Attack on fort hood in texas

bengalraider

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Twelve people were killed and 31 injured during a shooting rampage Thursday afternoon at Fort Hood Army base in central Texas, according to the base's commanding officer.

A law enforcement official identified the shooter as Army Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, who is currently hospitalized. The official spoke to The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to discuss the case.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas Republican, would not identify the shooter during an interview with Fox News, but did say the shooter had told people he was upset about the possibility of being deployed.

Gen. Cone said during a televised press conference outside that base that the shootings took place about 1:30 p.m., and that all those killed and injured were soldiers.

Gen. Cone said the shooter used two handguns.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, said it was too soon to attribute motives to the killers. The killings took place at two nearby "readiness centers," administrative buildings where soldiers are processed for medical records before going to the front or returning home from a tour.

In this case, there was a scheduled graduation ceremony scheduled for one of the base's continuing education programs. Ft. Hood is the largest geographical base for the U.S. military and one of the two largest in terms of population. The central Texas facility is host to the US III Corps as well as the 1st Cavalry division for the U.S. military. The US III Corps routinely fills the operational command structure for Multinational Forces Iraq.

"We expect Fort Hood will continue its missions deployed overseas and at home," Col. Garver said.

President Barack Obama called the shooting "horrific."

"We will make sure that we get answers to every question about this horrible incident," Mr. Obama said Thursday while speaking at summit of Native American tribes.

Ft. Hood, in Killeen, Texas, is the largest U.S. military base in the world — home to roughly 34,000 people on 160,000 acres. The base is used to send and bring back soldiers in the war of terror.
My condolences to the families of the dead, may the dead rest in peace.
Source: U.S. soldier kills 12, wounds 31 at Texas base - Washington Times
 

bengalraider

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Gunman alive

Ft. Hood Gunman Alive After Killing 12, Wounding 31 in Shooting Rampage
By Joseph Straw

11/05/2009 -
UPDATE @ 10:00 P.M.: Contradicting earlier media reports, The New York Times says the shooter Malik Nadal Hassan, an Army psychiatrist who recently learned he would deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan soon, was alive and in stable condition at a local hospital after being shot during his rampage. Three other soldiers detained after the shooting have been released.
UPDATE @7:00 P.M.: The deceased gunman's name has been released. His name is Malik Nadal Hassan. Two soldiers are also in custody. According to The New York Times:
[Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the commanding officer at Fort Hood] said the shooting began at about 1:30 p.m. Central time, when a soldier entered the soldier readiness unit, where soldiers receive last-minute medical attention before being shipped overseas, including to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“A solder opened fire, and due to the quick response of the police forces, he was killed,” General Cone said.
“There were several eyewitness accounts that there was more than one shooter,” he said. Two other soldiers were also taken into custody, he said, but the authorities are continuing to sort out what exactly happened.
The death toll has since been revised to 12, with 31 wounded.
Source: Ft. Hood Gunman Alive After Killing 12, Wounding 31 in Shooting Rampage | Security Management

 

bengalraider

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Was this jihad?

Fort Hood shooting: Nidal Malik Hasan 'said Muslims should rise up'
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 11 people before being shot and wounded by police at Fort Hood, had said Muslims should "rise up" and attack Americans in retaliation for the US war in Iraq, a former army colleague said.

source: Fort Hood shooting: Nidal Malik Hasan 'said Muslims should rise up' - Telegraph
By Philip Sherwell in New York
Published: 1:41AM GMT 06 Nov 2009
Col Terry Lee, a retired officer who worked with him at the military base in Texas, alleged Maj Hasan had angry confrontations with other officers over his views.
Maj Hasan was reportedly fighting orders to be deployed to Iraq at the end of the month, claiming that he was the victim of harassment and insults because of his Arab background and his faith.

The major is a psychiatrist who had been treating soldiers returning from Iraq for post-traumatic stress and alcohol and drug abuse problems.
"He was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," Col Lee told Fox News.
"He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place." He said that Maj Hasan said he was "happy" when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military recruitment centre in Arkansas in June. An American convert to Islam was accused of the shootings.
Col Lee alleged that other officers had told him that Maj Hasan had said "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Time Square" in New York.

