Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

damn this fucking sucks that he was muslim

I think the degree to which the muslim component gets played up in the news will largely depend on how he answers for what he's done. If he comes out screaming jihad then, well, that is just the last thing this already terrible situation needs. But if his reasoning is more personal, I doubt the media will run w/ the muslim thing. Obv what people say behind closed doors is another matter entirely.

I'm sorta trying to figure out the course of events -- apparently all casualties were in the location of the first reports, but there was a second burst of shooting a half hour later. I suppose it may be that that reflects when Hasan was caught or brought down.

At this point it sounds more like that this guy was exhibiting plenty of bad signals in advance, so (a bit like the Va. Tech shooter) I'd like to know what if anything was done/noted about that. He obviously has a superior officer, so what happened there?

Well, he was a psychiatrist, so he was the one in charge of giving others psychiatric evaluations, not the reverse. A superior officer would probably have to clear all kinds of red tape to get a psych to undergo some sort of third-party evaluation. Just a guess, really.

He or she is still the superior officer nonetheless, though. Not saying said person is somehow answerable for all this horror, just that from the sound of it I would have assumed some action was already taken prior to this. I don't envy that person at all right now.

If the guy were to be made to undergo an evaluation, if he had his wits about him at all he most likely would have known just the right answers to give to stave off suspicion. Not saying that the military doesn't need to keep strict tabs on the goings-on of its fellows, but if anyone were to be in any position to remain under the radar w/ such tendencies, it would be someone in his position.

True but if you have coworkers saying that he was known to be a loose cannon on some matters then it's not like something wasn't known. Well, we'll all have to wait to see what formal details emerge more. The hearsay doesn't sound particularly helpful to his cause, then again hearsay had this initially as a team of three shooters rather than one, so.

Didn't know about the "loose cannon" thing but, obv, yeah, you'd think something like that would have raised some red flags.

There were reports earlier that he'd recently received a negative Officer Evaluation Report, right? Which is rare for an officer, in my limited experience. Maybe even rarer for a doctor. (I assume his superior was also a doctor -- probably a colonel.) Also reports that he'd argued a lot with other soldiers about whether we should continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. But his Evaluation woluldn't be part of the public record, and I'm not sure we'll ever find out why that report was negative -- or why, if he wasn't adequately doing his job, he may still have been counseling or treating soldiers. (Actually, though, do we even know he was treating soldiers? Have any reports thus far on what his military job entailed? Occurs to me that plenty of soldiers he might have been working with may well have been just as apprehensive about deploying as he apparently was. And obviously, he was internalizing their apprehension all along. But I'm also guessing that, as a military shrink, part of his job may have been to reassure them that their fears were unfounded; at very least, he'd be required to be committed to the larger mission, like any other officer. So he was clearly conflicted in multiple ways, and quite possibly in ways that affected his day to day duties as a soldier.)

Actually, though, do we even know he was treating soldiers? - that was just an assumption on my part & it seems you know a fair amount more about such things than myself.

xp..."Have there been any reports thus far on what...," I meant.

Btw, the Virgina Tech connection seems like a red herring to me; the shooting there happened, what, a decade or so after he'd graduated? (Think I'd read 1997 somewhere, unless I misinterpreted something.)

NYT:

“He was doing everything he could to avoid that,” Mr. Hasan said. “He wanted to do whatever he could within the rules to make sure he wouldn’t go over.”

Several years ago, that included retaining a lawyer and making inquiries about whether he could get out of the Army before his contract was up, because of the harassment he had received as a Muslim. But Nader Hasan said the lawyer had told his cousin that even if he paid the Army back for his education, it would not allow him to leave before his commitment was up.

“I think he gave up that fight and was just doing his time,” Mr. Hasan said.

I didnt think it was *that* hard to get out of the forces was it? :/

In wartime, it's apparently pretty tough. (Not all that easy in peacetime, either.)

So he did something not within the rules, to avoid going over.

Fwiw, I don't think being opposed to involvement in the Middle East, maybe even vocally, would be that rare for a soldier these days; there's at least one coffee shop outside of Fort Hood that serves as a sort of off-duty refuge for soldiers questioning just that. (Local Austin papers have reported on it.) Might be rarer, though, for an officer -- especially one who's not supposed to fraternize with enlisteds on a social level (and maybe doubly so for a psychiatrist, who can't ethically socialize with his patients, right?) Still, these days, and this many years into the war, I'd guess that political opinions might be fairly diverse across the ranks. On the other hand, clearly the guy was scared shitless about deploying -- morally and politically opposed maybe, but also personally scared. (I haven't read how soon he was supposed to move, but apparently it was soon.)

I don't know how hard it is to get out, but having the government pay for a very expensive education that provided specialized training in a much-needed area probably makes it harder.

Agreed that VT connection is most likely a red herring.

xposts

He was recently relocated to Ft. Hood from the Mid-Atlantic.

Also, can this get it's own thread (deadlier than Columbine, etc.)?

deadlier than Columbine, etc. - tallies aside, the real clincher here is that we have someone who will have to answer for such a godawful thing. If I'm not a mistaken, this is a first for the new era of mass shootings, young children aside?

there prob should be a thread

That Times piece actually answers some of the questions I raised:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/us/06suspect.html?_r=1&hp

Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

Also mentions questionable Internet posts by somebody who may or may not have been Hasan, though the FBI had been taking note of them.

