Obama asks Congress to wait for inquiry

Last update: November 14, 2009 - 9:52 PM

President Obama on Saturday urged Congress to hold off on any investigation of the Fort Hood rampage until federal law enforcement and military authorities have completed their probes into the shootings at the Texas Army post, which left 13 people dead.

In his weekly address, Obama pleaded for lawmakers to "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater." He said those who died on the nation's largest Army post deserve justice, not political stagecraft. "The stakes are far too high," he said.

Several members of Congress, particularly Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have called for a full examination of what agencies knew about Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's contacts with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen and others of concern to the United States.

In the Senate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said his Homeland Security Committee was opening an investigation.

Obama said he was not opposed to hearings -- eventually. But first, he said, he wants the legal investigation to run its course.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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