Texas. They were locked down.
  I tell you all this because I want you to know that this was truly, 
not just a traumatic event for the Army, this was a traumatic event for 
the people who support the Army and for the families who are supported 
by the people who support the Army.
  Now, the mental health professionals came in in droves, and a lot of 
great work was done, and I praise everyone who did that. But when I 
heard that story about these little kids locked down, let's take some 
little sixth-grade kid or fifth-grade kid, or maybe someone smaller, a 
first-grade kid who had the trauma of all of a sudden the doors were 
locked to his school and his mama couldn't pick him up or her mama 
couldn't pick her up. And then they started hearing why: There has been 
somebody shot over at Fort Hood.
  Now, all these kids have soldiers at Fort Hood who are their parents. 
Some of them have two parents who are soldiers at Fort Hood. Now, there 
has got to be fear in the hearts of these little kids, and they want to 
know what happened. And when school is out and people are talking about 
it and they are watching it on television, they are trying to figure 
out what happened. And I am sure parents tried to sit down and explain 
it where they calmed the little children down. But I am going to argue 
with you or state to you here tonight that a recent report that was put 
out by a commission that was appointed by the Obama administration to 
tell us about the incident at Fort Hood, I would say if you read that 
report or you explained that report to little kids who were locked down 
at Fort Hood, you wouldn't even know that Mr. Major Nidal Hasan gave 
every indication that he was a radical Islamic Muslim terrorist, 
because it is not discussed in the report, and it should be.

                              {time}  2015

  I don't know who pulled the strings on this, but I know who is 
responsible, and that is the administration. We learned all kinds of 
things the Army needs to do differently and all kinds of things they 
need to talk about, the chain of command, yada, yada, yada, as my 
college-age girl would say. But we didn't hear anything about radical 
Islam. We didn't hear anything about this because, I would argue, and I 
think there are people across this country that are arguing, that it 
was because of political correctness. Political correctness.
  Excuse me, at some point in time it is just good intelligence, good 
police work to look at what makes up the chances are of the next 
terrorist attack. And to ignore it, and to act like you can't talk 
about it because you might hurt somebody's feelings--I tried sitting 
here tonight to remember as far back as I could, and I don't know how 
many years ago it was that the Munich Olympics was, but that was a 
radical Muslim terrorist attack. And every attack since that time has 
been a radical

[[Page H457]]

