It does indeed seem to be an act of terrorism.

This may give us a clue why he did this:

Officials: U.S. Aware of Hasan Efforts to Contact al Qaeda
Army Major in Fort Hood Massacre Used ‘Electronic Means’ to Connect with Terrorists
By RICHARD ESPOSITO, MATTHEW COLE and BRIAN ROSS
ABC News

Nov. 9, 2009 —

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan’s efforts.

CIA director Leon Panetta and the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, have been asked by Congress “to preserve” all documents and intelligence files that relate to Hasan, according to the lawmaker.

Hoekstra said he is “absolutely furious” that the house intel committee has been refused an intelligence briefing by the DNI or CIA on Hasan’s attempt to reach out to al Qaeda, as first reported by ABC News.

I never asserted he was crazy. I simply defended the media’s reluctance to suggest it was jihad, which seemed to disappoint truepatriotlove.

I have no idea why he did this and that is why I agree with your post at #10.

ZWERDLING: Earlier today, I spoke to a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan and knows him very well. And he said, you know, from the beginning -and Hasan was there for four years – the medical staff was very worried about this guy. ….The psychiatrist says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he – Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don’t believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You’re set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he’s educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I’m a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don’t believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn’t say, well, I’m just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.
“If you don’t believe, your head is cut off.”

ANYONE with views like that cannot be a U.S. Army officer at a time when the U.S. is actively engaged in fighting Islamic radicals.

Some in the Army who knew him, said that he espoused a genuine hatred toward his own country, which is totally unacceptable for an Army officer who is sworn to defend the United States Constitution. He had said that American Muslims should not enlist in the Army, because no Muslim should ever be ordered to kill another Muslim.

He had always refused to be photographed with women, a sign of Muslim radicalism.

He shouted “Allah Akhbar!” just before he opened fire.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fort-hood-hasan7-2009nov07,0,4710653.story

and numerous other news sources

That doesn’t sound to me like a nutcase who was hearing voices, or someone who had just had a nervous breakdown. It sounds to me like a guy who hated and hated America with a passion–and one fine day, decided to do something about it.

He’s no more a mental case than Timothy McVeigh was.

Why would the media mention jihad as a possible reason for the attack if there’s no evidence of that as a motive? Maybe you believe that the fact that the attacker is of Middle Eastern descent is, by itself, evidence of jihad?

No wonder Frum felt the need to warn people not to jump to conclusions.

Well, if you were wondering what paranoiac smear artist would be the first to step out and attempt to name President Barack Obama as the man who guided Nidal Malik Hasan to his murderous rampage at Fort Hood yesterday, the answer — naturally! — is Jerome Corsi. Corsi has a long history of lunatic, fact-averse ravings and he fails to disappoint on that regard on the pages of World Net Daily, today, in a piece entitled “Shooter advised Obama transition.” Except, of course, he didn’t do any such thing.

Essentially, what the HSPI did (and all of this is spelled out explicitly in this document’s executive summary) is convene a giant group of security wonks and academics, heard some briefings, made some “internal deliberations,” and generated a set of priorities and recommendations. Then those recommendations got published, and maybe someone at the White House read them, but it’s more likely that the content ended up as material to cite in the middle of further security-wonk discussions.

And at some point in the process, Nidal Hasan might have sat in a room while this was happening, with a few hundred other people.

But none of this constitutes formal advice given to the president on homeland security during the transition of power. This was a university panel that has sod all to do with the White House, generating ideas, and calling it “advice” for the president. If two or three of you wanted to meet up with me at the Au Bon Pain on Pennsylvania Avenue this afternoon and chat today, we will have accomplished basically the same thing.

Corsi, in fact, knows this. He writes:

While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security, there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity.

In short, the facts Corsi obtained torpedo the premise of his piece, which, I remind you, is that the “shooter advised [the] Obama transition.” Were this being written for a responsible journalistic entity, some creature called an “editor” would have stepped in and said, “Hey, Jerome, you realize that by your own findings, you article is complete horseshit, right?” But this is World Net Daily, written by and for complete charlatans.

UPDATE: I contacted Frank Cilluffo, the director of the HSPI at George Washington University, who tells me that Nidal Hasan has no affiliation with the HSPI or with George Washington University, at all. “[Hasan] has no role on the task force, other than the fact that he attended these meetings as an audience member, as did hundreds of others.” Hasan’s name appears on the list of participants only because he provided the HSPI with an RSVP, indicating his attendance. Cilluffo told me, “We always record RSVPs and publish them as a matter of transparency, and will continue to do so.”