Ft. Hood Shooting

I've little to add about this terrible shooting except a comment on this story from the Austin Statesman, in particular in reference to this exchange:

The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Banks, says two shooters were apparently involved. There is no word yet on who they were, nor on identities of the dead, according to the AP.

Banks says the second incident took place at a theater on the sprawling base, the AP said.

He says it is too soon to tell whether there is any link to battle stress or repeated deployments. The Army is suffering a record high suicide rate and other signs of stress from fighting two wars, the AP said.

So an AP reporter actually asked the Lt Col to speculate about something like this (later echoed in the Austin paper and all over the place) while the other shooter(s) were still on the loose? Aside from the fact that it's far too early to speculate, why wouldn't the AP wonder if the shooters were terrorists? Do battle stressed soldiers frustrated with multiple redeployments have a long history of going bananas en masse to do such things, or does this act more suggest something more like this, or this, or this, or this, or even this?

MORE 11/5/09

As information trickles in--such as the fact the shooter is still alive--the media spin cycle is going strong. Here's a WaPo article from an Arizona paper discussing the the small but increasing rate of suicides in the military and even attributing it to Obama's 'dithering' on Afghanistan:

The psychological toll on the all-volunteer force today is unprecedented, Army officials say, acknowledging that they do not know how much the Army can sustain before it breaks - making the health of the force a major consideration in President Obama's current deliberations over how many more U.S. troops to send to Afghanistan.

So the Army is actually saying it's in jeopardy of 'breaking'? What does that mean, exactly? As tragic as today's news was the idea of our United States Army breaking would seem a much bigger story.

Even John Cornyn is calling for everyone to be calm and not jump to conclusions. Maybe he could start with the media. But it's prudent, since nuts come in all varieties and religions. And even though there was hardly any significant backlash after 9/11 some still feel the need to warn everyone against further outbursts of violence, just in case.

But is it really jumping to a conclusion to wonder if a man of Muslim faith, who didn't want to deploy to Iraq (presumably because we are killing Muslims) might have gone on a jihadi binge based on the past 15 years of history? Wouldn't the same conclusions be jumped to if some guy named Carpenter or Smith was captured after an abortion clinic shooting? This may end up being something more in the realm of the Virginia Tech shooting (strangely, Hasan attended VT) but what if indeed this was a martyrdom operation? Wouldn't it, combined with the other arrests made around the country since March, suggest a rather troubling trend?