More Hysteria from Michael Ryan

Re: "If anyone's ill, it's apologists," from the November 12th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

The whole premise of Mr. Ryan's opinion piece is false. Nobody is apologizing for Nidal Hasan, the man who allegedly shot 30 people at Fort Hood, killing 13. Mr. Ryan uses the tragic shooting as an excuse to hysterically attack what he thinks is political correctness. Mr. Ryan flatly denies the possiblity that Hasan was mentally ill and tells us with absolute certainty that it was a "pre-meditated, cold, calculated, and carefully executed act of Islamic terrorism on American soil."

There are a couple of points I find disgusting with his statement. First of all, Mr. Ryan knows nothing about mental illness. He's not a doctor and he's not an academic who has studied mental illness. Some of Hasan's colleagues did express their concerns that Hasan may have been mentally ill. Second of all, there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism. To stick the adjective of Islamic on the noun, terrorism, is simply bigoted rhetoric and has no place in a public newspaper. When a Christian man beats his wife to death, we don't call it an act of Christian terrorism. Why should a person's religion be attached to his behavior? There have been other mass shootings in the military committed by Christians. Nobody referred to these acts as "Christian terrorism."

Mr. Ryan also shows once again that he needs to read his own newspaper because he wrote that "Reports say Hasan had 10 to 20 contacts with a top al-Qaida recruiter..." No, he didn't. AP reports published by the Augusta Chronicle say there's no evidence the radical cleric Hasan sent emails to was a member of al-Qaida. To make that claim is slanderous. According to the FBI, the emails did not give any indication that Hasan was going to go on a shooting spree.

There's no way anyone could've predicted that an army psychiatrist would go psycho. For conservatives to claim that failure to prevent this was due to political correctness is a ridiculous stretch.

Mr. Ryan wrote that Hasan gave a lecture in which he said, "if you don't believe (in Islam) you're condemned to hell..."

I'm agnostic but take my wife to a Christian church because she's disabled and can't attend without my help. More than one person who goes to that church has told me I'm going to hell because I don't believe in Christianity. Does that make them a terrorist threat?

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Today, Mr. Ryan ran a column by Charles Krauthammer, a regular Fox News contributor whose ideas Mr. Ryan frequently rips off. Recently, conservatives have been claiming a big victory in the off year elections because they won two governorships. But they fell further behind in the House of Representatives. I wouldn't call falling further behind in the House a victory.

In "They myth of 2008--demolished," Mr. Krauthammer claims the election was an aberration, not a big FDR re-alignment. It's too early to know for sure, but I wouldn't rush to judgement over one off year election when nobody votes. If we had high voter turn out, republicans would lose big time in every election everywhere. The only reason they won two governorships this time, was because nobody shows up for off year elections.

He also repeats the oft-cited poll that shows conservatives outnumber liberals by 2-1. This poll is B.S. When push comes to shove, the U.S. is a liberal socialist country. Even when republicans had control of all three branches of government, they didn't dare take away Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and food stamps--all liberal socialist programs.