All The News That Fits In Print

By now, I'm sure all of you are aware of the shooting at Fort Hood.  As of right now, 8:00 a.m. on the day after the shooting, the "facts" seem to be:  a single shooter, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, an Muslim army psychiatrist, has shot and killed 12 people, wounded dozens more, and is presently alive and in custody.  Are those facts completely accurate?  Well, follow the chain of events, much of which I am piecing together from memory:

1) Shooting reported with no information
2) Army (or possibly law enforcement) spokesflacks swiftly announce that there is no connection to terrorism
3) Number of dead reported at 7 people with roughly a dozen wounded
4) Reports that one shooter is dead with one more in custody
5) Reports that one shooter is dead with (at least) two more in custody
6) Reports of second shooting in a movie theater
7) Non-Fox MSM swiftly unifies around PC-friendly PTSD diagnosis, apropos of nothing
8) Number of dead rises to 12
9) Dead shooter ID'ed as Maj. Hasan.
10) Maj. Hasan ID'ed as a Muslim.
11) Maj. Hasan ID'ed as a Muslim convert.
12) Maj. Hasan reported to have sympathized with Islamic terrorists, resented pending Iraq (Afghanistan?) deployment, cheered on bombings (so much for PTSD and no connection to terrorism!)
13) Number of dead revised to 13
<I went to sleep at this point, but by morning:>
14) Ft. Hood commanding General announces that Maj. Hasan is alive and in custody, and was the only shooter
15) Maj. Hasan comes from a family of life-long Muslims, and is not a convert
16) Number of dead re-revised to 12
17) 13th victim dies of wounds

So there we are, so far.  Still no definite motive, although now that he's in custody I expect we'll get one soon, depending on how much the government wants to keep under wraps (I don't have particularly high hopes there).  I think several lessons are borne out here:

1) The media (all of it, sorry, not just the MSM) absolutely sucks at its job in a time of major crisis.  Has this always been the case?  I don't know.  Maybe there was a "golden age" where it didn't suck so much, and now they've lost their edge.  This is not to say that anyone else could do it better -- I think it's fair to say that if anyone could do it, it should be the news media (both new and old).  But considering the "facts" that were let fly so quickly, as outlined above, it's frightening how little confirmation of anything was done, and how much speculation, rumor, or misinformation was reported as "emerging fact".  The Punditry, on both sides of the fence, were all to quick to believe the reports from the very Media (MSM on the right, Fox on the left) they deride, as well.  The real lesson here is:  don't believe one red cent that anyone reports as objective fact until well after the smoke has cleared.

2) It's not like most of us who spend time around these parts didn't know this already, but:  the MSM will carry water for Islamic Extremism until the sun burns out.  It always seems like the immediate reaction is "THERE IS NO CONNECTION WITH ISLAMIC TERRORISM", regardless of the amount of information available.  And yes, such a statement, in the complete absence of information, might be technically true (well, vacuously true), it is also true to say "there is no reason to believe the incident is not connected with Islamic terrorism".  It is particularly laughable that the MSM jumped on the PTSD diagnosis at a time when it was thought that there were up to three shooters -- has "group PTSD" ever been an observed malady?  Anywho, apart from the punditry at NRO and other places, even after the (supposedly dead) shooter's name was revealed, I still failed to hear any connections to Islamic terrorism, which is astounding.  How could he have PTSD if he hadn't even been in combat yet?  So far his entire military experience was apparently a string of government-funded medical training fellowships! 

Particularly considering that the "suspect" is still alive, I will be very interested in seeing how things unfold.  Expect the media to paint Maj. Hasan as a victim, and for Pres. Bush to somehow take the blame.  Because Obama, of course, has already ended all wars and made the Ummah love us.  Assuming the reports of Maj. Hasan's "cheering on" of US troop deaths and justification of Islamic extremism bear out, I will be paying close attention to any policy changes the US Military makes to Muslims in its own ranks -- failing to censure (or outright court martial) an officer who cheers on the enemy seems like a pretty big deal to me.