He claimed he was aware that the major had been subject to "name calling" during heated arguments with other officers.
Federal law enforcement officials have said Maj Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.
The officials said the postings appeared to have been made by Maj Hasan but they were still trying to confirm that he was the author.
Maj Hasan's cousin Nader Husan said he was happy working for the military but did dread deployment to Iraq.
Mr Hasan said his cousin was a US-born Muslim who had joined the military after high school. He had served as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC, which treats many badly wounded troops.
"He was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed dealing with the people coming back and ... trying to help them with their trauma," he said.
He said his cousin had been transferred to Fort Hood in April months ago and was very reluctant to be deployed to Iraq. "We've known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare," he said.
All the warning signs were there this man should have been apprehended a long time ago! this incident would serve as a warning to american forces worldwide not to take such signs lightly.Also i believe that this would tighten the restrictions on warsd of immigrant families especially from the middle east joining the united states military.
 

bengalraider

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some pics from the fort hood incident


An undated photograph made available by the Centre for the Study of traumatic Stress, shows Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan the suspected shooter at Fort Hood U.S Army Post where according to authorities 12 people were shot and killed and 31 other were wounded on the post near Killeen, Texas, USA 05 November 2009. According to Lieutenant General Bob Cone a shooter was killed by local police. The shooter was later identified in news reports as Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan. Those killed were at the base's Soldier Readiness Center where deploying and returning soldiers undergo medical screenings.

An entrance to Fort Hood Army Base in Fort Hood, Texas, near Killeen remains in lock-down following a mass shooting on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. (AP / Jack Plunkett)
 

Ray

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They should have allowed him to quit!
 

Yusuf

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Another reason for America and the world to distance themselves from Muslims. I'm sure their will be ramifications in the US for sure.
 

Yusuf

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Seriously these pcs of shyt do this horrible crime snd the rest of the community have to pay for it. He will go to hell but will make the lives of others hell over here.
 

bengalraider

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Some soldiers have reported the attackers shouting "Allahu Akbar" during the attack, though no clear jihadist links have been established it is becoming more and more likely that Maj Hasan had jihadist sympathies, the american army really needs to look at incidents such as these and conduct regular psychological evaluations in order to root out such sympathizers before things come to a boil.
 

IBRIS

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Seriously these pcs of shyt do this horrible crime snd the rest of the community have to pay for it. He will go to hell but will make the lives of others hell over here.
From what I have read about this case, it looks like a typical case of a frustrated-disturbed guy finding a way to take it out by attaching it to a political issue that identifies with him. If he happened to be a white christian, he might go attack an abortion clinic.

It says that the guy was unhappy with being deployed to Afghanistan AND he was tormented about his background. That combination sounds like it drove him to a mental state where he wanted to just act out the way he did. He probably had some other problems as well.

In any case, this is not a good year for the US military or the Muslim-American population.
 

bengalraider

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Lawmaker: Hasan had communications with Pakistan

By ANGELA K. BROWN and SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writers
Fri Nov 13, 6:24 pm ET

FORT HOOD, Texas – The Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood made or accepted wire transfers with Pakistan, a country wracked by Muslim extremist violence, a Republican congressman said Friday.
Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee, said people outside the intelligence community with direct knowledge of the transfers also told him Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan also had communications with Pakistan.
"He may have friends or relatives or whatever and this could be totally (innocent)," McCaul said in a telephone interview. "But if he is wiring money to Pakistan, that could be terrorist financing. If he was receiving money from Pakistan, that is more significant."

