Ft. Hood shooting reactions?

[Orchidflower]

I assume by now most of us have heard about the shootings by a Major in the military at Ft. Hood, Texas, near Killeen, who killed 13 and wounded 30 more. Myself, I just heard about it this morning; and maybe this is not the mature and intellectual response one of my age and ability should have, but I'm just damned mad about the whole thing.
How the heck did someone that became a Major, for gosh sakes, and a Military Psychiatrist be so dysfunctional--without anyone red flagging him--that he became so angry or frighted or was such a nut job OR, possibly, working with others overseas be allowed to stay on the job? I'm just mad.
Please tell me that--after the military interrogates this guy and has a trial--that ultimately he won't get out of this alive and they'll fry him in Ole Sparky.

[RonBoyd]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower How the heck did someone that became a Major, for gosh sakes, and a Military Psychiatrist be so dysfunctional--without anyone red flagging him--that he became so angry or frighted or was such a nut job OR, possibly, working with others overseas be allowed to stay on the job? Please tell me that--after the military interrogates this guy and has a trial--that ultimately he won't get out of this alive and they'll fry him in Ole Sparky.

I guess I am still in shock because I am unsure how I feel about this. I have too many questions going through my mind right now -- those you asked and several others.

I do hope, however, that there ends up to be a better explanation than he acted "normally" and needs to be punished. I would prefer (at this moment) to find out what is causing all of these type of situations -- it is happening all too frequently -- and, therefore, cure the cause and not shoot the messenger.

[Orchidflower]

I just heard about it on the Today Show this morning. The whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach. And frustrated. Normally, incidents like this don't upset me much, but this case really does because of the guy's position in the military (this should set the case for psychiatrists back some) and his being allowed to stay on the job--despite the FBI having him already for some time on their Watch List. Are we THAT needy and desperate for professionals in the military to keep folks like this on staff?
On second thought, I have some sorrow for those fine Arab-Americans who are upstanding citizens as there is surely going to be some flack they will catch for this, also. When I first was in Houston and, because Houston is an oil and gas town, you heard about the Middle East all the time. An old time family --and long time citizens of Houston who were American ex-military to boot (born and raised in Houston on top of it)--owned a carpet selling and cleaning company for a couple generations with a fine reputation called Baghdad Carpets. Vandals shot up their vans and, I think, front windows to the store to the point the guy went out of business. The reaction to this could turn horrid...sounds of Kristalnacht.

[Leonidas]

It is allowed for under the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

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918. ART. 118. MURDER Any person subject to this chapter whom without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when he- - (1) has a premeditated design to kill; (2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm; (3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to others and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or (4) is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, sodomy, rape, robbery, or aggravated arson; is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial may direct, except that if found guilty under clause (1) or (4), he shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct.

I think that historically, until the UCMJ was created in the early 1950's that the military could not impose the death penalty for capital murder committed in the United States during peacetime. And once it was permitted it has rarely been used from what I understand. In fact, military death penalties are rare in general, and I've seen it cited several times that the last service member executed by the military was in 1961. It was briefly found to be unconstitutional in the early 80's, but that opinion was more about some procedural matters that were quickly, and retroactively, fixed.

There was a 1994 case involving a Ft. Hood soldier who went on a murderous crime spree off-base in Killeen, and the Supremes upheld his court martial imposed death sentence. And even that wasn't based on the constitutionality of the death penalty as much as it was yet again based on procedures more than anything.

I have no idea what method of execution the military would use, and it's just a guess on my part that it would be lethal injection.

Now, if they decide to charge him as a civilian under Texas state law and try him in the local district court - you can start picking out a casket for the man.

[W2R]

Apparently he had been identified as a potential terrorism risk, due to postings online, and was being watched.

Lot of good that did.

[RonBoyd]

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Originally Posted by Want2retire Apparently he had been identified as a potential terrorism risk, due to postings online, and was being watched. Lot of good that did.

Yeah. Seems that question is being asked a lot lately:

After Gruesome Find, Anger at Cleveland Police

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... residents said they were shocked by the case’s gruesomeness and appalled that a man convicted of attempted rape had apparently been able to hide such heinous crimes, even as the authorities were regularly checking up on him.

And yet, I'll bet these residents protect their own privacy with a vengence.

