Ft Hood Tragedy

[Muck]

I must dissagree with you on that. Some Soldiers aren't up to par. It used to be much easier to chapter a Soldier. It can be a long drawn out process now. Most of my Soldiers are at least as good as the ones coming in 20 years ago if not better. There is a saying thrown around in the Army that 5% of your Soldiers will take up 95% of your time. By my observations that certainly seems to be the case. Nearly all of my Soldiers performed well above what was asked of them, but those few grabbed all of my attention and detracted away from all of the good that was being done. We would try to get rid of the bad ones, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. To say today's Soldiers are substandard is absolute BS.

Agreed. Everyone who's been in a few years tends to believe the new wet behind the ears privates are far bigger clusterfucks than they ever were.

the highlighted portion of your statement is incorrect. ESGR does not allow people to be fired because of it.

Doesn't mean it won't happen.

"Oh no we're not firing you because of your deployment...we're firing you because of X."

He will be tried by both military and likely civilian courts. The military will slap him with plenty of Articles, try him and convict him to a military prison. If the local PD and/or FBI is able to any incriminating evidence in his off base house, he will then also be tried by civilian courts.

Even if the incident were to happen off base, the Major would still get hit with Article's (outlayed by the UCMJ) and charges such as Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer, (possible) Treason, Disobeying the local laws, etc.

FWIW "civilian" court doesn't mean the local county courthouse. He's going to be tried in a Federal court.

The first sentence he will serve will be in a military prison. This means he will get his ass beat on a daily basis by bigger and badder mother [censored]s.

Doubtful. When he goes to Leavenworth he'll be on lockdown & will never see the general population (and even if he did the military side of the house is very different than the civilian one).

Don't try to politicize this.

Amen.

I am afraid that these acts are not going to stop until we address the problem of the extremes of wealth and poverty in the world.

See above for political axe grinding.

 

[cincibuck]

This is bringing back a flood of memories. I was the XO for a truck company and spent most of my time processing CMs and Article 15s... most of our troops had been rushed to Vietnam after AIT and then came back with 180 or less to serve. Their collective attitude was, "I did what I was drafted to do, now let me out." I would spend an hour or more telling them all the negatives to bad paper and their answer would be, "I don't care, Sir, I just want out." the winter weather at Ft. Lewis, rain every damn day ad nauseam, didn't help matters.

I had to make frequent trips to the post stockade to get signatures, take statements, confer, etc. Very depressing. They sent these guys out into the yard to split logs, in iso, one man per cage, in the pouring rain. Maybe a fit task for Major Hasan.

In March of that year I was at Seatac when a planeload of marines was brought in from Camp Pendelton. They had been involved in a huge riot in the training barracks, several folks beaten to death with clubs and fists. These guys were going on trial at Pier 19 in Seattle. They brought them in through rain and a wet snow (what passes for snow in Seattle) barefoot, shackled at the hands, ankles and waist and then linked to each other. No belts, no hats, no coats. I looked at them and could just imagine what a slave ship journey must have been like.

 

[CookyPuss]

It's going to be politicized whether you like it or not.

The left will say that the military is stretched too thinly and that we need to disengage.

The right will say this is further proof that we need to finish the job in Afghanistan and Iraq and get the hell out of there.

The funny part is both are, in their own way, right for a change. Is the military spread pretty thin? You betcha. Even with the increases in recruiting goals and record retain-ability goals being met, continued deployments suck and no one has ever said any differently. (yes I understand my link is just for the army)...

Army Cuts Re-Enlistment Goal

But the President is pretty naive if he's saying things like "We can't truly know the shooter's motives" and thinks that this is going to play well given the reported postings on the internet and what the shooter shouted when he started shooting. It's pretty clear the guy was at least emulating what he views (or viewed as I last heard he's still on a ventilator) that he believed in.

I honestly find it difficult to believe this guy would have still been in service had the ranks not been stretched so thin. There were apparently red flags all over the place. I heard on NPR yesterday that his supervisor at Walter Reed was reluctant to give him cases because he wasn't good at his job. Apparently, he made his commitment pre-9/11. I would have hoped that someone with his background would have been given some special consideration for discharge.. but not so. I mean, this guy wasn't Corp. Klinger, this was someone who co-workers joked about coming back and shooting up the place. He met the classic profile of the disgruntled employee who commits mass murder (loner, pissed at employer, major stress, trouble with women). Doesn't excuse anything he did, but this was a failure of leadership.

As for Obama's response, I'd say he's just being cautious rather than naive. No need to further flame any anti-Arab flames that are already raging.