McCaul said he does not know the direction of the transfers and communications, only that they passed between Hasan and Pakistan. He said the lack of additional information is why Congress should launch an investigation.
Hasan, 39, was charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder in a military court, and Army investigators have said he is the only suspect in the case and could face additional charges. His attorney, John Galligan, has said prosecutors have not yet told him whether they plan to seek the death penalty.
A pair of civilian police officers responding to last week's attack, in which 43 people were also injured, including 34 with gunshot wounds, shot Hasan four times. Recovering in the intensive care unit at San Antonio's Brooke Army Medical Center, Hasan has told his attorney he has no feeling in his legs and extreme pain in his hands.
Galligan said doctors have told Hasan he may be permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He called his client's medical condition "extremely serious" and said Hasan didn't flinch when Galligan touched his leg during a meeting Thursday, when one of Hasan's relatives was able to see him for the first time since he was hospitalized.
Hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell said he could not confirm whether Hasan was paralyzed, since Hasan has directed hospital officials not to release any information about his condition or injuries.
The question of how Hasan spent his Army salary stems from the apparently frugal lifestyle he lived both in the small city of Killeen, Texas, outside of Fort Hood, and in the Washington, D.C., suburbs when stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In Texas, he lived in a rundown apartment that cost $350 a month and drove a 2006 Honda.
As an Army major with more than 12 years of service, Hasan earns just over $92,000 a year in basic pay and housing and food allowances, according to pay tables from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Hasan's gross monthly salary is $6,325.50 a month, or $75,906 annually. He also gets $1,128 a month for a housing allowance and $223 a month for meals, which adds up to another $16,212 a year.
Military psychiatrists may also receive as much as $20,000 a year in incentive pay, according to the tables. But to get the bonus, they must meet certain requirements, such as agreeing to remain on active duty for at least one year after accepting the award. Hasan's Army records are sealed due to the ongoing investigation, and it isn't clear if he was eligible for the bonus or agreed to the conditions.
President Barack Obama has ordered a review of all intelligence related to Hasan and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies. Several members of Congress, particularly Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have also called for a full examination of what agencies knew about Hasan's contacts with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen and others of concern to the U.S.
Hoekstra confirmed this week that government officials knew about 10 to 20 e-mails between Hasan and the radical imam, beginning in December 2008.
A joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned late last year of Hasan's repeated contact with the cleric, who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.
The FBI said the task force did not refer early information about Hasan to superiors because it concluded he wasn't linked to terrorism.
___
Gamboa reportered from Washington. Associated Press writer Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: Print Story: Lawmaker: Hasan had communications with Pakistan - Yahoo! News

A Pakistan angle here as well!
 

bengalraider

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The greatest shock of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's murderous spree at Fort Hood last week may not have been the spree itself, but the fact that it was the first of its kind in the United States. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Muslims in America have been subject to innumerable stresses, including discrimination and the strain of divided loyalties in their country's eight-year-long war against Muslims in the Middle East and Central Asia. The confusion is enough to inspire conflict in the minds of even the most patriotic of American Muslims in the U.S., let alone young Muslim GIs directly exposed to enemy propaganda. The fact that one unstable member of this community finally erupted in violence should be no surprise.

The conventional wisdom is that unlike Europe's discontented Muslims, America's Muslims are prosperous and happy, having benefited from the welcoming embrace of our "melting pot" nation. This is basically a complacent fiction. According to a Gallup poll released in March 2009, while Muslim integration in the United States has been more successful than in Europe, Muslims remain less civically engaged in American society and less inclined to view their social position positively than any other religious group.


These attitudes have hardened since the attacks of Sept. 11, with American Muslims increasingly choosing not to assimilate into American society and instead finding solace in their religious identity. For example, exclusionary Muslim students' associations on college campus have grown, as have Islamic schools and Muslim radio stations and publications. These initiatives may resemble those taken by other religious and ethnic groups in the United States since the nineteenth century to promote acceptance and assimilation.

But the Muslim situation differs. As a relatively well-integrated minority, Muslims were able to protect their considerable stake in America -- American Muslims' income is slightly above the national average -- by keeping a low profile. Sept. 11 rocked their quiet world, abruptly placing them in a conspicuous and tortuous position. The domestic aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, including physical attacks on Muslims in the streets, being singled out for airport security screenings and in other forms of surveillance, and biased media treatment, implied that suppressing their Muslim identity was better for their health, that they couldn't take their civil rights for granted, and that their interests depended on the absence of serious future attacks within the United States.