Muslim terrorist attack. So why can't we talk about the fact that our 
enemy seems to be, good intelligence seems to tell us, is radical 
Islamic terrorists?
  Now, why in the world can you write a report about a guy who walked 
down a peaceable line, some of the people checking in from being at 
war, and some of the people checking out to go to war, doing their 
everyday duty of getting through that process of processing in, 
processing out, and this guy walks down the line shooting soldiers in 
uniform, shouting out, ``Allahu Akbar,'' God is great, which is a part 
of the declaration of that religion. And I am not attacking that 
religion. But you can't talk about it. If you can't talk about it, you 
can't figure it out.
  And to write a report with this many Americans killed where they 
should have been safe, and this many Americans wounded where they 
should have been safe, and not mention the profile of the guy that did 
the shooting, and to give me the excuse when I asked the question, 
well, we are afraid it will mess up their murder case. Well, let me 
tell you, I will state this again for the record, if you have got a law 
degree and you are supposed to be able to practice law and you can't 
prove a murder case where you got 200 eyewitnesses, you need to send 
your law degree back to law school and turn in your bar card because 
you are an ineffective lawyer. And there are at least 200 people that 
witnessed this guy shooting these folks.
  So I mean give me a break. They don't have any proof problems to 
prove this case. That is not a reason not to talk about who did the 
shooting or who is alleged to do it. And I am an old judge, use the 
term alleged. It is perfectly good. But they don't even talk about who 
is alleged to have done the shooting or what kind of person that was.
  What do we know about him now? I will have to give our news 
organizations a lot of credit. We know that he acted erratically for 
months before the attack. That he promoted radical Islamic views while 
at Walter Reed Hospital. That he exchanged emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, 
a Yemen cleric which we are reading about every day in the newspaper 
who is one of the now major promoters of terrorism. No action was taken 
against him when he would have debates with other members of the 
military, and his position was what our soldiers were doing in Iraq and 
Afghanistan was worse than what terrorist attacks do or the 9/11 
attack. That the 9/11 attack doesn't equal America's war fighting 
efforts. And nobody reported him? In fact, they promoted him to get him 
out of their hair, to move him to another duty station so they didn't 
have to put up with him.
  And it was all about Islamic terrorism, and yet our government writes 
a report and just fails to mention it. And what is really amazing, 
really amazing to me, I mean there are a lot of people pointing a 
finger at me and saying that guy is a right wing wacko. That is why he 
is standing up there. I won't shy away from the right wing part of it. 
I will shy away from the wacko part.
  But I will tell you, who else has raised this question? Kind of 
interesting. Time Magazine has raised the question in an article, 
``Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?'' Now, that is certainly 
not a famous right wing radical group. I would call them leaning over 
pretty hard to the left. Here is another one. You sure wouldn't 
consider people at the San Francisco Chronicle to be right wing wackos, 
but here it is: ``Political Correctness on Fort Hood at the Pentagon.'' 
And it is about why didn't they talk about who this guy was.
  So that is one of the things I got up for. And I see I am joined by 
one of my dear friends, who is always there for me, Phil Gingrey from 
Georgia. He and I are classmates. He always has something good to say.
  Doc, I yield whatever time you would like to use.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Judge Carter, I thank you. I am glad to be 
with you tonight talking about a very, very serious issue. I will make 
the light comment before I begin and say that my good friend from Texas 
is not a right wing wacko, he is just a regular wacko. I am a right 
wing wacko from Georgia. But Judge Carter is actually not right wing 
nor is he a wacko, Mr. Speaker.
  What he is talking about tonight is extremely important. And I hope 
our colleagues on both sides of the aisle are listening. I know that my 
former colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee listened very 
carefully ever since this incident occurred. And now of course the 
judge is talking about this 50-page report that our Secretary of 
Defense, Robert Gates, ordered, commissioned to be done by a former 
Army Secretary and former Chief of Naval Operations.
  And Judge Carter, Mr. Speaker, I think expresses the view of probably 
most members of the House Armed Services Committee. I can't put words 
in their mouth, but I have served with them 6 years, loved being on 
that committee, led by the great chairman Ike Skelton and our ranking 
member Buck McKeon from California. And it is a great committee. And it 
is a bipartisan committee. It is probably the most bipartisan committee 
in the entire House of Representatives. I bet that is true on the 
Senate side as well.
  But Judge Carter is disappointed in this report, Mr. Speaker, and I 
am disappointed in this report. When we heard about this tragedy at 
Fort Hood in the great State of Texas at this Army military 
installation, which really is probably the epitome of the Army military 
installations--when you think about the Army you think about Fort 
Benning, the home of the infantry in my great State of Georgia down in 
Columbus, and you think about Fort Hood, probably the first two that 
come to your mind.
  But we were briefed. We, all members of the House of Representatives, 
all 435 of us, had an opportunity to go to a briefing that the 
military, the people from Fort Hood, commanders, I forget their names, 
probably good I don't remember the names because I don't want to use 
them here tonight, but they were telling us, ``Well, look, we responded 
correctly.'' Mr. Speaker, this is exactly what was said. ``The response 
to this incident, you would be proud. Members of Congress, you would be 
proud. Everything, we got all the emergency teams in, we locked down.'' 
The judge is talking about locking down the schools and all that and 
making sure the kids were safe.
  And they went on for about 30 minutes, describing how the response to 
this tragic attack, where this guy kills 14 and wounds 43 before we 
were able to take him down, and I want to say of course that we salute 
the heroism that was shown that day at Fort Hood, and I don't know who 
they were, but Judge Carter probably does, and God bless them for what 
they did. But my concern at the time was how do we have ourselves in a 
situation where anybody that goes nuts--of course we know this 
situation was far more than just an incident of somebody going nuts. 
And that is the purpose of the hour tonight the judge is talking about. 
But we should have been able to take this guy out you would think after 
he had shot three or four people at the most. But that is kind of 
another story, Mr. Speaker.

