Oops - not so fast.
MSNBC is reporting that an AWOL U.S. soldier has been arrested while planning a bomb attack on Fort Hood, Texas:
Killeen, Texas, police arrested Pfc. Naser J. Abdo, 21, of Garland, Texas, on Wednesday at a motel near Fort Hood, police said. The Austin American-Statesman reported that Abdo, an infantryman with the 1st Brigade Combat Team (Rear Provisional) of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., was arrested at an America's Best Value Inn on South Fort Hood Road.
U.S. officials told NBC News that police went to Abdo's motel room on a tip from a gun dealer who said Abdo was asking suspicious questions about smokeless powder, a component often used in pipe bombs. Explosives were found in the room and in a backpack, the officials said.
A U.S. military official said Abdo was overheard saying he wanted to attack Fort Hood and that he repeated the statement after he was in custody. Authorities said it was not clear whether his alleged intended targets were soldiers in general or specific individuals on the base.
What could his motivation be? Probably reading Mark Steyn and Bruce Bawer:
Abdo was arrested on a child pornography warrant, police said. He had been wanted since he went AWOL earlier this month after he was recommended for a court-martial in a child pornography investigation at Fort Campbell.
...
Abdo sought conscientious objector status last year, arguing that his Muslim beliefs prohibited military service. The Army approved his application in May, then, two days later, it charged him with possession of child pornography, which put his discharge on hold, he said on a Facebook page.
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Abdo's campaign to leave the Army got considerable coverage beginning in August, when he gave several televised interviews.
"As my time came near to deployment, I started asking the question more seriously whether God would accept what I was doing and whether I was really meant to go to war, as opposed to the peace that Islam preaches," he said in an August interview with Headline News. He made similar comments in interviews with al-Jazeera.
As recently as June, Abdo was pursuing his battle on the Facebook page, where he describes himself as "engaged in a struggle against religious discrimination and for freedom of conscience in the US Army."
Right - got it. Struggling against religious discrimination, Islam preaches peace, blah blah blah.