 

[SEREbuckeye]

My non-military experience opinion. Soldiers in WWII served at max from 12/1941 to spring 1945. Tens to hundreds of thousands had stress/combat fatigue issues - some for life. I remember Audie Murphy's wife writing about how he almost choked her to death one night while he was having nightmares (she said he would wake up shivering and covered in sweat on a regular basis).

These guys and gals today have been under stress from two to three or four times as many weeks/months/years as those guys were in combat. The military culture that leads you to suck it up instead of going to the shrink is also a reason for not wanting be known as a head case. Advancement and performance evaluations could depend on the soldier not being seen as "weak".

We do not help our military families as much as we should. Their lives are turned upside down by deployment, and if guard or reserve, they come back to no job and unemployment, while the loss of income resulting from honoring their commitment leads to financial distress and divorce - which leads to more stress.

Sucks. Really sucks. It seems we look to the military to save us from the bad guys, and then we turn our backs on them when we are done. If we have a deficit, I would like it to be from helping the families of those who serve and for giving every damn one of them the physical and psychiatric help that they deserve.

It was debated about the other day in my squadron, as to whether this was stress related or just an act of terrorism.

The shooter began giving away his possessions, he was shown dressed in full Arab garb the day prior, handed out religious textbooks prior to, was posting online negative slants against the military MONTHS before hand...He even knew where to go and get the high ground for the best shots in the Deployment processing center. The icing is that he spoke about God , in native language before he pulled the trigger.

This Major didn't just "snap". This guy was showing all signs of both planning and also making this a religious issue.

A soldier that snaps under stress is someone like the Soldier that shot up the base in Iraq early May 09. It was an uncharacteristic action and didnt have planning behind it.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

He will be tried by both military and likely civilian courts.

Negative, Ghost Rider. A crime committed by an active duty military member on a military post is strictly a military matter, even if some/all victims were civilians. Civilian courts have zero jurisdiction over what happens on a federal installation, unless the federal government hands over jurisdiction to civilian authorities, and that ain't gonna happen here.

If convicted by military court, he will face the death penalty.

 

[MaxBuck]

1. The idea that this guy was somehow "unfit for service" or had a poor performance record seems to me to be at odds with the fact he'd risen to the rank of major. Not to mention - why would you send a guy into combat that you think is a risk to his fellow soldiers?

2. He was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists tend to be a bit on the edge anyway, whether because of all the trauma they hear about or because some mentally ill people go into the specialty because they want to better understand their own demons. They can sometimes hide their angst better than lay persons because they know the "signs" of psychological collapse.

3. Lots of people give out "warning signs" but never go off like this guy did. And political correctness now demands we don't make negative assumptions about people like the major, like the disgruntled Reynolds Smith & Hills engineer, etc. So we who contact such folks go on without saying or doing anything, hoping we're wrong in our hunches about potential nutcases.

4. Bottom line is that this very sad incident was perpetrated by a very troubled individual who for whatever reason never received the support or intervention that he clearly needed. I feel great sorrow for the families of all the victims of this event, including the family of the perpetrator.

 

[Mike80]

Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut


Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.


Related Articles

• Fort Hood killer linked to September 11 terrorists

It was the latest in a series of "red flags" about his state of mind that have emerged since the massacre at Fort Hood, America's largest military installation, on Thursday.

Hasan, armed with two handguns including a semi-automatic pistol, walked into a processing centre for soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he killed 13 and injured more than 30.

Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a "Muslim first and American second."

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

Being overly-PC strikes again.

And The President can stop the "we don't know the shooters motives" crap right about now. It's pretty clear this guy was emulating the nuts in the Middle East.

Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut - Telegraph

 

[jimotis4heisman]

I honestly find it difficult to believe this guy would have still been in service had the ranks not been stretched so thin. There were apparently red flags all over the place. I heard on NPR yesterday that his supervisor at Walter Reed was reluctant to give him cases because he wasn't good at his job. Apparently, he made his commitment pre-9/11. I would have hoped that someone with his background would have been given some special consideration for discharge.. but not so. I mean, this guy wasn't Corp. Klinger, this was someone who co-workers joked about coming back and shooting up the place. He met the classic profile of the disgruntled employee who commits mass murder (loner, [censored]ed at employer, major stress, trouble with women). Doesn't excuse anything he did, but this was a failure of leadership.

