Massacre at Fort Hood

Last updated on: November 6, 2009 at 5:12 am

November 6, 2009 by Gene Veith

A gunman who was an army officer and a medical doctor opened fire at Ft. Hood in Texas, killing 12 and wounding 30, by last count. The killer was eventually shot to death.

NBC News’ Pete Williams reported that U.S. officials identified the gunman as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who had been promoted to major in May. A defense official told NBC News that Hasan arrived at Fort Hood in July for his first assignment after completing his psychiatry residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, followed by a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry.

Hasan, who was 39 or 40, was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq on Nov. 28, officials said. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said military officials had told her that Hasan was “pretty upset” about his deployment orders.

First reports were that he had accomplices. Major Hasan’s Arabic name makes one think immediately of Islamic terrorism, though right now (Thursday night) there is no evidence to that effect. Still, army bases had been mentioned as possible targets by the jihadists. All of this is to say that America may have been attacked by terrorists.

UPDATE: The shooter is alive, but in a coma. Meanwhile another of his victims died, bringing the death toll to 13.

UPDATE: It turns out, as some of you have noted, that Major Dr. Hasan is a Muslim, a radical, and an apologist for suicide bombings. See this. So I think we can reasonably term this as an act of terrorism. As DonS says, the only question is whether it is an individual act of terrorism or if it was planned with a larger group.

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