At least 7 dead, 20 wounded in Fort Hood shooting

[HisMajestyBOB]

I looked it up: they have had 5 Canadians as deputy commanders since 1998, including Rick Hillier.

I am guessing it is part of an officer exchange program.

Probably to get them needed experience under fire before going to Afghanistan.

[Caliga]

I saw on CNN that apparently the guy is now a paraplegic.

[Ed Anger]

I saw on CNN that apparently the guy is now a paraplegic.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

[Caliga]

Yes, I'm quite broken up about it. 

[KRonn]

I'm just waiting for this to be declared an act of extremist Muslim terrorism. Seems it was, based on what's been reported of the Major's dealings with radical groups, some of his own statements, papers he's put out such as in a medical class. That had nothing about medicine but was about his views on radical Islam, Jihad and such like that. Emails to al-Qaida. Seems there were so many warnings going off. Why did this ever get so far to this guy being retained in the military, and not more heavily investigated as well?

[Darth Wagtaros]

I'm just waiting for this to be declared an act of extremist Muslim terrorism. Seems it was, based on what's been reported of the Major's dealings with radical groups, some of his own statements, papers he's put out such as in a medical class. That had nothing about medicine but was about his views on radical Islam, Jihad and such like that. Emails to al-Qaida. Seems there were so many warnings going off. Why did this ever get so far to this guy being retained in the military, and not more heavily investigated as well?

Afraid of lawsuits?  General incompetence?  Probably a dislike of attacking a fellow officer's loyalty (sanity).

[DGuller]

I saw on CNN that apparently the guy is now a paraplegic.

And sharp pain in his hands.  As far as mass shootings go, this one is pretty botched as far as the shooter's outcome is concerned.  Being painfully crippled seems like the worst possible outcome.

[Berkut]

I saw on CNN that apparently the guy is now a paraplegic.

And sharp pain in his hands.  As far as mass shootings go, this one is pretty botched as far as the shooter's outcome is concerned.  Being painfully crippled seems like the worst possible outcome.

Painfully crippled and spending the rest of his life in a military prison, where he can get the best care possible, I am sure.

[grumbler]

I'm just waiting for this to be declared an act of extremist Muslim terrorism. Seems it was, based on what's been reported of the Major's dealings with radical groups, some of his own statements, papers he's put out such as in a medical class. That had nothing about medicine but was about his views on radical Islam, Jihad and such like that. Emails to al-Qaida. Seems there were so many warnings going off. Why did this ever get so far to this guy being retained in the military, and not more heavily investigated as well?

Afraid of lawsuits?  General incompetence?  Probably a dislike of attacking a fellow officer's loyalty (sanity).

I think it was more like a failure to understand that not all Muslims were obsessed with Islam, and a reluctance (on grounds of tolerance) to term such behavior insane even when it obviously was.

[CountDeMoney]

The Hammer of the Krauts nails it on the motherfucking head, insha'allah.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and Islamic-fueled violence is Islamic-fueled violence.  WAKE UP WHITE PEOPLE

Medicalizing mass murder

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 13, 2009

What a surprise -- that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs.

"I cringe that he's a Muslim. . . . I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They suffered. He listened. He snapped.

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists -- not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics -- who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

It's been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, who National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won't find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as "compassion fatigue." The poor man -- pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. His business card had his name, his profession, his medical degrees and his occupational identity. U.S. Army? No. "SoA" -- Soldier of Allah. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It's a danger, clear and present.

Consider the Army's treatment of Hasan's previous behavior. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising grand rounds that Hasan had apparently given. Grand rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital -- attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding.

I've been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia -- as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan's. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers -- consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This "really freaked a lot of doctors out," reported NPR.

Nor was this the only incident. "The psychiatrist," reported Zwerdling, "said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird?"

Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague's religion?

One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question -- condescending, politically correct and deadly -- is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center."

Ah yes, those Jersey men -- so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.

[Barrister]

I had initially reserved judgment on this.  Wait for the evidence, don't assume anything, I said.

Well a lot of evidence is in, and he's starting to look an awfully lot like an islamic terrorist.

[garbon]

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists -- not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics -- who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

While I've no problem with this narrative, this part was rather stupid. Different people have different breaking points...we aren't all created equal.

[grumbler]

While I've no problem with this narrative, this part was rather stupid. Different people have different breaking points...we aren't all created equal.

Anyone who used the term "mainstream media" (particularly as a singular noun) is shouting how moronic their thinking is.

"The Mainstream Media" are simply the modern version of "the Jewish World Conspiracy" - a boogieman concept on which one can blame everything.

Was this guy a psychotic who increasingly identified with the absolutism of Islamism as he cracked?  Looks like that to me.  But he is as individual a snowflake as Timothy McVay (who was far worse as a killer, IMO), and so the lessons we can learn from him are as limited as those we learned from McVay (who would seem, from background, pretty much indistinguishable from the victims of Hasan).

People are individuals.  It is dangerous to Grallonize, as Krauthammer and others appear to be doing.

I guess I am saying that i agree with you, but am more emphatic about it! 

[garbon]

I guess I am saying that i agree with you, but am more emphatic about it! 

[CountDeMoney]

It is dangerous to Grallonize, as Krauthammer and others appear to be doing.

Not Grallonize;  Islamosize.

Whoa, Islamosize.  Sounds like an extra-large order of hummus.