As for Obama's response, I'd say he's just being cautious rather than naive. No need to further flame any anti-Arab flames that are already raging.

failure of leadership? is that on a "local" level or place the blame straight on the potus, as was done katrina. its been clear that moral has gone from seed to [censored] since the af/pak pandering began...

that being said, i dont blame others. i blame the excuse my language but the jackass murdering terrorist asshole who shot the place up. then again thats just me...

im just going to add this.

this is inevitably interwoven with the hate crime legislation that just passed.
http://www.buckeyeplanet.com/forum/political-conversation-debate/614345-hate-crimes.html#post1457991
the idea that a certain group of people who consider that "real victims" of crimes do not reflect mil personnel. and that these folks somehow "belittle" those who are the real victims of "crimes"

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=510R5osD9Rk"]YouTube- Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz pushes hate crime bill[/ame]

then again somehow our legislature determined that pedophiles should be given specialized protections under the new legislation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V3F80r3h7Y

 

[SEREbuckeye]

1. The idea that this guy was somehow "unfit for service" or had a poor performance record seems to me to be at odds with the fact he'd risen to the rank of major.

Well, if you enter the military with a doctorate or some sort of law degree, you most likely start out at OTS/OCS as a Captain or Major. Its not even uncommon to find a doctor entering OTS/OCS as a Lt Col if they have had years of experience in their position in the civilian world.

Rank in branches is heavily compensated for the degree and experience you hold.

Mili:

My understanding is that ANY and/or ALL evidence that is found in the Major's off base housing that could be used as criminal evidence would warrant a civilian court appearance. Should the FBI find any illegal doings on the Major's computer, he would be tried in civilian court as well since such criminal action took place off base?

 

[MaxBuck]

Well, if you enter the military with a doctorate or some sort of law degree, you most likely start out at OTS/OCS as a Captain or Major. Its not even uncommon to find a doctor entering OTS/OCS as a Lt Col if they have had years of experience in their position in the civilian world.

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[Mike80]

Well, if you enter the military with a doctorate or some sort of law degree, you most likely start out at OTS/OCS as a Captain or Major. Its not even uncommon to find a doctor entering OTS/OCS as a Lt Col if they have had years of experience in their position in the civilian world.

Rank in branches is heavily compensated for the degree and experience you hold.

Mili:

My understanding is that ANY and/or ALL evidence that is found in the Major's off base housing that could be used as criminal evidence would warrant a civilian court appearance. Should the FBI find any illegal doings on the Major's computer, he would be tried in civilian court as well since such criminal action took place off base?

I would think the UCMJ still is in effect even off base, but I could be mistaken in this case.

But the major crime itself was committed on a military base and they won't be giving up jurisdiction on this one.

 

[SEREbuckeye]

FWIW "civilian" court doesn't mean the local county courthouse. He's going to be tried in a Federal court.

I know that it doesn't mean local courts. Its like when us military folk refer to wearing "civilian clothes", meaning anything non-military. I don't think I ever said local courts, I did say local PD because they were on scene.

 

[SEREbuckeye]

I would think the UCMJ still is in effect even off base, but I could be mistaken in this case.

But the major crime itself was committed on a military base and they won't be giving up jurisdiction on this one.

Well, there is the act (cant think of the name) where the local and federal PD's have to be brought in for any off base findings that may involve any civilians. In the Air Force we have military OSI (unlike the Navy), which hinders us in a case where a military member may be buying illegal activities from civilians. In such a case we have to refer to the civilian PD's for help because military members can not arrest civilians off base.

I would think that he will get military punishment for his on base actions and the FBI could get him for any illegal actions made by him off base (ie: illegal activities on his computer). Im not 100% positive. I base this off of the fact that if you get a DUI off base you will be in trouble with your local PD as well as your base unit for failing to0 obey local laws and acting in a manner unfavorable to the military.

Is anyone here savvy with the UCMJ because there seem to be a lot of grey areas?

 

[Muck]

I know that it doesn't mean local courts.

Then you should also know that I probably wasn't making that comment to clarify for you. :)

In the Air Force we have military OSI (unlike the Navy),

NCIS (NIS back in the day) performs the same function for the Navy (and has subsumed the USMCs CID).

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

Mili:

My understanding is that ANY and/or ALL evidence that is found in the Major's off base housing that could be used as criminal evidence would warrant a civilian court appearance. Should the FBI find any illegal doings on the Major's computer, he would be tried in civilian court as well since such criminal action took place off base?

If the crime itself was not committed off-base, i.e. in the "civilian world", then 1.) Civilian authorities have no jurisdiction, and 2.) The fact that evidence is in Hasan's off-base residence is irrelevent as to determining jurisdiction...the UCMJ has world-wide jurisdiction.