Curious about this, too: The Times piece claims "he joined the Army right out of high school" -- which, if he's 39, probably means over 20 years ago. If didn't graduate from Virgina Tech until 2007, that means he would have been 27 when he finished his undergrad -- apparently on a full-tuition ROTC scholarship. I'm not sure whether that suggests he was an enlisted soldier before college, or whether the NYT is confusing signing a ROTC contract with "joining the Army," when in fact he wouldn't actually be in the Army until college ended. (The Times piece goes on to say that the Army also paid for him to go to med school.)

dedicated thread:
Fort Hood Shootings Nov 05, 2009 (suspect Major Malik Nadal Hasan)

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

Srsly, why the heck do people join the defence forces if this is how they feel about war, wtf.

I've known a couple people who got in (and back out) of the service to help them get their act together, go to college, or to pay for medical school - they accept that they might have to deploy but are hoping that they'll miss out. If this guy joined up 20 years ago he probably thought he was going to be fine as there weren't actual combat situations happening.

Oh whatever. If you don't want to fight, don't volunteer for the armed forces. The armed forces fight. That's what they do. That's why they exist.

Let's assume that war is crazy. Let's assume that a military psychiatrist is burdened with an impossible task of convincing American Service men and women that war is in their best interest as a people.

I have plenty of sympathy for people who join and realize some time later that they can't do it anymore. That's different than joining with the calculation that fighting can somehow be avoided.

I agree, don't gamble on not having to go to war if you aren't ready to do it. I'm just saying there are people who do this and hope that they won't ever have to. My uncle had his medical school paid for by serving in the air force in the 80s and paid it back by working at a rural US base as an OB/GYN for four years. There's no way in hell he could have become a doctor otherwise and he lucked out.

This guy had been in the military for over 20 years, tho, & had only recently acquired an islamofascist worldview. Yes, in theory he probably should have promptly retired from his position when he made up his mind to adopt such beliefs, but dude was obviously not playing with a full deck at that point.

Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

my point with virginia tech is that if someone from the school you went to goes and has a massacre you are going to be thinking about massacres more than people who didn't go to that school. any virginia tech alum is going to have taken that situation a lot more personally than people who have never been there, so at the very least it was in his headdd. somewhereeee.

sorta like how suicide is more common in places where there's lots of suicide in the news.

I can see how people join the military but don't actually want to fight. The military's use of incentives as a recruiting tactic have basically turned it into a social welfare organ. Still, anyone who joins ought to realize that they could be called on to kill and die.

xxpost

This guy was career physician though, so it's not like he was being called up to "fight." It just happened that there was a perfect storm that he had actually been called upon to serve the very cause that his recently-adopted beliefs so thoroughly negated. Add to that the factor of mental illness/instability & it was just the tipping point in his house of cards. You can only go so far to rationalize a situation that is, itself, completely irrational.

full o typos - sry.

the real clincher here is that we have someone who will have to answer for such a godawful thing

yeah, i really hope he stays alive. the mass murder-suicide always feels like a cheat. you want to sit the (pardon the language but, you know) motherfucker down in a courtroom and make him listen to the victims and the survivors. it may or may not have any effect on him, but who cares about him. it's good for everyone else.

Yeah, I just hope he comes to the point of, if not actual atonement, at least taking some sort of personal responsibility. If he comes out all "praise be to Allah!" fuck - I think we can all agree that the last thing we need to come of this is a whole new cycle of sociopolitical xenophobia. I mean, that is inevitable at this point anyway, probably, but the less amplified it is the better, obv.

This should all probably be moved to Steve's thread, anyway.

when we get our pink uzis, i'll make sure to find you and kill your first, fuckin homophobic shitbag.

jesus christ.

you realize how tasteless that is on a spree shooting thread? like way more tasteless than "god fuck this gay earth" which is tasteless but certainly nowhere near warranting a death threat?

safety tip: don't join the homicidal international gangster US military, one of the most evil forces on earth. Sorry, but truth.

does Fort Hood have a cute little logo that people can put on their facebook profiles to show how sensitive and caring they are? Preferably with a ribbon on it.

or is that just for college victims.

Morbs: let's see if you're still singin' that tune when a United Planets cruiser has to rescue your beautiful daughter from the destrucltive power of your own artificially augmented id.

crut, table had every right to be upset w/me: it was tasteless (in general), and esp on a thread like this. sorry, tables

you realize how tasteless that is on a spree shooting thread? like way more tasteless than "god fuck this gay earth" which is tasteless but certainly nowhere near warranting a death threat?

― the passos of unbanned sock (Curt1s Stephens), Friday, November 6, 2009 2:28 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Tbh I agree with Curtis. I didn't say anything last night but I'm glad that he did. I really don't think anything warrants a fucking death threat even if it wasn't serious and certainly not on a thread about a shooting spree. To be totally honest, I'm surprised tables wasn't temp banned for that. I thought it was pretty horrifying.

I didn't see it until this morning. However, I would likely have tempbanned both of them because:

a) death threats on a spree-shooting thread are incredibly stupid;
b) quoting seemingly homophobic subboard memes to a mainstream audience on a touchy thread where emotions are running high is also stupid

The basic moral of the story is "think about who you're talking to before you post". Let's move on.

dan is otm---it was pretty thoughtless of me, sorry!

can we tempban people for uncritically using the phrase "islamofascist worldview"

ha i wanted to point that out too :(

I just used that phrase to indicate that the guy had been indoctrinated to, or at least sympathetic with, some degree of radical Islam. I'm sorry if that is not the proper terminology, but I was using it to state what, in this case, has already been revealed as fact & not making some reactionary assumption.

Tempban away tho, if you like.

I just looked it up & yeah, bad phrasing. Sorry about that. I was typing pretty fast when I was posting on this thread last night. Normally, I would cross-check a term I had any doubts about, but it is what it is.