A man walked into the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas today and started shooting.  By the time he was done 12 people were dead and 31 were wounded.  No one seems to know much more than that right now.  The shooter was Major Malik Nadal Hasan.  He is a Muslim about to be deployed to Iraq.  There is some evidence that he was against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but so are a lot of people.  For now, it hasn’t been entirely established what his motives or agenda were and, as Legal Insurrection suggests, I’m going to wait until more is known.  He may be a terrorist, he may just be a nutcase who cracked under the idea of going to war or some other stressor.  You can read more here:  Hot Air had running updates all day, The Daley Gator also has running updates on the shooting,  Sister Toldjah: Fort Hood Gunman,  The Other McCain: Another Belgian American goes berserk

     Something else disturbing about this incident was President Obama’s ability to open his press conference with a casual, light hearted “shout out” then promote his work with the Native American Affairs Council before eventually moving on to discuss the situation at Fort Hood.  I realize his remarks were probably prepared in advance, but maybe delete the shout outs from the teleprompter when soldiers are dying.

Update:  A local news station is reporting a story from a soldier present at the shooting.  The daughter of a Utah resident was at the Soldier Readiness Center and called her father shortly thereafter.  She says the shooting started with the shooter standing up and yelling, “Allah Akbar!”.  This hasn’t been confirmed yet, but his daughter said this before the shooter’s identity was known.  If true, I think this gives us a pretty good idea as to motive.

Update: Apparently, I am not the only one who thought Obama’s shout out was a bit innappropriate.  Another Black Conservative has the video and commentary.

Update: It turns out, not only was Obama’s “shout out” inappropriate given the circumstances, it was incorrect.  President Obama starts out giving a shout out to Joe Medicine Crow and declares him a Medal of Honor Winner.  Joe Medicine Crow is not a Medal of Honor winner.  He is a Medal of Freedom Winner.  This may seem like a small distinction to civilians, but the Medal of Honor is the highest military honor, the Medal of Freedom is a civilian honor.  These are the kind of mis-steps the media loved to ridicule George W. Bush about.  I guess its no big deal when Barack Hussein Obama does it.