[Orchidflower]

Is this why Killeen is so cheap to buy housing in? Good grief....the place sounds like a killing ground.
Yeah, if the State of Texas gets ahold of this case he'll have NO chance. One of Texas' better qualities.
I had a close friend who was a beautiful woman that worked for a year at Huntsville (Texas' primary killing prison) to use her degree in criminal justice before getting out as a guard (and does she have some doozy stories to tell). We used to have arguments all the time about capitol punishment, which I am a firm believer in when it is an ABSOLUTE that the guy did the murders like this fellow...and Scott Peterson who I wish had killed his wife and baby in Texas and not drag-your-feet California. Some people are SO guilty, and they are just left to use up taxpayers money in prison. So frustrating. (Sorry if this offends those who are against capitol punishment.)

[Leonidas]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower Yeah, if the State of Texas gets ahold of this case he'll have NO chance. One of Texas' better qualities.

It's not that he won't have a chance. Even though he was caught in the act and the act was witnessed by dozens of witnesses and it seems like a slam dunk. It's more of a case that we believe in applying the death penalty in heinous cases and we're willing to fund the cost of such trials.

Edit: The Ft. Hood Police Officer who stopped the shooter is Kimberly Munley. She has a twitter site with very few tweets, but I wanted to share this from her bio on her twitter account:

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I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life.

That's what it's all about. We can fixate on all the evil and bad things, but I think we should at least acknowledge that there are many more Kim Munley's in this nation than there are Nidal Hasans.

[Bestwifeever]

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Originally Posted by Leonidas ....The Ft. Hood Police Officer who stopped the shooter is Kimberly Munley. She has a twitter site with very few tweets, but I wanted to share this from her bio on her twitter account: That's what it's all about. We can fixate on all the evil and bad things, but I think we should at least acknowledge that there are many more Kim Munley's in this nation than there are Nidal Hasans....

From a Yahoo news story::

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The officer who shot the gunman, Kimberly Munley, also was wounded. "She happened to encounter the gunman. In an exchange of gunfire, she was wounded but managed to wound him four times," Cone said. "It was an amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer."

[tryan]

Many study the mind to determine why they're so messed up.

[JOHNNIE36]

Lots of questions to be answered and hopefully they will be eventually. This guy was recently promoted from Captain to Major. Why? He recently was also given a poor annual review by his superiors. Then why the promotion? If the FBI had him on a watch list (which I didn't know) why was this guy still in the military? Why? Why was he being preparing for deployment? I don't understand all this.

[Orchidflower]

Again, one of Texas' better qualities, Leonidas. And Texas doesn't draaaaag their feet either in these cases unlike it-will-take-20-years-or-more California.
I was a psych major (which qualifies you for little, by the way, as Nords has pointed out correctly before), dated a Psychologist for a couple years, have a few Therapists even today as friends. Some (not all naturally) are more messed up than normal for sure even if on the surface they seem okay. Some have some realllly deep problems hidden from all but those who know them well. I agree with you, Tryan, as to why most go into the field to begin with. Just my observation, too. (On a personal observational level, I've found most in the field to be more passive than anything else. Great observers of life--instead of active, aggressive participants.)

Leonidas: I agree with you, and average citizens like me are so lucky to have people like her in their life--even if we don't know who they are personally. These are the unsung heroes of everyday life that deserve our respect and admiration I agree.

[Nords]

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Originally Posted by Leonidas That's what it's all about. We can fixate on all the evil and bad things, but I think we should at least acknowledge that there are many more Kim Munley's in this nation than there are Nidal Hasans.

Good post, Leo. Thanks.

My first reaction to hearing the words "from Fort Hood" was "Oh, crap, that's my nephew's base." My next reaction on learning it happened AT Fort Hood was "Whew, thank goodness my nephew's safe in Iraq."

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Originally Posted by JOHNNIE36 Lots of questions to be answered and hopefully they will be eventually. This guy was recently promoted from Captain to Major. Why?

Pretty straightforward. The armed forces are short on personnel. The selection rate from O-3 to O-4 is so high that it practically takes a DUI or a felony conviction (not merely a grand jury indictment) to fail selection. Medical specialists like psychiatrists or surgeons are all but guaranteed rubber-stamp promotion to O-5.

