If not, perhaps many lives would have been saved.

Army psychiatrists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who supervised Maj. Nidal M. Hasan’s work as a psychiatric fellow tried to turn his growing preoccupation with religion and war into something productive by ordering him to attend a university lecture series on Islam, the Middle East and terrorism, according to a Walter Reed staff member familiar with Hasan’s medical training.

The psychiatric staff at Walter Reed did not discuss kicking him out of the service, according to the staff member. In fact, Hasan was initially considered a good medical school candidate because he had spent time as an enlisted soldier and had cared for his siblings after his parents died, both attributes that supervisors believed indicated he had a healthy work ethic.

Which is putting sugar-coated language on the facts as they were known.

There was no reason not to grant this man’s pressing requests to be released from the Army. And every reason to investigate his ties to radical Islam.

An important part of military service used to be accountability. It still is in large part. This is the part that fell through the cracks, and the astounding part is that no one caught it and stopped it.

He opted to give a bizarre PowerPoint presentation in which he defended suicide bombing, explaining that non-believers should be beheaded, be burned alive, and have boiling oil poured down their throats (presumably not in that order). He argued that all Muslims should be discharged from the military.

One slide concluded: “We love death more then [sic] you love life!”

According to the Post, the medical staff in attendance was deeply disturbed by the incident. But there’s apparently no record of anyone’s reporting it to authorities. That would be insensitive and discriminatory.

Who’s defining these things?