  I was just so concerned when I heard that briefing shortly after the 
incident that it was like the military was telling us, you know, you 
should be proud of the fact that we responded after the fact. And that 
is my whole point, Judge, in sharing a little bit of this time with 
you. It was like locking the barn door after the horse is long gone. 
And that is what we did. We did a good job of that.
  But what the judge is talking about here tonight, Mr. Speaker, is 
that when you have clear evidence that someone is a radical, has become 
radicalized, and you have this information and you don't share it--and 
indeed, as was pointed out tonight, Major Hasan was promoted during 
this time just right up through the ranks. You know, no holes on his 
promotion, no concern, because of, yes, I will say it, political 
correctness. They did not want to be in a position where let's say 
somebody could lose their job because they were calling out someone, 
blowing the whistle and saying this guy is showing signs of Islamic 
extremism. And we need to connect these dots, and somebody needs to 
examine this person and let a psychiatrist see him, the psychiatrist, 
Dr. Hasan. Doctor, you can't treat yourself, you need some help.
  Well, and I think that what the judge is saying, Mr. Speaker, is that 
we have got to stop this political correctness

[[Page H458]]

nonsense. We did the same thing I think, in my humble opinion, on 
Christmas Day with the undie bomber, when a decision was made after 50 
minutes by one or two FBI agents talking with someone in the Justice 
Department, and that someone most likely was the Attorney General, Eric 
Holder, and saying, all right, this is not a terrorist, let's Mirandize 
this guy. And so he immediately gets lawyered up, as the expression 
goes, and shuts up on the advice of counsel.
  I was reading today, looking over the budget, the $3.8 trillion 
budget proposal which the President delivered to Congress on Monday. 
And in that budget the line item section in regard to what we have 
always called, and I think the world has known the global war on 
terrorism and the amount of money that we want to fund for that, we 
call it overseas contingency operations or some such nonsense like 
that. Nowhere in that budget, no matter how many hundreds of billions 
of dollars we need to fight that war, do we call it a war on terror. 
Oh, God no. God forbid we do that because it is politically incorrect. 
We don't want to offend anybody. I say call a spade a spade.
  And that is exactly, Mr. Speaker, what Judge Carter is trying to 
point out to our colleagues tonight. Make sure people understand if we 
are serious about protecting this country, the security of this 
country, we are going to stop all this nonsense and we are going to 
call a spade a spade and we are going to fight terrorism where we find 
it.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, we are going to call a terrorist a 
terrorist and say who he is, what he is, where he comes from, what his 
background is, and if religion has a part in it, what religion has a 
part in it.

