Washington, November 07: An Army psychiatrist, trained to treat soldiers dealing with anxiety and stress, opened fire Thursday in a crowed medical building at Fort Hood, Texas.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is suspected of shouting “Allahu Akbar!” seconds before opening fire on a crowd of people near a Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood on Thursday. Hasan is suspected of shooting more than 40 people before he was shot four times by a civilian police officer.
Minutes later, when the carnage ended, 13 people were killed and at least were 28 wounded in what is believed to be the largest mass shooting ever to occur on a US military base.
Once the gunfire stopped, soldiers schooled in battlefield medicine tore their clothes to create makeshift tourniquets and bandages for the wounded, which doctors later said helped save lives. One soldier escaped the attack and quickly sealed off an auditorium in the same building where 138 were marking their graduation from college.
As stories of heroism emerge from the chaos by fellow soldiers, a hazy picture is also emerging of the man who received his medical training from the military and spent his career in the Army, then turned so violently against his own.
Current superiors said Hasan wasn’t a known risk and that they weren’t aware of any performance issues in relation to his job as an Army psychiatrist. But peers from his past paint a slightly different picture and recent allegations of extremist postings on the Internet are adding fuel to the fire for those who see Thursday’s ambush as a terrorist attack against the US military.
While working at Walter Reed, he received a poor performance evaluation, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. And while he was an intern, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger told reporters that privacy laws prevented him from going into details, but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
“He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,” Grieger said. “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths.”
But Col. Kimberly Kesling, deputy commander of clinical services at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, told reporters Hasan had provided excellent care to his patients.
“You wouldn’t think that someone who works in your facility and provided excellent care for his patients, which he did, could do something like this,” Kesling said.
She praised his work ethic, saying, “In my personal interactions, there was never any indication he would do something like this.”
Kesling described him as “a quiet man who wouldn’t seek the limelight” and said she was ‘shocked’ when she heard that he was the man suspected of carrying out the shootings.
Neighbors told reporters that Hasan was described as a generous man and a good neighbor.
Although reasons for the attack remain unknown, Hasan wanted out of the Army because he said he was constantly harassed by others in the military,” his family told ABC News. And even though the 39-year-old had just been promoted to major in May, his family said he had hired a lawyer to try to help him get out of the Armed Forces.
Hasan, born in Arlington, Virginia, is an American citizen whose family came from Ramallah in Palestine. His cousin, Nidal Hasan, told reporters that after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he was targeted by others in the military, his tormentors called him a “camel jockey” and other derogatory terms, said his cousin.
His cousin, Nader Hasan, told Fox News during a telephone interview, that Hasan turned against the wars after hearing the stories of those who came back from Afghanistan and Iraq, adding that Nidal was a “good American,” but he was weary of being harassed because he was a Muslim.
While the bullying irritated Hasan, Nader Hasan believes his upcoming deployment is what set him off. The cousin said, “My mom is his mom… and we didn’t know he was being deployed until we heard it on the news today.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and sought for several years to be discharged from the military.
“I know what that is like,” she said. “Some people can take it, and some cannot.”
“Apparently became very disgruntled in the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and voiced that to a lot of his colleagues,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told reporters.
A former Fort Hood colleague of the shooter said Hasan would frequently make “outlandish” comments.
“He said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor,” retired Col. Terry Lee told Fox News. “At first we thought he meant help the armed forces, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Other times he would make comments we shouldn’t be in the war in the first place.”
Hasan had been optimistic that President Obama would start pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, Lee said, but when that didn’t happen as quickly as he hoped, Hasan became angry. He said Nidal had argued with military colleagues who supported the wars, adding that “he was sort of a loner and kept to himself, and he didn’t socialize a lot with officers off duty or on duty.”
The AP reported that Hasan received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland before being transferred in July to Fort Hood, and that many of his colleagues found him “cold” and avoided sending their patients to him.
In Washington, President Obama called the shootings “a horrific outburst of violence” and urged Americans to “pray for those who were killed and wounded.”
“It is difficult enough when we lose those men and women in battles overseas,” he said. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.”
On Friday, Obama ordered all flags in federal and government buildings to be flown at half mast to honor those killed on Thursday.
Fort Hood is the largest geographical base for the US military and one of the two largest in terms of population. It is home to roughly 34,000 people on 160,000 acres.
The central Texas facility is host to the US III Corps and the 1st Cavalry Division. The US III Corps routinely fills the operational command structure for Multinational Forces Iraq.
Thousands of soldiers have passed through the gates of Fort Hood on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than 500 have not come home. Post-combat stress has been an acknowledged problem on the base, and this year alone, 10 Fort Hood soldiers have committed suicide.
Muslim American organizations reacted swiftly Thursday and Friday to condemn the shootings at Fort Hood, noting that there are thousands of Muslims serving in the armed forces. They said they had already begun receiving some hate mail after the attack.
Officials from the Islamic Society of North America, the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and Imam Mohamed Magid of the large Northern Virginia mosque ADAMS (All Dulles Area Muslim Society) among others held a news conference Friday, urging Americans to view the shooter as a criminal individual, not a representative of Islam.
“As with Timothy McVeigh, the sniper, we focused on the person, not their religion. You wouldn’t take a Christian or a Jewish soldier who did something like this and look at other Christians and Jews and say, ‘Can we trust them?’ ” said Qaseem Uqdah, a Marine and executive director of the Muslim veterans’ council. “It’s ludicrous.”
Magid announced his group would be collecting donations from Muslim Americans for the victims of the shootings. He said the groups were trying to emphasize that Islam doesn’t condone random violence. “You do this, you go to hell. You don’t go to paradise.”
“At a time of deep sorrow in the midst of this horrific tragedy, our thoughts are first and foremost with the Fort Hood shooting victims and their families. One can only imagine the unspeakable pain and loss they are and will be dealing with in the weeks, months and years to come,” said The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans.
“It is unfortunate that whatever demons possessed Nidal Hasan that he chose to deal with his problems in this way.”
The Council of American-Islamic Relations, urged calm and unity and reiterated “the Muslim community’s condemnation of today’s deadly shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.”
Calling the attack “cowardly,” CAIR called on all Americans to “assist those who are responding to this atrocity.
“No political or religious ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence. The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted our nation’s all-volunteer army that includes thousands of Muslims in all services. We again offer our thoughts and prayers for the victims and sincere condolences for the families of those killed or injured.”
The Islamic Society of North America also condemned “in the strongest terms” the attack on soldiers at Fort Hood, resulting in the murder of at least a dozen soldiers and the wounding of many others. “We express our deepest condolences to the victims and their families.”
“ISNA is proud of the many Muslim men and women who serve loyally in the United States military. We are grateful for the sacrifices made by all US soldiers, who represent the religious, racial and ethnic diversity of America, to defend the Constitution and our national security.”
The Arab American Institute also criticized “this tragic and senseless act of violence committed by a disturbed individual. We grieve with the families of those who died and those who were wounded. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.”
While praising the “thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably everyday in all four branches of the US military and in the National Guard,” it asked Muslim Americans and Arab Americans to be pro-active and help the victims of the attack by giving blood to “help through the Red Cross in this crisis.”
—–Agencies