12 shot dead at biggest US military base in the world

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Quote :

Twelve people have been killed and 31 injured in a pair of shootings at the Fort Hood military base in Texas, a US Army spokesman has said.


One person has been arrested and at least one more is on the run, officials said. The base has been locked down.

Well, shit. Hope they get the other bastard.

They've now arrested three people, all members of the US military.

If only they allowed guns in the military, this never would have happened.

Quote :

If only they allowed guns in the military, this never would have happened.

For a second there, I thought that meant they killed each other with a machete or something.

Lysander wrote:

If only they allowed guns in the military, this never would have happened.

Goddammit, Lysander.

I came into this thread thinking "Gun wank, good Lord no." Then I saw that the gunmen were in the military and thought "Oh, they'd have guns anyway. Gun wank avoided." See, since military men always have access to firearms, gun control doesn't even come into the situation. The thread was safe.

BUT NOOOOO.

You had to come storming into the thread like the fucking Herald of Darkness, dragging that dead horse's smelly rotten maggot-infested corpse behind you, just like a dog on a goddamn leash. Fuck you, man. Fuck you.

Lysander wrote:

If only they allowed guns in the military, this never would have happened.

I admit, I LOLed.

Lysander wrote:

If only they allowed guns in the military, this never would have happened.

This thread is saved by hilarity.

The guy's name is Nidal Malik Hasan. Anybody here want to bet that some of his fellow soldiers weren't bullying him for being a "raghead", and that he finally snapped?

rachel wrote:

The guy's name is Nidal Malik Hasan. Anybody here want to bet that some of his fellow soldiers weren't bullying him for being a "raghead", and that he finally snapped?

Anybody want to bet that this man was a Major in the military in the mental health field and about to be deployed. Motives aren't yet clear just saying. I highly doubt his fellow soliders were bullying him since he was a high ranking officer.

T.S.Orr wrote:

Anybody want to bet that this man was a Major in the military in the mental health field and about to be deployed.

I'm not sure if that detail is hilarious or horrifying...

T.S.Orr wrote:

Anybody want to bet that this man was a Major in the military in the mental health field and about to be deployed. Motives aren't yet clear just saying. I highly doubt his fellow soliders were bullying him since he was a high ranking officer.

You might be right. I found this in the New York Times:

Quote :

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia...

You're just not right about his rank protecting him. But being bullied harassed doesn't seem to have been the only reason he did this.

That's no excuse. The military has so many sane routes of redress that an officer in the mental health field would know damn well about that to say that that's a reason for opening gunning down your coworkers is a load of shit. That fucker's been in for over 20 years. He could just fucking retire with full benefits and be done with it. Frankly the fact that he hadn't thought that maybe this Army thing with foreign deployments wasn't for him up until now, or decided to reenlist repeatedly... yeah, "I just couldn't take it anymore" doesn't hold any water with me.

The military took that shit stain in, gave him a college education and a commission, and this is how he shows his gratitude: By gunning down soldiers in a readiness center, which is specifically there to help people with... well, just about everything. Why not shoot up an orphanage while you're at it, asshole?

Lysander wrote:

If only they allowed guns in the military, this never would have happened.

Heh. If you're not a cop, you don't have a gun on base.

Good to know, Penguin.

Penguin this so much. When I heard about this my jaw dropped. When I found out he was a Major it dropped more and when I found out he was in the mental health field it fell completely fucking off. If he were having second thoughts about the military, why the flying fuck did he re-enlist? Why not just fucking retire and be done with it? He would have had the works at 40 years old when it came to benefits.

Being harrassed is no damn excuse, hell my damn boss was harrassed every damn day when he first moved down here (right after 9/11) for being Jordanian but did he gun down 43 people? No. I just cannot comprehend this at all. Why the fuck would anyone do shit like this? I mean seriously a fucking Major in the damn military holds power. If someone wants to act unprofessional, write their asses up but don't gun down 43 people. Fucking dickwad. If he doesn't die I hope they put him in a cell full of rednecks for the rest of his life. Yeah, I said it.

Why is nobody pissed off that the guy was harrassed for being a Muslim? That's appalling. And I'll bet in the US military 'harrassed' is a nice and careful way of saying, "This guy was treated like pigshit by his comrades and we overlooked it."

Also, they're in an Islamic country. They should be sympathetic towards the huge majority of Islamic citizens who are being shot and blown up and living in fear of their lives and the US being to blame because they invaded, yes, INVADED Iraq.

Sure, he shouldn't have gunned down a bunch of people. But people don't just snap like that on a whim.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Why is nobody pissed off that the guy was harrassed for being a Muslim? That's appalling. And I'll bet in the US military 'harrassed' is a nice and careful way of saying, "This guy was treated like pigshit by his comrades and we overlooked it."

A) Because he's a grown ass man.
B) As a major on an Army base, the # of people who could give him shit about being Muslim and not catch hell for it is probably in the single digits.
C) HE SHOT FIFTY PEOPLE.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Why is nobody pissed off that the guy was harrassed for being a Muslim? That's appalling.

What Freezer said. Plus we're just going off of speculation.

Quote :

And I'll bet in the US military 'harrassed' is a nice and careful way of saying, "This guy was treated like pigshit by his comrades and we overlooked it."

This asshole was a commissioned officer in the US military. If you think he's some poor put upon lost child, you just don't understand military rank structure or culture on a very basic level.

Quote :

Also, they're in an Islamic country.

Texas? [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Quote :

They should be sympathetic towards the huge majority of Islamic citizens who are being shot and blown up and living in fear of their lives and the US being to blame because they invaded, yes, INVADED Iraq.