                              {time}  2030

  We cannot afford--it's bad police work, if nothing else--to ignore 
that evidence. What do you tell that kid over at the high school when 
his dad is deployed and he asks his mom, he said, Wasn't this guy a 
soldier? Well, I can't say what kind of soldier he was because we've 
got to be politically correct. But, yes, he was a soldier. But how do I 
know my dad is safe with other soldiers? How do I know?
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Judge, would you yield just for a second? 
Judge Carter, I don't know whether you pointed this out before I got to 
the floor, but this guy, Major Hasan, was quoted as saying that sharia 
law should trump the United States Constitution. Am I correct on that?
  Mr. CARTER. That is correct.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. I yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. And this guy was radicalized. And now we're hearing--only 
from the news sources, not from the people in the administration that 
should be informing the public about this, but from news sources--we're 
hearing just how radicalized he was by conversations he's had. In fact, 
a Member of this House called a relative who went to medical school in 
the Army and happened to know the guy in medical school and said clear 
back in medical school he was talking about this stuff. That means we 
gave him--by the way, we paid for his medical education. And the good 
doctor from Georgia can tell you that's no small ticket right there. 
But we took this man and we put him through education and we educated 
him all the way through university, medical school, and all of his 
specialty stuff. The Army paid for that. You did. The taxpayers paid 
for that. And even then he was talking like this. Why can't we start 
being honest with ourselves and talk about these people? That's the 
issue.
  You mentioned the Christmas Day bomber. Our good friend, Dr. 
Burgess--maybe he doesn't want me to tell you this--but he said, 
There's a guy that ought to be the easiest guy in the world to 
interrogate because this guy has just set himself on fire in his crotch 
area. Now his choice is to go back to Yemen and get treated over there, 
or be treated by the best medical community on Earth, as was pointed 
out. It wouldn't be hard to say, Tell us what you know and we'll get 
you the best doctors, the best reconstruction surgeons in America. And 
we are the best. And the guy would gratefully share, it would seem to 
me, but not after you've lawyered him up after an hour.
  So, once again, though, I would argue we're playing the political 
correctness game. We wouldn't do the same thing for a regular criminal 
defendant, I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that. So it's different. 
And I worry about the fact. And that comment about overseas 
contingency. If they can't identify the war on terror as the war on 
terror, then we've got some black-and-white-striped cats that they're 
welcome to come down to Texas and pet those cats, because their really 
skunks. If you don't want to call them a skunk, call them a pussycat 
and start playing with them. See what happens to you. That's the same 
thing that happens to terrorists. If you're not going to call them a 
terrorist and point out what ideology is driving their thinking, then 
what are you going to do to identify your enemy and defeat your enemy? 
If you're not even going to call them an enemy, what are we doing?
  I yield back.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Thank you, Judge. I want to thank John 
Carter, Mr. Speaker, for introducing two pieces of legislation. I hope 
he'll discuss that with our Members tonight in regard to the 
Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. H.R. 4267 is the number of 
that bill, Mr. Speaker. And then the other one, equally important, the 
Fort Hood Families Benefits Protection Act, H.R. 4088. I know Judge 
Carter, Representative Carter, will talk about that as a great Member 
who is actually cochairman of the House Army Caucus.
  So this is a labor of love on the part of this Member, Mr. Speaker. I 
can understand how upset he must be, as we all are, regarding this 50-
page report. Here, again, distinguished cochairs--the former Army 
Secretary, the former Chief of Naval Operations--who were charged by 
our Secretary of Defense, Secretary Gates, in a very timely manner to 
produce a 50-page report. But, you know, Mr. Speaker, this report, 
again, there's not a word in there in regard to terrorism, Islamic 
extremism. I don't know whether they scrubbed it before they did the 
report or they scrubbed it after they did the report.
  It's so disappointing to see that you spend all that time saying, 
Well, maybe we need to streamline the way the sergeant talks to the 
lieutenant and the lieutenant talks to the captain and the captain 
talks to the major and the majors talk to the colonels and lieutenant 
colonels and then finally we get the information to the generals and to 
the admirals. That's all well and good, but it's almost like a 
deliberate attempt to miss the point.
  The point is, as Judge Carter has pointed out, Mr. Speaker, that we 
are dealing with an individual, in the case of Major Hasan, that is a 
terrorist. He has been radicalized. The judge has pointed out that 
there was information even from his time in the Army Medical School 
that he made radical statements. I mentioned just a second ago that he 
was quoted as saying that sharia law should trump our Constitution. 
Well, when you're commissioned as an officer in the military, when you 
enlist in the military, you make a pledge of fidelity to this country. 
And so the warning sign was there.
  I will go back to the time, Mr. Speaker, when Representative Carter, 
Judge Carter, and I were freshmen Members of the 108th Congress. The 9/
11 issue had occurred shortly before we got here. And the families of 
those victims, over 3,000, insisted that we form a commission, a 9/11 
Commission, and we really look into this. Quite honestly, President 
Bush at the time was a little reluctant. He felt like the Department of 
Homeland Security, the CIA, and the military intelligence could do all 
that.
  In any regard, a commission was formed. And we were told by the 
commissioners that this was a problem in regard to Islamic extremism 
and we needed to do something about it. And to then come along with 
this report that was commissioned by Secretary Gates, I think, is a 
tremendous disservice and disappointment. And I will yield back to 
Judge Carter.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for yielding. I thank my friend for 
mentioning these two bills that we've got out here. I tried a 
whistleblower case back about the mid-nineties sometime. A very 
interesting case. I won't go into the details. But it involved some 
organizations that were major political players and major financial 
players in Texas and a little small accountant who made a right 
statement but had

