Obama admin finally calls Ft. Hood attack a “terrorist act”

What took them so freaking long?

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has become the first Obama Administration official to publicly describe last year’s deadly shootings at Ft. Hood, Tex., as a terrorist act, according to a search of news clips and transcripts.

“Violent Islamic terrorism … was part and parcel of the Ft. Hood killings,” Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday morning. “There is violent Islamic terrorism, be it Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen or anywhere else, [and] that is indeed a major focus of this department and its efforts.”

In the months since an Army psychiatrist — who had been in contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen — opened fired inside the Army base, many on Capitol Hill have urged administration officials to publicly identify the attack as terrorism.

Those calls have been used by Republicans and others to paint administration officials as weak on terrorism and subsequently unwilling to use the word “terrorism.”

During the Senate hearing on Wednesday morning, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, called the administration’s “reluctance” to use terms such as “Islamist extremism” or “Muslim terrorist” a “pet peeve of mine.”

He said his “concern” about the issue was “aroused again” when an internal Pentagon review of the events leading up to the attack by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan on Nov. 5, 2009, never used such terms.

Lieberman asked Napolitano: “Has the administration made a decision to avoid any public reference to ‘violent Islamist extremism’ or ‘Muslim terrorists’?”

Napolitano denied any such move.

“There has been no such decision,” she said. “The [phrase] that you refer to, ‘violent Islamic terrorism,’ is something that we fight and deal with every day at the Department of Homeland Security. There is no doubt about that. It was the motivation [for the failed Christmas Day bombing], it was part and parcel of the Ft. Hood killings and other incidents we have seen this year within the United States.”

So, like, does this mean we’ve finally moved beyond the “man-caused disaster” nonsense? :-?

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