On November,5 2009 at 1:30pm CST 2 gunmen who were also US Soldiers entered the Army Base in Ft Hood outside Killeen, Texas and opened fire killing 13 and 31 injury others. One gunman has been killed, the other guy is now in police custody along with 2 others who are also suspects......my heart goes out to those families that lost they're loved ones. What are your views on this unspeakable tragedy?

This is a horrific incident, but I am not completely aware of this, because I've failed to follow the news.I heard there was only one gunman who opened fire.
I take part in the sorrow of the victim's loved ones.
The shooter must've had some kind of mental problems, and what's stranger, he was an Army psychiatrist.

The female city police officer who shot/ stopped the (not so) good Major, is a hero...pure and simple. She took a hit, and still did her job, very well.

From what I'd heard, the Major was about to be deployed to the Sandbox, and didn't want to go... and, lost it. The truth will come out, he's alive.

We'll all see. -FNR...

Yes, there was just a single gunman. But the early news coverage here in America was terrible, with all sorts of false reporting about this being an organized conspiracy that might have involved Al-Qaeda. So I can understand why some people got confused.

Anyway the shooter was a Muslim who didn't want to be deployed to the war front. He made this very clear to military officials. But they decided they were going to send him anyway. The result was this bloody tragedy.

Yes I heard about it yesterday, he's a 39 year old Muslim from Washington DC....I can understand that he didn't wanna be deployed but he shouldn't have never done what he did and you know what's really crazy....earlier yesterday at around noon I think another guy walked into his former place of employment and started shooting people really for no apparent reason other than he was fired 2 years ago & held a grudge with then company ever since.

I have to wonder, why does it matter that he was Muslim? Would the news desks be atwitter about his religion if he was "plain ol' Christian", or if his religion was undeclared?

RMDC wrote:

I have to wonder, why does it matter that he was Muslim? Would the news desks be atwitter about his religion if he was "plain ol' Christian", or if his religion was undeclared?

I agree that the news media can sometimes get out ahead of itself when it comes to Islam and acts of terroism. For example, many concluded ahead of time that Muslims must have been behind the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. But instead it turned out to be a group of right wing militia nuts headed by Timothy McVeigh.

However in this case it is completely relevant that the shooter was Muslim. He had told military officials ahead of time that he didn't want to be deployed into combat because he didn't want to fight his fellow Muslims. He had also previously given a presentation attempting to justify suicide bombings. All the evidence indicates that his religious beliefs were a primary motivation for his murderous outburst. To come to any other conclusion is just naive.

Well, now that the news has stopped tripping over themselves to cause a panic, those circumstances have become clear and demonstrate that his personal religious beliefs were indeed relevant. I'm disturbed by how twisted and flat-out wrong so many of the early reports were.

Still, for people like abortion clinic bombers, it's not their religion which matters, but their personal interpretation of their religion, and I'd argue that this guy is in the same category: a fringe nut whose beliefs didn't represent the greater bulk of his religion.