[[Page H459]]

stepped on some good-old-boy toes and so they fired the guy when the 
truth was he was telling that there was a lot of money that they were 
losing. It showed me why we have whistleblower laws: so the little guy 
who discovers a wrong can be comfortable in going to right that wrong 
without fear of retaliation, of getting fired because he did--told 
about something that the big boys didn't like.
  Well, we've got this Military Whistleblower Protection Enhancement 
Act. It protects military personnel from any negative action for 
reporting any regulation or law violation. Proposed protections for 
reporting ideologically based threat or actions a servicemember 
reasonably believes could be counterproductive or detrimental to the 
United States interests or security.

  Basically, what we're saying to the ordinary soldier, to the soldier 
that was going through medical school with Mr. Hasan, to the soldier 
that was stationed with Mr. Hasan when he was a second lieutenant and 
then a first lieutenant and then a captain and as he got promoted to 
major, that somebody didn't have a fear that something would happen to 
their military career if they reported this guy was talking radical 
ideas to service people. He wasn't preaching religion to them. He was 
talking that blowing people up was good, fighting conventional war 
against terrorists was bad.
  I mean, that's the kind of way he was talking. It didn't have 
anything to do with the Muslim religion. It had to do with terrorism 
being the right way to straighten out America. Excuse me? He was 
educated by the United States military. It kills me to hear that.
  So I think it's a good bill. I hope we can get some action on it. I 
hope we can get it written into law. And I'm going to be working on it. 
I feel confident. I have a lot of folks that are cosigners to that 
bill.
  This other one is pretty simple, too, really. What we had--and I can 
say this almost without--and I don't know the names and background of 
every one of these soldiers, but I have personally talked to several of 
them and the general consensus is everybody that got shot had either 
just come back from Iraq or getting ready to deploy again to either 
Iraq or Afghanistan.
  And the reason we had mixed units that day at that center is because 
normally units go through as a group as they deploy, but these were the 
guys that were absent for some purpose. May have still been on the 
training range or something else. So they had to go make up by getting 
all the paperwork shuffled to get ready to deploy. That's why you heard 
it wasn't just one outfit that had all the deaths. It was multiple 
outfits around the Army because there are multiple outfits stationed at 
Fort Hood.
  Anyway, I would argue these were warriors either returning from the 
war or going to the war and an enemy soldier, terrorist, disguised in a 
uniform of the United States military, walked into our warriors as they 
were peacefully getting ready and processing paper and started killing 
soldiers. And I do argue that's a combat situation. Whether you're 
killing a soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq or whether you're killing a 
soldier in a center at Fort Hood, if your intent is to kill soldiers to 
keep them out of the war against terror, you are an enemy combatant 
killing our soldiers. Therefore, they should be treated with combat 
respect.
  This incident should be like we did for what happened at the Pentagon 
when it was attacked on 9/11. We declared that to be an incident in 
combat in the war on terror and the people who did heroic acts there 
received the appropriate medals and the appropriate benefits for being 
injured or killed in a combat zone.
  I think Fort Hood and the incident that happened with Major Hasan 
should be a combat zone; and I'm trying to do it by statute. But it's 
been done by act of the Defense Department. I think it's time for it to 
be done. There are a lot of Purple Hearts that ought to be awarded, at 
least 43 that we know of. There are a lot of folks that should get 
civilian medals that were civilians that were accidentally wounded in 
the misfires. And there are benefits that attach to being killed or 
injured in combat. I think these people ought to get it. Just because 
they just got back from another country but they got shot in our 
country by an enemy soldier, I would argue they still ought to be 
treated as if they were wounded in combat.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield, and, Mr. 
Speaker, I thank Judge Carter for yielding. I don't think that the 
logic of this legislation is a stretch in any way. I'm sitting hear 
listening, Mr. Speaker, to my colleague from Texas describe this bill, 
Fort Hood Families Benefits Protection Act, H.R. 4088.
  I would think that you ought to get 434 votes, if not 435, in the 
House of Representatives, and 100 in the Senate, Judge, is my opinion, 
because that Islamic extremist--and, as you say, camouflaged in an Army 
uniform with officer's insignia on that uniform--is every bit of an 
Islamic extremist as those characters in Afghanistan, in Iraq, aided 
and abetted, I think, by Iran, in many instances, that make those 
improvised explosive devices, that put them in the ground, that 
detonate them cowardly in a remote fashion and blow our young men and 
women to smithereens. I've had over 30 from my congressional district 
in the 11th of Georgia pay the last full measure. And that's what these 
14 that were killed and 43 or whatever the number is in Fort Hood. Same 
thing. Exact same thing.

