Pentagon Grapples to Understand How Yet Another Insider Threat Went Undeterred
04.03.2014 at 03:53pm
Pentagon Grapples to Understand How Yet Another Insider Threat Went Undeterred by Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post
Wednesday’s mass shooting by an Army specialist in Fort Hood, Tex., put the Pentagon on a dreaded, if increasingly familiar, footing as officials grappled to understand how yet another insider threat went undeterred.
It unfolded just two weeks after the Defense Department unveiled the findings of three investigations into last year’s fatal shooting at a Navy Yard building in Washington, D.C., by a contractor and four years after a similarly extensive inquiry into a massacre at Fort Hood by an Army psychiatrist led to vows of sweeping reforms…
Comment seen elsewhere made by a very experienced combat veteran – one that needs to be seriously looked at: “Why hasn’t a reporter critically questioned the assertion that the Ft. Hood shooter had PTSD from “Four months in Iraq during 2011?” Unless he was in a really unusual situation, there wasn’t a lot (really any) of shooting going on then. I just hate when potentially real PTSD gets conflated with just being bonkers, as if working at Camp Victory in 2011 was like Ramadi 2006.”
As a recent employee of DOD & a Antiterrorism Officer by trade, what went wrong is what continues to go wrong throughout Federal Service & the military…it has become nothing more than an employment agency for Non-productive Assets (NPA) desiring to contribute not so much as an original thought, but keep that government paycheck coming in. When the Final Report of the Ft. Hood shooting came out with the appeasing “Work Place Violence” as the politically decided upon cause, we all knew that this was only the beginning of random mass killings, active shooter events & potential WMD incidents, so take heart because we have not seen the last of these needless deaths. Lets face it, military installations are nothing more than soft targets of opportunity (this includes ALL branches of the service). In the aftermath of the Washington Navy Yard shooting, the rush to pencil whip physical security & active shooter exercise & plans accomplishments, IOT satisfy SECDEF requirements, was appalling. These moral cowards, masquerading as installation commanders, executive & operations officers, & NPA GS employees are exactly why these mass killing incidents continue to occur…they refuse to learn about NIMS, become qualified in ICS, write the plans, conduct the quarterly drills & exercises, & ensure that their installations are protected from any All Hazard Threat, but will not even blink an eye at using whatever others have attempted to accomplish as the basis for their end-of-tour awards. Pathetic, to say the least! Until the right to carry aboard military installations & other so-called Gun Free zones is returned, we had better stock up on body bags.
Does deterrence work with such people? Today’s shooter has had a ‘mentally ill’ label hung around him.
Prevention would be more appropriate, less glamorous than target hardening and physical responses. It also means more people have to take responsibility.
When will the Army wake up and realize that the numbers of true PTSD cases have been so over inflated and the VA/taxpayers are footing the bill.
When one looks at VN vets and they massive struggles with the VA just to get PTSD recognized and many are still fighting VA over their PTSD—Army Iraq/AFG vets fine tune their final Army medical to get the “killing of a life time” a PTSD disability payment for the rest of their lives.
When originally PTSD was awarded by VA it had to do with the massive sustained combat and experienced brutality of actual 365 days a year of war 24X7—so just what is triggering PTSD in this war generation and has the VA and the Army actually wanted to truly understand the reasons behind the current PTSD wave.
It is a known fact that the younger soldiers talk among themselves prior to the medical and they know exactly what terms, words, and symptoms they need to record in order to be granted VA disability after leaving service.
So just how did the this shooter get the title PTSD hung on him with only a four month tour in a relatively quiet time in Iraq?
There is the true story—