[Nuclear1]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/05/texas.fort.hood.shootings/index.html

(CNN) -- A solider suspected of fatally shooting 12 and wounding 31 at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday is not dead as previously reported by the military, the base's commander said Thursday evening.

A civilian officer who was wounded in the incident shot the suspect, who is "in custody and in stable condition," Army Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told reporters.

"Preliminary reports indicate there was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene," Cone said at a news conference. "However, he was not killed as previously reported."

The suspect, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood around 1:30 p.m., Cone said.

Well...this sucks.

[Flipside]

Been following this, it's pretty horrific, but I'm unwilling to jump to conclusions at the moment. My condolences to the families of those involved

[Nuclear1]

There's really nothing worse than knowing you're vulnerable even when you're stateside and not deployed.  I half-expected to have a difficult time getting back on base today (I was downtown when it happened).   Hood itself was locked down and a fair number of installations in Texas ramped up security. 

Interesting points about the suspect himself though:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting#Hasan

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, age 39, was born in Virginia to parents who immigrated to the US from Jordan. He served as an army psychiatrist, who had transferred to Fort Hood in July from Washington's Walter Reed Medical Center. Prior to being transferred, he had received a poor performance evaluation. He had special training in shooting.

...

According to Hasan's aunt, he had sought for several years to receive a discharge, due to harassment relating to his religion, Islam. An army spokesman could not confirm the aunt's statement. Hasan had come to the attention of federal authorities at least six months before the attacks because of internet postings he may have made discussing suicide bombings and other threats. However, it remains unclear that he was the author of the posts, and no official investigation was opened.

...

Hasan was about to be deployed, whether to Iraq or Afghanistan is unclear, on November 28. According to Jeff Sadoski, spokesperson of U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, "Hasan was upset about his deployment". Hasan's cousin, Nader Hasan, a lawyer in Virginia, said that Nidal Hasan turned against the wars after hearing the stories of those who came back from Afghanistan and Iraq. Noel Hamad said, however, that the family did not know he was being sent to Iraq. "He didn't tell us he was going to deploy," she said.

According to his cousin, Nidal Hasan was a practicing Muslim who had become more devout after the deaths of his parents in 1998 and 2001. However, his cousin does not recall him ever expressing any radical or anti-American views. The cousin added that Hasan had been harassed by his Army colleagues because of his Middle Eastern ethnicity. Said the cousin, "He was dealing with some harassment from his military colleagues. I don’t think he’s ever been disenchanted with the military. It was the harassment. He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of trying everything."

According to retired Colonel Terry Lee, "He said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor. At first we thought he meant help the armed forces, but apparently that wasn't the case. Other times he would make comments we shouldn't be in the war in the first place."

[Flipside]

Yes, the name kind of gave away the angle most people are going to be looking at, especially so hot on the heels of the shooting of UK soldiers in a very similar manner in Afghanistan. I'm hoping it's not, not because of any political or social views, but because all it will serve to do is harm Muslims in the USA in general, there are people who would love to point fingers at them and claim they are all 'timebombs' waiting to go off.

I don't doubt that idiots like O'Reilly won't be long in pointing out that his last name sounds the same as Obamas middle name...

[Nuclear1]

Oh, I bet Glenn Beck has it already set for his conspiracy radio hour tomorrow.  O'Reilly's just going to be the one who spends his whole television hour calling for Hasan's death, and then spend the next six months carrying out a personal crusade against Muslim Americans.

I mean, really, they should've seen something happening, albeit maybe not this tragic.  They spent months at a time beating equal opportunity and tolerance lessons into our heads coming out of basic, so why, when a devout Muslim reports being harrassed and mistreated because of his ethnicity, do they not do a damned thing about it?  The Army's got plenty of blood on its hands here too.

[Flipside]

I'll tell you this, if he so much as breathes the words 'Internment Camps' or anything of that ilk, I think I will weep for the US.

I think some Americans don't realise the depth of offense that people take when their religion is insulted, which is quite ironic in a way, since they are often to people who take the most offence when their own religion is insulted

[Black Wolf]

Damn... I caught the end of this on the radio, didn't realize the guy was muslim.

This isn't going to go down well, is it?

[Flipside]

And, no offence to the Texans here, but Texas is probably the last place in the US that you want even larger amounts of hostility towards Muslims, from what I understand of the state (which, I'll admit, may be wrong or over-stereotyped), there's a certain reputation for vigilante action from certain quarters.

[Nuclear1]

The only time this could've been worse was right after 9/11.  Now we've got racists crawling out of their holes screaming about Obama's birth certificate, the return of the militia movement, questions about border security, and people's 24-induced paranoia of sleeper cells to fuel the fire.  I would not want to a Muslim living anywhere near a red county right now, especially in the breeding-ground of vigilantes that is Texas.

[Liberator]

This to me sounds more like a man who was at the end of his rope somehow, it feels like an act of desperation.  That his CO, whether it was his direct superior or the base commander should have, but didn't, handle the insults or bad mouthing or outright descrimination, from the sound of it it was hurting unit cohesion if nothing else.  It shouldn't have happened.  Well probably see some officers brought up on dereliction of duty or something like that before this is over.  An officer's job isn't just to give orders, it's to take care of the men under his command.  It's the sign of a bad commander if his subordinates don't trust him enough to come to him with this sort of issue.