                              {time}  2045

  And so, Mr. Speaker, I commend them. I think it's absolutely right. 
They should have a status to ensure full benefits and eligibility for 
the Purple Heart and a civilian equivalent award for those who are 
civilians. They were killed not by just some ordinary nut. They were 
killed by an Islamic extremist in the same fashion that our men and 
women are being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  Mr. CARTER. That's exactly right. And reclaiming my time, once 
again--and I'm not going to mention who said this, but it was said at 
the time. And although I understand why it was said, I think it was 
inappropriate. A statement was made, I certainly hope this incident at 
Fort Hood doesn't affect the Army's diversity program.
  Excuse me. We had folks that had risked their lives for our country 
killed in their own backyard by an Islamic terrorist, and I think that 
it's not the time to be worrying about whether somebody's feelings may 
have gotten hurt because we're talking about this guy being an Islamic 
terrorist. He is. That's a fact. Why can't we talk about it?
  I understand people talking about profiling, and what they're talking 
about is, in its ultimate extent, what offends people is situations in 
our historic past where, for example, there has been a shooting on the 
square. It's been identified. It was an African American. Round up all 
African Americans because the profile is African American. And that's 
where the whole idea of profiling--and you can expand it to American 
Indian, to Hispanic, to Vietnamese--identifying a whole group as evil 
because one was bad. And that's bad. And the police will tell you that 
that is not good police work.
  But if the shooter is wearing a major's uniform, answers to the name 
of Hasan, and 200 people can identify him in a lineup for having done 
the shooting, then you ought to talk about what the guy looks like, 
where he comes from, what his background is, and what motivated him to 
do this, which is a radical religious belief, the bottom line. That's 
not being politically incorrect. That's being intelligent. I'm sorry. 
It's just common sense.
  There's one thing I tell people back in Texas--I'm sure my friend in 
Georgia gets frustrated with it, too, sometimes. Inside this Beltway, 
the thing we lack the most seems to be common sense most of the time. 
Average American people know this, and I think that the Members of this 
House know that the folks back home know that this is something the 
administration should have addressed. Secretary Gates ordered it, but 
he's part of and takes his orders from the Commander in Chief, and they 
should be held responsible for their yielding the truth to political 
correctness. It's not the right thing to do. It harms those people who 
fearfully today, as I am talking, are standing in harm's way on our 
behalf, on my behalf, on your behalf, on everybody's behalf. They're 
doing the hard job.

