Topic: WorldNetDaily
Because the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood massacre is apparently a Muslim, this has given WorldNetDaily license to engage in a full-on anti-Muslim freak-out.
WND's initial report on the shootings began: "A Muslim U.S. Army officer opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas today, killing 12 soldiers and wounding 31, before he was shot by a base police officer."
An unbylined Nov. 6 article rehashes claims allegations in its CAIR-bashing, theft-based tome "Muslim Mafia" that alleged shooter Nidal Malik Hasan "is just the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the U.S. military – which is too blinded by political correctness to see the threat." The article also quotes Walid Shoebat, uncritically calling him "a former Islamist terrorist" even though the facts appear to show otherwise.
WND then jumped the shark from alarmist claims to outright falsehoods with a Nov. 6 article by Jerome Corsi -- with the blaring headline "Shooter advised Obama transition" -- asserting that asserting that Hasan "played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House,"citing Hasan's participation in a George Washington University task force that produced a document on "security priorities for the next administration.
But Corsi contradicts himself later in the article:
While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security, there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity.
As Media Matters noted, the task force first convened in April 2008 -- well before Obama had even secured the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone won the election. Further, as Gawker reported: "Daniel Kaniewski, the institute's deputy director, confirms that Hasan attended task force meetings as an audience member, and stresses that he was not a member of the task force."
If there's no indication the task force -- which Hasan merely attended and was not actually a member -- actually played an advisory role to the Obama transition, Corsi and WND are lying when they claim it did.