HOLY FUCK WE INVADED IRAQ

WHY WASN'T I TOLD THIS

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

Quote :

Sure, he shouldn't have gunned down a bunch of people. But people don't just snap like that on a whim.

Whim or delusion or... anything, there's not justification for this. But you know, I'm detecting a subtext here.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Sure, he shouldn't have gunned down a bunch of people. But people don't just snap like that on a whim. Why if he was a giant gay robot oh God that's hot [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] .

Oh.

Freezer wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Why is nobody pissed off that the guy was harrassed for being a Muslim? That's appalling. And I'll bet in the US military 'harrassed' is a nice and careful way of saying, "This guy was treated like pigshit by his comrades and we overlooked it."

A) Because he's a grown ass man.
B) As a major on an Army base, the # of people who could give him shit about being Muslim and not catch hell for it is probably in the single digits.
C) HE SHOT FIFTY PEOPLE.

The fuck? A week or two ago we got a woman who had been 'harrassed' by youths for ten years, and also her disabled daughter. She'd reported them lots of times but nothing had been done. Eventually she snapped, and burned herself and her daughter to death in her car. Who got blamed?

FUCKING SOCIAL SERVICES.

And rightly so, too.

As a Major, the number of people who should catch hell for giving him shit SHOULD be low. But that all revolves around whether HIS superiors did anything about it. Until I know what the US military classes as 'harrassed', I blame the US military for not keeping a closer eye on the sanity of their soldiers and teaching them that THEY SHOULD LEAVE THEIR FUCKING RACIST PREDJUDICES AT THE FUCKING DOOR.

Penguin wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Sure, he shouldn't have gunned down a bunch of people. But people don't just snap like that on a whim. Why if he was a giant gay robot oh God that's hot [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] .

Oh.

Don't fucking edit my posts in quotations, you little worm.

Penguin wrote:

That fucker's been in for over 20 years. He could just fucking retire with full benefits and be done with it.

Not according to the NYT article.

Quote :

Nader Hasan said his cousin never mentioned in recent phone calls to
Virginia that he was going to be deployed, and he said the family was
shocked when it heard the news on television on Thursday afternoon. “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.”Some years ago, that included retaining a
lawyer and asking if 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. (my emphasis)

Oh yeah, and the body-count has risen to 13.

What the hell are we even TRYING to do in the Middle East? Piss people off? Deal with the planet's overpopulation issues?

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

The fuck? A week or two ago we got a woman who had been 'harrassed' by youths for ten years, and also her disabled daughter. She'd reported them lots of times but nothing had been done. Eventually she snapped, and burned herself and her daughter to death in her car. Who got blamed?

FUCKING SOCIAL SERVICES.

Because a woman who'd been tormented for years while her on-the-record pleas for help were dismissed and ignored on every level is totally the same as a commissioned military man going berserk and shooting up his brothers-in-arms possibly because of his religion.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

As a Major, the number of people who should catch hell for giving him shit SHOULD be low. But that all revolves around whether HIS superiors did anything about it.

Not "should" - would. The only ones he wouldn't be able to bring the pain on directly (chain of command and all that) would be those of equal or greater rank.

There's also the thing about his being a 39-year-old military man trained in mental health. You'd think mental discipline would factor in somewhere.

And there's also the pesky little fact that we don't know if he were actually harassed. We don't know what set him off and the probability is very good that we never will.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

As a Major, the number of people who should catch hell for giving him shit SHOULD be low. But that all revolves around whether HIS superiors did anything about it.

If people are giving a major problems, he can create a whole world of legal hurt all on his own long before he sends it up the chain of command.

Quote :

Until I know what the US military classes as 'harrassed',

Pretty much everyone else's definition. Discriminatory language is not allowed.

Quote :

I blame the US military for not keeping a closer eye on the sanity of their soldiers

Yes, let's blame everyone but the asshole who decided to gun down innocent people.

Quote :

and teaching them that THEY SHOULD LEAVE THEIR FUCKING RACIST PREDJUDICES AT THE FUCKING DOOR.

HOLY FUCK THAT'S A GREAT IDEA WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THA- OH WAIT I've had to sit through Military Equal Opportunity briefings at every base I've been to, along with Sexual Assault Response Coordinators, Mental Health, and a host of others to make sure that everyone gets along just fine and is well looked-after. Even the frigging dentists.

There was no excuse for this. None.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

What the hell are we even TRYING to do in the Middle East? Piss people off? Deal with the planet's overpopulation issues?

We did it for the lulz. Happy now?

rachel wrote:

Penguin wrote:

That fucker's been in for over 20 years. He could just fucking retire with full benefits and be done with it.

Not according to the NYT article.

Quote :

Nader Hasan said his cousin never mentioned in recent phone calls to
Virginia that he was going to be deployed, and he said the family was
shocked when it heard the news on television on Thursday afternoon. “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.”Some years ago, that included retaining a
lawyer and asking if 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. (my emphasis)

Which, from what I know of military tenure, would be absolute bullshit. There may have been pressure for him to stay on, but as a commissioned officer, the circumstances under which he would not be allowed to say "I quit" and resign his commission are few (And I'm sure Penguin and our other military types will correct me if I'm wrong.)

I have a nasty feeling this is going to fire up even more of the ongoing predjudice against Muslims in America.

Multicultural my ass.

Freezer wrote:

Which, from what I know of military tenure, would be absolute bullshit. There may have been pressure for him to stay on, but as a commissioned officer, the circumstances under which he would not be allowed to say "I quit" and resign his commission are few (And I'm sure Penguin and our other military types will correct me if I'm wrong.)

What was all that "Stop-loss policy" stuff the Bush Administration was using to keep unwilling personnel in the services against their wishes, then?