A Day for Mourning and Questions at Fort Hood

I was shocked when I learned about an Army Psychiatrist opening up fire at Fort Hood yesterday.

Sometimes we read about people going nuts and opening up fire on others; but not on a base, not when they are an Army trained psychiatrist. I've got to agree with our President's comment concerning this, that it's a tragedy to lose a soldier overseas and even more horrifying when they come under fire at an Army base on American soil.

From what I've read, here's what we know about the shooter:
-His name is Nidal Malik Hasan
-He is a 39-year old major in the United States Army
-He worked for 6 years training in psychiatry at Walter Reed Hospital and is now a psychiatrist
-There is some questions about him receiving a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed
-According to Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at Walter Reed when Hasan was there, Hasan had some "difficulties" that required counseling and extra supervision
-He is a practicing Muslim
-There was an investigation at least 6 months ago into if Hassan had been the author of some internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting
-He was to be deployed today - some sources say to Iraq and some sources say to Afghanistan
-He had been cleaning out his apartment for the last few days and even paid his neighbor to clean it for him on Friday after he was all moved out.

There are 12 people dead and 31 wounded.
Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of "friendly fire," that in the confusion at the shooting scene some of the responding military officials may have shot some of the victims.
Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander, acknowledged that it was "counterintuitive" that a single shooter could hit so many people, but he said the massacre occurred in "close quarters. "With ricochet fire, he was able to injure that number of people," Cone said. He said authorities were investigating whether Hasan's weapons were properly registered with the military.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is quoted as saying :

"That investigation is under way by law enforcement authorities, and let's let that be the No. 1 priority in terms of ascertaining what motivations he had."

My heart goes out to those families of the victims of this shooting. My prayers are with the victim's families and the 31 wounded soldiers.