ANYONE ELSE SEE A PATTERN EMERGING?

A National Guardsman was arrested and accused of trying to provide information to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, the U.S. Army has announced.

Army Lt.-Col. Stephen Barger said yesterday that Specialist Ryan Anderson was being held at Fort Lewis "pending criminal charges of aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the Al Qaeda terrorist network."

Anderson, 26, is a tank crew member from the National Guard's 81st Armour Brigade, a 4,000-member unit scheduled to depart for Iraq for a one-year deployment, the biggest for the state's Army National Guard since World War II. He is to remain at the base near Tacoma.

Barger would say nothing more about the arrest, or about what information allegedly was given to Al Qaeda or how it was provided.

Anderson converted to Islam five years ago and studied military history with an emphasis on the Middle East at Washington State University.

Consider over the last 10 months...

SGT Akbar, a muslim with the 101st....fragged his officers.

Chaplain Yee, a muslim Army chaplain...charged with espionage at Guantanmo. (Spy charges later dropped but still charged with failing to obey an order or regulation; making a false official statement; conduct unbecoming an officer, for downloading pornographic material onto his laptop computer; and adultery with a female officer at Guantanamo Bay. )

Senior Airman Halabi, translator at Guantanamo, charged with spying. (Charges later reduced to mishandling classified material and attempted espionage involving an alleged plan, apparently never carried out, to pass information to someone in Syria.)

And now this. Just imagine what now goes through the mind of a young soldier upon learning a newly arrived soldier in the unit is a muslim.

I'm not saying it is proper to jump to conclusions...but I can bet you the trust isn't there. And when a soldier doesn't trust his battle buddy...the entire system weakens.