Hasan’s erratic work was a sign

Among the many questions Hasan’s case raises, one of the most basic is why the Army considered him fit for his duties. He spent six years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Fellow doctors there, according to National Public Radio and the Washington Post, found him to be inattentive to patients, troubled, and given to haranguing others out of the blue about religion.

In 2007, Hasan gave a strident slide presentation on Islam to Walter Reed’s assembled mental health staff, including another Muslim psychiatrist who objected to its tone and content. The address ended with Hasan recommending that the military grant conscientious objector status to Muslim troops “to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.’’ NPR reporter Daniel Zwerdling said one military psychiatrist told him he was not at all surprised to hear that Hasan was the Fort Hood killer.

Army officials should find out whether evaluations of Hasan’s performance reflected such concerns and whether the failure to act on them grew out of superiors’ unwillingness to take action against a Muslim at a time when the nation’s leadership wants to characterize its global struggle as one against terrorists and not against their religion.

A military stretched to the breaking point by two extended ground wars needs every therapist and psychiatrist it can find to tend to the emotional needs of its troops. That alone - and not political correctness - might account for the readiness of officers at Walter Reed to turn a blind eye to Hasan’s conduct.

But the military and the medical profession are both too willing to give their credentialed professionals a protective cloak of impunity. The picture that emerges of Hasan is of a deeply disturbed man who never deserved that deference.