Below The Beltway

It was a bad day at Ft. Hood yesterday:

The gunshots came out of the blue.

An Army psychiatrist, trained to treat soldiers under stress, allegedly opened fire Thursday in a crowded medical building at Fort Hood, Tex. When the assault ended minutes later, the attack had become what is believed to be the largest mass shooting ever to occur on a U.S. military base. Thirteen were killed, 30 wounded.

Nidal M. Hasan, 39, a major who had made a career in the military, fired a pair of pistols, one of them semiautomatic, in the soldier readiness facility, dropping and scattering people as they waited to see doctors, according to authorities. Hasan and a civilian policewoman exchanged fire, they said. Both were hit. Both survived.

When the gunfire stopped, soldiers schooled in battlefield medicine ripped their clothes to make tourniquets and bandages. Someone hustled to seal off an auditorium in the same building where 138 troops were marking their graduation from college. Sirens typically used to warn of tornados sweeping across the plains alerted residents, schools locked down and the Fort Hood community struggled to understand what had just happened.

In the aftermath, a string of unanswered questions remained about the shooter’s motives, his background and whether the military was aware that he posed a risk to his colleagues.

In Iraq, an Army journalist telephoned his wife, who lives on the base. When she did not answer, he turned to e-mail. She said there had been shootings and an order to secure all doors and windows.

“This is ridiculous,” Naveed Ali Shah, the soldier, told his wife. “I’m in the war zone, not you!”

The accused gunman, initially reported killed but later revealed to be in custody in a hospital, is a Virginia-born doctor who once practiced at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.

And, while it’s still far too early to say that this massacre had a political motivation, all the signs are there:

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex.

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

“I know what that is like,” she said. “Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay” for his medical training.

An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. George Wright, said he could not confirm that Hasan (pronounced Hass-in) requested a discharge.

As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened at Fort Hood, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of this son of Palestinian immigrants, a man who received his medical training from the military and spent his career in the Army, yet allegedly turned so violently against his uniformed colleagues. Hasan spent nearly all of his professional life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, caring for the victims of trauma, yet he spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(…)

The Associated Press reported that Hasan attracted the attention of law enforcement authorities in recent months after an Internet posting under the screen name “NidalHasan” compared Islamic suicide bombers to Japanese kamikaze pilots. “To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate,” the posting read. “It’s more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause.”

(…)

The psychiatrist once said that “Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” and that the United States shouldn’t be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a co-worker, on Fox News.

(…)

The psychiatrist once said that “Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” and that the United States shouldn’t be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a co-worker, on Fox News.

Of course, on the slightly humorous side:

Hasan was an avid Redskins fan. “That was his main entertainment,” his aunt said. “

It’s been a really bad season for the Skins, you know…..

Seriously, though, the early evidence all seems to be pointing toward a guy with mental problems motivated by religion into doing this.