The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
This Doesn’t Sound Very Conscientious
From the Houston Chronicle:
An AWOL Muslim soldier who had been granted conscientious objector status earlier this year was arrested and bomb-making materials were found in his motel room near Fort Hood, the same Texas Army post where 13 people were killed in a 2009 shooting rampage blamed on an Army psychiatrist, an FBI spokesman told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Killeen police arrested 21-year-old Pfc. Naser Abdo on Wednesday after being alerted by “concerned citizens,” and agents found firearms and “items that could be identified as bomb-making components, including gunpowder,” in his motel room, said FBI spokesman Erik Vasys.
Vasys said the FBI planned to charge Abdo with possessing bomb-making components later Thursday, at which time he would be transferred into federal custody. He said there was nothing to indicate Abdo was “working with others.”
It seems to us that this raises serious questions about whether he deserved to be granted conscientious-objector status.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below ”Today’s Columnists.
(NOTE: James Taranto is on vacation. The excerpt above is from the 7/28/11 BOTW Archives.)