At one point ~10 years ago the submarine force actually had a selection rate from O-3 to O-4 of 107%. The promotion boards were dipping into the guys who'd been passed over before or who were still a year away from eligibility. Eventually BUPERS had to literally order the board members to stop deeping the O-3s to O-4 before they ran out of O-3s to fill the O-3 billets. And in the case of the passed-over O-3s, scooping them up for O-4 a year later was not always the best decision.

When I retired in 2002, submarine O-4 shore-duty billets were 30% short of officers. The solution? Gap all their reliefs for four months. Problem solved!

The DoD promotion guidelines say that O-1s aren't supposed to be promoted to O-2s until they've been commissioned for at least two years. My nephew, an Army Ranger, was adding O-2 to his e-mail signature at the 16-month point. I happen to think that he deserves it, but I suspect that he was also just one of a very large crowd of platoon leaders who were bumped up a bit early.

Keep in mind that we lack perspective. In WWII the average American time-in-rank to O-4 was merely six years (as opposed to today's 9-10). German submarine officers were in command at age 23. The source of today's military attrition is a bit different but the stresses and the results are the same.

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Originally Posted by JOHNNIE36 He recently was also given a poor annual review by his superiors. Then why the promotion?

Because "poor" can still be "good enough", particularly when added to "hopes for improvement". Especially when the business is so busy.

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Originally Posted by JOHNNIE36 If the FBI had him on a watch list (which I didn't know) why was this guy still in the military?

Due process, especially if he would have been able to claim that he was being subjected to profiling or paranoid harassment. I guess he'd have to move from "watch" to "warning" before abrupt action was considered justifiable.

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Originally Posted by JOHNNIE36 Why was he being preparing for deployment? I don't understand all this.

If a marginal performer is struggling to do a job, then one way to make them step up to the challenge is to give them a more challenging job... of course with proper support & supervision. Perform or fail, either way the situation is resolved on their own merits.

Besides there's a perception that the screwups get too many good deals, including not having to do their share of deployments. Whatever flags or problems this guy was demonstrating at Fort Hood, if there even were any, they weren't considered deployment-limiting.

I can understand what his co-workers and "the authorities" were dealing with, and I take this a bit personally. I can completely comprehend how everyone around him felt betrayed and how his chain of command was caught by surprise. Even those professionals probably had no significant warning of how quickly things went bad in his thought processes and of what was about to occur.

I spent nearly five years at a training command where we extensively screened instructors in high-risk courses looking for psychological problems. (The idea was to not put a psychopath in charge of keeping the students alive, or someone who was so stressed out and distracted by their personal issues that they didn't notice a bad situation developing.) One Friday afternoon I had a short "Have a good weekend" conversation with a Navy diver who'd just reported aboard a month ago. He was a star performer: quickly promoted to E-6, a leader at his last sea-duty command, their Sailor of the Year with a rare Navy Commendation Medal, a shoo-in for the next year's Chief Petty Officer selection board. He was at the school to train submariners on Navy diving techniques, a course with significant mental stress and physical risk. We felt pretty darn lucky to have cherry-picked him from some other fast-track duty.

I'd interviewed the guy and been impressed. I'd gotten to know him around the command and been even more impressed. He was officer material, but so good that he'd be a much better asset to the community as a chief petty officer/master diver rather than wasting an officer's commission on him. He had no medical issues (and divers don't get away with hiding that). He'd been signed off by the local Navy psychiatrist, an experienced officer who'd done some work at our command and whose opinions I trusted. The guy was good to go. We joked about our weekend plans and he headed home.

Friday night he tailed his spouse as she drove to the apartment of a man with whom she'd been carrying on a long-term affair while our sailor was deployed. (His last command had been aware of this, and had informed us, but the sailor had told us that he and his spouse were reconciling and working things out on shore duty. It was going well. Thumbs up!) Saturday afternoon, he loaded his two preschool children in his pickup truck. (The youngest was not biologically his child, which we later determined he was aware of and had accepted as part of "saving the marriage".) He drove back to the apartment of the younger child's biological father and entered it, finding his own spouse still there. Our sailor used his personal 9mm automatic, which he had legally obtained & licensed, to shoot the man several times and make him a quadriplegic. (From the subsequent investigation it's thought that this was what the sailor had intended to do, rather than killing him.) He then dragged his spouse out to the parking lot where he shot her in the head in front of the kids, killing her. Next he drove back to his base house, phoning his brother en route to ask him to listen to the radio and pick up his kids later that day.

