Sometimes, an extremist really is an extremist -- latimes.com

Sometimes, an extremist really is an extremist -- latimes.com: "Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan demonstrated many things when he allegedly committed treason in the war on terror. For starters, he showed -- gratuitously alas -- that evil is still thriving.

He demonstrated that being a trained psychiatrist provides no immunity to ancient hatreds and religious fanaticism, nor does psychiatric training provide much acuity in spotting such things in others. For example, the London Telegraph reports that, in what was supposed to be a medical lecture, Hassan instead gave an hourlong briefing on the Koran, explaining to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that nonbelievers should be beheaded, have boiling oil poured down their throats and set on fire.

His fellow psychiatrists completely missed this 'red flag' -- a suddenly popular euphemism for incandescently obvious evidence this man had no place in the U.S. Army.

He proved how lacking our domestic security system is. According to ABC News, intelligence agencies were aware for months that Hasan had tried to contact Al Qaeda. His colleagues reportedly knew he sympathized with suicide bombings and attacks on U.S. troops abroad, and one colleague said Hasan was pleased by an attack on an Army recruiting office and suggested more of the same might be desirable. That's treason, even if you're a Muslim.

Which raises the most troubling revelation: For a very large number of people, the idea that he is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics, was -- at least initially -- too terrible to contemplate. How else to explain the reflexive insistence after the attack that the real culprit was 'post-traumatic stress disorder'? The fact that PTSD is usually diagnosed in people who've been through trauma (hence the word 'post'), and that Hasan had never in fact seen combat, didn't seem to matter much.

Apparently the 'P' in PTSD can now stand for 'pre.'"