Topic: Fort Hood Shootings?!?!?

[Terry in Australia]

Here's an email I just received from an old Navy Seal mate, who, like Bobby and Bob, has seen the horrors of war from a less clinical position than most of us here. It was sent to my mate Tom by an Army Chaplain who was in Fort Hood on the day, and for me at least, puts a human face on the tragedy. Cheers, Terry.

"Dear Family and Friends,
I hate sending out a mass mailing, because I want to write each of you and thank you for your prayers. There is just no time. I received several calls from the Synod and our Bishop, and those were wonderfully timed and uplifting. I have relied on many of you to get messages to others, thanks for helping.
First, the reality that we saw here was many times worse than anything CNN or Nightline portrayed. They want to talk more about the "political issues"and missed the real event. It was for me a flashback to the Combat Hospital in Baghdad, but bigger and 1 mile from my office.
Second, the response of our soldiers, all unarmed and vulnerable in a medical setting, was heroic beyond description. People threw themselves to protect others. There were many civilians there but few were injured because soldiers rushed them to safety wherever they could, at their own peril.Additionally, our civilian medical people and staff are awesome and their leadership remained calm. Unarmed Soldiers and staff rushed toward the gunfire. Toward it!
Third, this shooter shot up a group of reserve soldiers who do psychiatric support and combat stress care. Did he randomly select this group during their first day of processing? I understand he had an appointment there that day as he was likely to deploy with this group.
Fourth, 5 of the fatalities and more than 20 of the wounded were Reserve and Guard Soldiers that my unit was just beginning to process. That is about half of the whole group. One fatality was one of our dearly loved Physician Assistants who was retired from the Army. He looked like and had the gentle, happy spirit of a Santa Claus.
Fifth, our staff, soldiers and volunteers who rushed to the scene were applying makeshift tourniquets and improvised pressure dressings and doing CPR during the shooting. They helped the EMTs and often stayed with Soldiers, continuing CPR all the way to the ER.....when just minutes before they were targets.
A heavily armed gunman, trusted as an officer and physician did this. Can you imagine having someone you totally trust doing this? I had met him before, and am totally stunned. I was on scene with my commander just minutes after it started. Those of you who saw CNN saw me walking around with a cell phone, trying to guide more chaplains to our location as most routes were blockaded. Hunter said he knew it was me because of the cell phone and my distinctive walk.
In the first 72 hours none of us slept. I was on duty all of Thursday night and all of Saturday night. Tragically, I was tasked to go on a team who told a young woman that she and her three babies had lost husband and father. We woke her up at 3 AM. Because the cell phone system was totally overwhelmed, her whole neighborhood was on edge and still had not heard from some Soldiers who were on duty all night. When we went to her door, her neighbors came rushing. Our Army vehicle and dress uniforms told them everything.
I slept a few hours last night, more like passed out. Tomorrow I join all of our other chaplains in a prayer service with the Chief of Chaplains, and then prepare for the memorial service with the President speaking. We will be nearly totally locked down and I'll be walking everywhere due to security. Then I will drive to North Fort Hood, where we have a donated BBQ for our Reserve Soldiers. It is 23 miles from the main post,ceremony and my office. This is our Reserve Training site, where the units are housed in training for deployment. These guys can't run to the big PX or watch their own tvs or be with their families. It is super hard on them, after losing so many.
I could not be more proud of the people here at Fort Hood. My Soldiers are wearing themselves out trying to help these Soldiers and families. We are getting help from other bases, and these people are a great blessing. Be proud of our military. We have Air Force and Navy personnel joining us in some of the specialties, medical, counseling and other fields. The FBI is everywhere. So are chaplains.
In the midst of so much evil, good and compassion are flowing. I am glad I am here......but like everyone else I wish it really was a tv show we could turn off.
Please pass this on to anyone I left out. I haven't been on my personal computer for a long time and have had to respond to Washington in my very few moments on my military computer. I also am too tired to check all the email addresses...some may be old or no good. Sorry!
By the way, go hug someone for me....I'll feel it.
Love, Richard
CH (LTC) Richard Brunk
Hood Mobilization Brigade
Building 4228, 78th St and Warehouse
Fort Hood, TX 76544

[BobbyR]

Blackwater are paid Mercenaries not properly led Soldiers.

[Bob Wessner]

All I know is that our troops don't covertly target mass unarmed civilians for the largest amount of damage possible.