When he got home he barricaded himself until the SWAT team arrived, sent his kids out, and killed himself with his gun.

While I was at that same command I had two submariners, both literally Sailor of the Year material, one an E-6 and the other a chief petty officer, who committed suicide as a result of similar personally stressful situations. "At least" they didn't kill anyone else in the process.

Once? Bad luck. Twice? It's a problem-- investigate the process and do a bunch of stuff to fix it. Three times? It's not the people and it might not even be the system-- we need better tools to detect these symptoms and correct these problems before it's too late to catch up.

[Leonidas]

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Originally Posted by Nords Once? Bad luck. Twice? It's a problem-- investigate the process and do a bunch of stuff to fix it. Three times? It's not the people and it might not even be the system-- we need better tools to detect these symptoms and correct these problems before it's too late to catch up.

There is a general lack of understanding about the effects of stress on people. Not that the mental health folks don't understand it, but there are deficiencies in institutions like the military coming to grips with the reality that while some people don't handle stress very well, there are limits to what any human can withstand before being affected.

You can't take young people and plunge them into a life of violence, danger, and making life-or-death decisions one after another and not expect some changes in their reactions and outlook. Maybe the system would better serving itself, and its members, to recognize that everyone will be affected in some way, and everyone needs to get support and treatment as necessary.

I started my career at the same time my employer hired its first pshrink, I was one of the first people he interviewed as part of my pre-employment screening. Over the years I had repeated contact with him (classes he taught, some assignment testing, and a couple of mandatory visits when someone got hurt). He grew to understand us as a group and he adopted a philosophy that we were all a "little crazy" because of our experiences at w*rk. His goal was to get us to examine why we reacted to some things the way we did, and through that understanding come to realize when we needed help and when it was just a natural and healthy reaction to being exposed to violence and death so often.

[vicente solano]

I don´t want to be controversial, but we Spaniards can´t understand how something like this can happen in the country whose military and psychology expertise we admire and learn from.
I´d like to hear the US version of the causes of these episodes, not only this one in particular. I know all about what Europeans have to say about this issue.
Talk to me guys!

[oldtrig]

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Originally Posted by vicente solano I don´t want to be controversial, but we Spaniards can´t understand how something like this can happen in the country whose military and psychology expertise we admire and learn from. I´d like to hear the US version of the causes of these episodes, not only this one in particular. I know all about what Europeans have to say about this issue. Talk to me guys!

I am an American and I cannot even start to explain why something like this would happen. I got sick to my stomach when I watched this on the news last night. I pray for all the friends and relatives. Somebody just did not pay attention to this nut when he was giving signals that he was crazy. I have my thoughts on all of this but I will keep them locked up in my mind and not share them. oldtrig

[Walt34]

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Originally Posted by Leonidas He grew to understand us as a group and he adopted a philosophy that we were all a "little crazy" because of our experiences at w*rk. His goal was to get us to examine why we reacted to some things the way we did, and through that understanding come to realize when we needed help and when it was just a natural and healthy reaction to being exposed to violence and death so often.

Dealing with that is what makes some appear to be "hardened". It's the process of finding that line between caring enough to want to do a good job but not "bringing it home with you." That's the "burnout phase" that about 80% go through.

How else, for example, to reconcile dealing with spending Christmas Eve with the family of a man who has chosen to end his life by eating a 12-gauge and then spend Christmas Day with your family? That felt like something right out of the Twilight Zone.

[Leonidas]

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Originally Posted by Walt34 How else, for example, to reconcile dealing with spending Christmas Eve with the family of a man who has chosen to end his life by eating a 12-gauge and then spend Christmas Day with your family? That felt like something right out of the Twilight Zone.

I think every cop in America must have a 12-gauge suicide story that involves vivid imagery that can't be repeated in public. I have one that I wasn't even there for, but when I heard the sergeant in charge describe what he saw at that moment, well, I'll say that it was such a vivid description that I can't buy a pot roast at the butcher's and toss it in the grocery cart without having the same picture pop in my head. And it's been ten years since the incident.

