Fort Hood Texas shootings

[Josh_R]

I'm honestly suprised noone has made a thread about this incident already. For those of you who don't know what i'm talking about there links on this post you can check out.

Homewood soldier was 1st target at Fort Hood -- chicagotribune.com
Fort Hood suspect said his goodbyes before rampage - Yahoo! News
FBI reassessing past look at Fort Hood suspect - Yahoo! News

For me this was a horrible event cause I have buddies in the army that are at Fort Hood so when I heard about this I flipped out. If anyone knows anything else about this event feel free to speak on it and your opinos...

[smurphy]

Err im not too sure about legal precedent in the US so does anyone know if the gunman will be court martialed or judged by a civilian court. I think the gunman shouting "Allah Akbar" goes beyond the normal average soldier losing their nut and so can this be treated as a terrorist incident?

I have got to feel sorry for the families of the victims as these soldiers werent even deployed yet. Losing a loved one in a warzone is one thing but having them mercilessly murdered is just grotesque.

[Pete]

I want to say that this is an act of domestic terrorism, from the facts stated. I also think that he will be tried in military court, being that the events happened while he was serving active duty on a military base. I couldn't even think of an appropriate punishment for him; slow and painful would be a start.

I've been following the story on the news, and supposedly he has been in contact with a radical cleric or sheik overseas. I can't say for sure how true this is, but if he was really shouting "allah akbar," then I would have to assume there is some correlation.

I don't think I can fully understand the stress of his position, but that is by no means any reason to start shooting. Being over in the Middle East has got to take a hell of a toll on you, and being a psychiatrist, listening to probably hundreds of soldiers and staff all going through various traumas has got to be incredibly stressful, especially if you've lost patients to suicide. As stressful and heartbreaking as his job may have been, I think it really brings to mind a few questions.

There were warning signs, like him begging to be discharged and his internet postings, why did nobody look into these?

Who helps the psychiatric help?

How can we make things better/ easier for returning vets, transition-wise?

Why didn't he just kill himself?

[Sasquatch]

Err im not too sure about legal precedent in the US so does anyone know if the gunman will be court martialed or judged by a civilian court.

In a word: Yes. That's the bad (or good) thing about the Uniform Code of Mulitary Justice (UCMJ), which applies to every American servicemember -- it doesn't replace civilian laws, it supplements them. This man will still be tried for local, state, and federal crimes, but he will also be Court Martialled for them. The military kind of has a double-jeopardy thing that the civilian justice system can't touch.

From what I've seen ... "domestic terrorism" is right on the ball. Even though (most of) his targets were military, they were not in combat, and that, along with the rest of his circumstances, rules out this being an act of war.

Hopefully, this will bring one subject to light: anti-profiling. Pete, you asked why nobody looked into the warning signs ... It's because he's Muslim. I shit you not. America (government) has become so politically correct, so unwilling to offend people, that instead of focusing on the more probable terrorist threats (i.e. Muslims), our government has mandated that we almost completely ignore them. Even a reasonable amount of attention -- the same amount given to anybody else -- is considered "too much", so specific groups are given even less attention. For the same reason, 80-year-old women are frisked at airports and have their knitting needles taken away, but military-aged Arab Muslim men are told to pass on through.

He had never been deployed, so he didn't have PTSD. It ain't like it's contagious. If he needed some sort of psychiatric help or had some sort of problem, he would have known it, since that's kinda his job. Something made him want to kill soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan.

We've got to start looking at what terrorist attacks have in common. And for a while, the one common string has been radical Islam.

[Pete]

And that's really what disgusts me the most. This is a time of war right now. if you want peace with a group that isn't wearing nice and distinguishable uniforms, then we're going to have to make some concessions. Middle eastern-looking people driving a Uhaul truck towards a bridge or tunnel should be stopped 100% of the time, all the time. I would rather have innocents inconvenienced than see any more blood shed. I'm not saying we throw every Middle Easterner into Guantanamo, but we've gotta step things up and conduct more background checks before any more attacks happen.



And yeah, I'm aware that PTSD isn't contagious, I was just under the impression that he was afraid to go back to the Middle East, since that's what I had heard on the news this morning. I could see it being depressing trying to counsel so many people with PTSD and getting an impression of how horrible it may or may not be over there. At the same time, that doesn't warrant his actions.

[Josh_R]

And that's really what disgusts me the most. This is a time of war right now. if you want peace with a group that isn't wearing nice and distinguishable uniforms, then we're going to have to make some concessions. Middle eastern-looking people driving a Uhaul truck towards a bridge or tunnel should be stopped 100% of the time, all the time. I would rather have innocents inconvenienced than see any more blood shed. I'm not saying we throw every Middle Easterner into Guantanamo, but we've gotta step things up and conduct more background checks before any more attacks happen.

This is a good point Pete, and I definately agree with it. I do not wish to see anymore bloodshed either and I think that this method could save many people from a potential terrorist attack. Every middle eastern person could be a terrorist and the world and those discrimanated against just has to except that, now I know that all of them are not terrorist but how do we know the middle eastern's with good intentions and those with bad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10hood.html

In this link it states that Major Hasna's college roommate's often heard him express his hate for america and he even tried to justified suicide bombing's. With all of this terrorism is probably the first thing going through everyone's mind...