[[Page H460]]

  There is a movie that's out that really is realistic. I'm going to 
quote it because I'm not trying to promote movies. But it makes you 
feel the stress that soldiers have to deal with when they have these 
explosive devices and having to deal with those explosive devices. It 
was so tense, my wife covered her head with a pillow because she just 
couldn't stand the tension of it. And then you think about it and say, 
You know, we eat in the mess hall at Fort Hood with these guys. They go 
through that every day, the stress. She covered her head with a pillow. 
These kids--kids--they deal with it every day. So they're not kids 
anymore when they go over there. They're men and women of courage and 
honor, and they understand what it means to be courageous.
  So I think it's wrong for us to avoid describing our enemy to keep 
from stepping on somebody's toes. I have nothing against any--and when 
I say all this, let me preface this or finish this up by saying this is 
not about a religion. It's about a criminal defendant and his ID. And 
that's the way we should treat it. For that reason, I have raised this 
issue.
  I will yield some more time to my friend from Georgia if he wishes to 
speak.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman again for 
yielding.
  I just wanted to quote some of my friends on the Armed Services 
Committee, the ranking member--actually also on the Education and Labor 
Committee--Colonel John Kline. Colonel Kline is a subcommittee Chair, I 
believe, on Armed Services as well. He has been there since we were 
elected in the 108th, back in 2003. So this is his eighth year on the 
Armed Services Committee. It is very appropriate that Colonel John 
Kline is there because of his service in the United States Marines.
  But Judge Carter, here is what Colonel Kline said. Mr. Speaker, I 
want to quote this. ``The American people recognize that the 9/11 
Commission was correct when it said we have an enemy, and it's Islamist 
extremists--their words--and the concern is that we may not be paying 
attention to the fact that the alleged perpetrator was, in fact, an 
Islamic extremist.''
  Judge Carter is telling us, Mr. Speaker--and certainly I agree with 
him--that this is not about diversity, the importance of diversity in 
the military. We all understand that. We all understand that. We have 
great men and women of all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, religious 
backgrounds. They have one thing in common: They swear, as we do, as 
Members of Congress, to uphold the Constitution and defend this 
country. And that will be continued to be held in common. But this 
business of being politically correct for fear of offending but not 
being able to say, He did it, and here is the evidence, and everybody 
knows it, and for fear that you are going to get reprimanded--and 
that's what Judge Carter's other bill is all about, Mr. Speaker. So I 
thank him for giving me the opportunity to join a good friend on the 
floor to encourage our colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
  There are 95 cosponsors. I hope tomorrow there will be 150, and the 
next day there will be 300, and that when this comes to a vote--and 
hopefully it will--we'll get a near--maybe we can put it on the 
suspension calendar and it will pass without controversy.
  I yield back to my friend.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for that comment, because what a 
heartwarming experience that would be for the families and some of the 
soldiers who were there and who are now in the combat zone to know that 
this Congress said, We recognize this was a combat situation. We 
acknowledge it unanimously. It is hard to get unanimous around here, 
but it would be nice. And I thank my friend for his participation.
  Well, this is all a part of the chance that I get every now and then 
to talk about the rule of law and doing what's right and identifying 
what's wrong in this country and not being afraid to speak out and to 
point out when things are wrong. I want to end by saying that this is a 
wrong that needs to be righted, and this House and the Defense 
Department has the ability to right this wrong, and we should do it.
  I want you to know that I consider Secretary Gates a friend. I have 
the highest respect for him. I had the highest respect for him when he 
was the top man at Texas A&M University when I represented that 
wonderful institution, and I still have the highest regard for him. But 
I do criticize and will continue to criticize letting political 
correctness interfere with making correct statements about what 
happened so that, if nothing else, the kids of these people in the Army 
who know that a major shot other people will have a good explanation as 
to why he did it and what the indications are as to why he did it so 
they're not worried about their mom or dad getting shot by another guy 
in uniform. That's a tragic situation.

  I want to thank the Speaker for allowing me to have this time. I hope 
that we can right this wrong, and I hope that we can let common sense 
and right over wrong prevail in these two bills and in letting our 
heroes know what the right thing to do is and that we're going to do 
it.

                          ____________________