Sometimes when that picture pops in my head I chuckle or smile, because I'm reacting as someone who maintains sanity by denying the normal human reaction to grisly and horrific things. If you're going to live a life that frequently exposes you to that kind of sight you have to how to separate it from your "real" life. It's dark humor, not something normal for regular people who seldom see such things. Every now and then the thought sobers me a little, and I have to remember that it really had nothing to do with me, that it was another man's bad choice in a tough spot. One of too many such things I have been exposed to, and I have to trivialize the tragedy to weaken its impact, or I would be debilitated from sorrow.

Things that work really well out there on the seamy side of life are non-starters at home. People with healthy adaptations find ways to get that w*rk personality all shut down and put to bed before interacting with la familia. And the healthy individual knows how to keep that personality turned off and not let normal stressful situations produce a w*rk-type response.

Being suspicious that every word you hear is a lie, or being prepared to turn a "no" into a "yes" by laying on off hands are totally legitimate tactics on the streets of the big bad city when justified, but are huge leaps into disaster-land if you apply them in your personal life. There were times in my family/personal life when I saw the cop personality trying to come out and I had to struggle to keep that bastard suppressed. On the streets it's all about "Git R Done" and at home it's all about maintaining the relationships.

Our pshrink said that healthy people can usually see the stress coming on and put Mr. Policeman back in his closet before they let him have his way. The people who can't do that are just maladaptive and need to go find another occupation. But he always cautioned about the surprise attacks that some situations could bring on in unexpected ways. Like the guy whose wife called in and said she was finding her husband laying on the floor of their daughter's bedroom; curled into the fetal position sobbing uncontrollably. The officer couldn't explain what was happening other than whenever he came home from work he would go to kiss his sleeping daughter and was repeatedly struck by a debilitating sense of loss and grief.

The ignition source for that guy's problems turned out to be a pair of shoes very popular with young girls like his daughter. Also popular with another young girl, the victim of a violent death, whose body he had seen in situ while working the investigation of her death - and she had been wearing the exact same shoes. The pshrink finally figured out that the guy's subconscious was making the connection, via the shoes, between his daughter and the dead girl. He would go in to kiss his daughter and see those same shoes and be struck by misplaced feelings that he couldn't figure out the cause much less control his reactions.

The message I took away from that was that no matter how good we are at separating w*rk stuff from home that our subconscious will sometimes win out. You wind up putting your whole family into the Twilight Zone. I got really good at apologizing before I got a better grip on why I sometimes reacted too strongly to what was not that big of a deal.

I don't know what rang this Hasan dude's bell and turned him into a mass murderer. I suspect, from what I've read, that he had closed himself off to so many support systems that he just became a one-issue kind of guy. His parents were dead (and they were against his military career), he had no wife or girlfriend, the few friends that have been mentioned don't seem like the bossom buddy types at all, and he was obsessed with his religion. It came down to the only "roles" he had in his life were the Army and Islam, and eventually he found himself in a spot in which those two roles were in direct conflict. There were no shades of gray for this guy. He couldn't see any good in one role and totally misidentified that dark side of the other and embraced it.

Even though his role in the military was totally non-combat and as rear echelon as you can get; he only saw that he was part of a machine that was killing Muslims. He didn't see them as terrorists who happened to be Muslim, he just saw Muslims as victims. And his role as a religious man bought into the dark side of the religion, the one that says it must be protected and that martyrdom is not only acceptable but glorious. He had two personalities, two life-roles, both of which he had distorted so far that they were in direct opposition and at war with each other.

IMO Hasan latched on to what he perceived as bad about his role as a soldier and was saddened and the enraged by it. He also latched on to that which normal people easily recognize as the bad in Islam and glorified in it. That's a balancing act that nobody could maintain, and was crazy to try it, or the trying drove him insane. In either case, he had his own Twilight Zone episode all to himself.

[Orchidflower]

...and by a woman! I'm proud, anyway....go, Kimberly!

[RonBoyd]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower ...and by a woman! I'm proud, anyway....go, Kimberly!

Yeah, me too. But, again, it happens far too often:

Security guard who stopped shooter credits God

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"I saw him coming through the doors," she told reporters on Monday. "I took cover, and I waited for him to get closer, and I came out of cover and identified myself, and engaged him, and took him down. And that's pretty much it."