At the same time, many Muslims also found the moral territory of those years murkier than the average American did, results from a 2007 Pew Research Center survey suggest. The Sept. 11 attacks appeared to be retaliation for policies, like unbending U.S. support of Israel, that American Muslims themselves tended to disapprove of. Muslims were also less supportive of the American reaction to the attacks: military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and indefinite detention and torture of terrorist suspects. And many Muslims perceived the implementation of the U.S. Patriot Act as biased. Thus, to most U.S. Muslims, maintaining a low profile simply by demonstrating unalloyed approval of their adopted country's policies would have been unprincipled and unpalatable. Yet the absence of a fervently patriotic response only confirmed the suspicions of many non-Muslim Americans.

In turn, the evolving attitudes of non-Muslim Americans toward their Muslim compatriots have been more conducive to Muslim alienation than assimilation. According to a 2006 Gallup poll, a third of Americans admire "nothing" about the Muslim world. Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslims. A July 2007 Newsweek survey indicated that 46 percent of Americans think that the United States is accepting too many Muslim immigrants, 32 percent consider American Muslims less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam, 28 percent believe that the Koran condones violence, 41 percent are convinced that Islamic culture "glorifies suicide," 54 percent are "worried" about Islamic jihadists in the U.S., and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques. Since Sept. 11, Muslims have faced increasing racism, employment and housing discrimination, and vandalism. Media coverage dwelling on the violence associated with radical Islam and ignoring the respectable lifestyles of most American Muslims, along with Christian right-wing rhetoric casting the campaign against terrorism as a clash of religions, has contributed to the public's misunderstanding of Islam.
 

bengalraider

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part 2

BY STEVEN SIMON, JONATHAN STEVENSON | NOVEMBER 18, 2009
Despite all this, American Muslims have generally resisted radicalization, and have almost universally rejected violent protest or reaction. Post-9/11 fears that a Muslim fifth column would coalesce in this country have not remotely been realized. But the Fort Hood massacre arguably showed that the continued civility of the Muslim population against undeniable pressures cannot be taken for granted. To preserve it, the American public will have to resist the paranoia to which last week's tragedy could potentially lead.

Instead, Barack Obama should use his bully pulpit to fight for the better treatment and monitoring of vulnerable Muslim service-members, to avoid another tragedy. Following his stern and eloquent eulogy, Obama should offer another speech emphasizing that Fort Hood was an anomaly and that the very rareness of such incidents illuminates the overall loyalty of American Muslims and the need to protect that population.

Then, he should follow up his words with policy changes. The fact that Hasan was psychologically disturbed does not negate the larger point that soldiers cannot be expected to function well in the service of their country for a cause that they oppose. Accordingly, with the United States in direct combat with Muslims on two fronts and engaged in a broader global counterterrorism campaign in which the antagonists are Muslims, the attitudes of Muslim service members need to be closely monitored. The sharp opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the belief that Muslims should not be sent to fight other Muslims voiced by Hasan at Walter Reed Hospital in mid-2007 should have raised a red flag even without evidence of mental imbalance or contact with radical clerics because the military imperatives of unit cohesion and strong morale would have counseled against his continued service. The White House should ensure that the services, the Pentagon, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force institutionalize better interagency early-warning mechanisms for detecting attitudes that render personnel unsuitable for service before they become alienated from their country.

Second, evidence has emerged that Hasan's turn toward radicalism and violence was partly driven by the taunts of fellow soldiers. The relative ease with which the Army was integrated after World War II demonstrates how effective military discipline can be in advancing individual rights when purposefully applied. Since military service is an extraordinarily sensitive issue for Muslims, Obama should immediately direct the chiefs of staff of all of the military services to redouble efforts to enforce antidiscrimination standards. Then a broader antidiscrimination effort, perhaps informed by a General Accountability Office study on anti-Muslim bias, should be extended to other agencies.

Increased vigilance for the few Muslims who may stray from the nonviolent norm is essential. But Fort Hood's principal legacy should be a greater commitment to ensuring, through accommodation of political and religious sensitivity and equality of treatment, that American Muslims don't suffer for their loyalty to their country.
 

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