Actually, it has happened. I think you mean they don't do it as a matter of policy.

Sometimes it is a result of faulty Intellegence. Unfortuantley given today's weaponry, the results are horrific.

And sometimes not.  While not "technically" the U.S. military one has to just think back to when Blackwater slaughtered 17 Iraq civilians in the street unprovoked and without cause.  Just one well known example of what happened far to often.

Actually, I was thinking back to Vietnam in this instance, but I would guess it has happened in just about every conflict.

[medic09]

All I know is that our troops don't covertly target mass unarmed civilians for the largest amount of damage possible.

Actually, it has happened. I think you mean they don't do it as a matter of policy.

Sometimes it is a result of faulty Intellegence. Unfortuantley given today's weaponry, the results are horrific.

And sometimes not.  While not "technically" the U.S. military one has to just think back to when Blackwater slaughtered 17 Iraq civilians in the street unprovoked and without cause.  Just one well known example of what happened far to often.

Actually, I was thinking back to Vietnam in this instance, but I would guess it has happened in just about every conflict.

It may be; but I absolutely assure you that in the case of American, Canadian, British, or Israeli soldiers (these are the militaries I've had direct contact with in some way) this would be a clear aberration.  What's more, it would be rejected by the mainstream if proven.  Anything else you hear is malicious fiction.

[Slayer]

All I know is that our troops don't covertly target mass unarmed civilians for the largest amount of damage possible.

Actually, it has happened. I think you mean they don't do it as a matter of policy.

Sometimes it is a result of faulty Intellegence. Unfortuantley given today's weaponry, the results are horrific.

And sometimes not.  While not "technically" the U.S. military one has to just think back to when Blackwater slaughtered 17 Iraq civilians in the street unprovoked and without cause.  Just one well known example of what happened far to often.

I was not there, but they were on mission and apparently gunners were spooked and reacted excessively which triggered others to do the same. Common with police. Not terrorism and those responsible will face manslaughter charges in a few months.

[medic09]

Thanks for posting that Terry.  God bless those brave men and women.  Combat when you're unarmed and unexpecting must be even more frightening.

[Bob Wessner]

Medic,

I agree 100% about them being aberrations rather than commonplace.

[BobbyR]

Thank you Terry. And God bless Rev.Brunk. While I am not a religious sort, I spent many hours with our Chaplin, who never a objected to a Bourbon or two. He always scammed the CO into getting us to lift "extra" supplies to Missionaries out in the remote Villes. I received word he was killed in a mortar attack after I left.

The take away from Rev. Brunk's story is that the well trained soldier responds to a situation in the hope they can improvise a solution.

This piece of garbage is paralyzed and I hope he is locked away rather than killed. This way he is denied being a marytr.

[mick7504]

Thanks for that insight Terry.
Reading it really does drive the reality home.
Mick

[74cb750]

The Rev wrote a good piece.

It must rankle the muslim shooter that he was stopped by a woman, at least I hope it does.

[Terry in Australia]

This is an interesting article:

 

[medic09]

Another look at how political correctness facilitates this:
 


Medicalizing mass murder
Nov. 15, 2009
Charles Krauthammer , THE JERUSALEM POST
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 downplaying 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, whom 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. 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.

Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated Washington Post columnist.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1258027296104&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
[ Back to the Article ]
Copyright 1995- 2009 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah Mordy, like I said awhile ago, if you walk like a duck, and talk like a duck, you're probably a duck......... 

[demon78]

I don't know if this will mean anything but I begin to think that the term "Terrorist" is becoming an appellation for the those people and I think it has outlived it's usefulness which is why I suggested the term "#$%*" awhile ago, now having thought about it more, I wonder at the richness of human swear words and the possibility of coming up with something that demeans the terrorists instead of giving them presence and fame, the new term would have to be short, to the point and easily translatable into Arabic.
Bill the demon.

[BobbyR]

Try Murderers it kinda fits.

[demon78]

Yeah Bobby but words like that still empower the #$%*s what I'm trying to find is something that puts them down.
Bill the demon.

[Slayer]

Caitiff?

[Bob Wessner]

Caitiff?

Unfortunately, being a coward isn't a capital offense, but I get your drift.

[bucky katt]

hopefully he lives a good long time, suffering with no movement below his chest, crapping into a plastic bag for the rest of his life.

[Hush]

It's a worry when the administration will not call a spade a spade or a Muslim extremist a terrorist!