Denying combat benefits of Fort Hood victims

Shawn Manning:

In November 2009, my Army Reserve Medical Detachment reported to Fort Hood, Texas, in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan. As we waited in line at the base’s processing center, Maj. Nidal Hasan entered the building and fired rounds that would kill 13 people and an unborn child and wound 32 others, including me. After many setbacks, Hasan’s trial finally began this week, only to be delayed yet again on Wednesday.

My recovery has been long and agonizing. But the pain that has taken me by surprise has come in the nearly four years since the attack, as my fellow victims and I have been given the runaround by a government more eager to protect itself than the dead and wounded.

On the day of the attack, I was waiting for a medical exam before what would have been my third deployment overseas. I was texting my wife when I heard the shout of “Allahu Akbar!”

I looked up to see a man in Army fatigues firing a pistol. His fourth or fifth shot went into my chest. As screams broke out around me, I collapsed to the ground. The bullet had punctured my lung and I was gasping for breath. As I lay there, he shot me five more times in my back and legs. Eventually soldiers helped me get medical attention.

The bullets had narrowly missed my heart, but one had lodged in my liver. I still have two bullets in my body and deal with near-constant pain in my legs and back.

During my recovery, I learned that the Army had classified the shooting as nonpolitical workplace violence instead of a terrorist attack. The language used to describe the attack may seem meaningless, but it is very meaningful to the victims and their families.

Because the Army decided that our wounds were not “combat-related,” a number of benefits are being denied to the victims and their families, including certain health and disability ones. In some instances, the designation even resulted in victims receiving smaller salaries than we would have received during our deployment. As a reservist, I was making roughly $2,000 per month less than I would have in my private-sector job. The Army would have made up that difference had I been on deployment orders or had my injuries classified as combat-related.

Unfortunately, I am not alone in my experience. I have watched other victims and their families be denied disability benefits and treated indifferently by the Army. This has left many families suffering not just physical and emotional wounds, but financial ones as well. Though the Army claims that the survivors of the Fort Hood attack are eligible for the same medical benefits as any service member, we are not getting the same treatment as soldiers wounded in combat. That is part of the reason we have brought a lawsuit against the government.
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Political correctness made the Army complicit in the attack.  They were too eager to have a Muslim psychiatrist in the Army to realize he was a Muslim psycho.  It is not like he hid his evil intentions.  But even after he committed his terrorist atrocities, the Army has tried to ignore those acts and downplay his conduct.  There is a claim that there is no terrorist charge under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. but Hasan could be considered an illegal enemy combatant and a traitor.  He could also have been tried by the military commissions at Gitmo, if this administration did not have such an unreasonable animosity toward their use.