[Blue Lion]

Glenn Beck is out due to surgery apparently. Dunno how long you recovery from an appendectomy.

[StarSlayer]

My condolences to those involved

[Kosh]

I'll tell you this, if he so much as breathes the words 'Internment Camps' or anything of that ilk, I think I will weep for the US.

I'll start when they actually do start shifting people to Internment Camps. If Glenn Beck says it then we can ignore him.

[StarSlayer]

I'll tell you this, if he so much as breathes the words 'Internment Camps' or anything of that ilk, I think I will weep for the US.

I'll start when they actually do start shifting people to Internment Camps. If Glenn Beck says it then we can ignore him.

Internment Camps?  Like WW2 or The Siege?  Not that I think we would never do it, but I think it would take a large scale campaign against civilian targets by an organization.  From what I've seen so far this was a one man incident, unless they dig up connections to an terrorist organization then this isn't much different then an office park shooting. 

Now if there was a dedicated operation blowing up malls, schools, buses etc. throughout the country then I think you would find Internment Camps would be considered.  Not that I am advocating it as a solution mind you, just that I believe a campaign of small scale operations against soft targets across the country would certainly drive the populace into thinking it is an acceptable measure.

[Mr. Vega]

You don't see a guy randomly kill 12 people and then get captured alive very often. Kind of impressive on their part.

[Snail]

Comes less than a week after that other incident in Afghanistan... In fact when I heard it on the radio I thought they were talking about the same incident at first...

[codedog]

I haven't posted here in years, but I was just browsing through and thought I would say something.

And, no offence to the Texans here, but Texas is probably the last place in the US that you want even larger amounts of hostility towards Muslims, from what I understand of the state (which, I'll admit, may be wrong or over-stereotyped), there's a certain reputation for vigilante action from certain quarters.

Over-stereotyped would be correct. 

I would not want to a Muslim living anywhere near a red county right now, especially in the breeding-ground of vigilantes that is Texas.

This is an ignorant statement. 

This to me sounds more like a man who was at the end of his rope somehow, it feels like an act of desperation.  That his CO, whether it was his direct superior or the base commander should have, but didn't, handle the insults or bad mouthing or outright descrimination, from the sound of it it was hurting unit cohesion if nothing else.  It shouldn't have happened.  Well probably see some officers brought up on dereliction of duty or something like that before this is over.  An officer's job isn't just to give orders, it's to take care of the men under his command.  It's the sign of a bad commander if his subordinates don't trust him enough to come to him with this sort of issue.

It is always a tragedy when there is descrimination within the ranks of our soldiers.  Even when it is unintentional.  If your chain of command fails you then you can always file an EO complaint through IG.  I have never seen an equaI oppritunity complaint that was not taken seriously by IG.  If he filed one, then somebody is definately at fault for not investigating it throughly if racial/religious discrimination was his motive. I am curious to see what the investigation comes up with.  He clearly was emotionally distrought over something, but there could be a number of reasons why.   Above all else he is a Major, a field grade officer, and psychiatrist.  Someone whose job was to provide care for soldiers, many with PTSD.  Now he is nothing but a murderer.  I have no sympathy for the guy no matter what his reasons are.  He killed one of our Battalion's soldiers in that incident right across the street from our rear detachment head quarters.  The rest of the Battalion is currently in Iraq, to include myself.  We have had more soldiers killed while on their 2 week leave or on rear detachment than we have in the past 11 months here in Iraq due to this, motorcycles, and DWI.

On a legal note.  The Army has two options here.  They can go through the state of Texas or UCMJ for prosecution.  Both have capital punishment, but I think this should be done through UCMJ.  It was on a Fort Hood and it was soldier on soldier. 

[Flipside]

The concern is, will the American public see it that way? Will they take it simply as the act of one man who was obviously unstable, or will they see his religion as his motive, instead of being the cause of his motive? (Assuming, of course, that initial thoughts regarding his motive are accurate).

I have used the argument that 'the percentage of nerds who live in their parents cellar is probably the same as the percentage of Texans who live in a gun-lined shelter, i.e. far, far less than people seem to think' so I can accept that there was over-stereotyping there, hope no offense was taken at that

[Flipside]

It has begun.

Fox news are claiming he shouted 'Allah Akbar' before opening fire, something unconfirmed by any other news outlet, or the base, and they are claiming he made radical Internet postings when even the FBI said that are still trying to confirm they are the same person...

Good old witch-burning Fox...

[Turambar]

there was some news coverage about this on tv at dinner last night. 

it was extremely annoying.  Instead of "there was a shooting today at a military base, we will report back with details as they come in"  there was this whole google maps bull**** where they were zooming in on buildings and telling us all sorts of unrelated details about the base, and when they ran out of that, instead of doing the "report back with details as they come in"  they started bringing in "experts" and doing all this speculation, and repeating the stuff they had already said and going on and on and on about the same thing with not new information for like half an hour at least.

****ing Wolf Blitzer.