Read it here.Foremost today is to care for the wounded and the families of those who were lost or wounded. Next week, we must continue to care for those in need, while mourning our losses.
First reports are notoriously wrong. The shooter already has been killed then resurrected by the media. Some media are in a frenzy and so the reports are particularly untrustworthy at this time. Now is not a time to psychoanalyze the attacker by using a media-supplied telescope that already said he was dead, and that there were multiple attackers. Media: STOP, please. There will be time to pursue answers and justice after Christmas. We must remember that family members lost loved ones just before the holidays. Justice and answers will come with time.
Most important is to remember that we have just lost a dozen people. Others are wounded. Children and other family members will need care and thoughtful attention.
But it is unreasonable to expect that the media and various political interests should not try to exploit this terrible incident for ratings or to push various agendas. For the left the overriding imperative is to find an anti-war angle to push. The strategy is to suggest that the stress of war "post-traumatic stress disorder" [PTSD] is the ultimate cause of the killer's actions. The New York Times, for instance, writes:
The incident raised new questions about the toll that six years of continuous fighting in Iraq and nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan have taken on the U.S. military and on individual soldiers, many of whom have been on several combat tours.The trouble with this line of attack, though, is that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the murderer, had never been deployed to a battle area. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, however, is undeterred by this fact. She combs back through decades of news stories to find incidents where military personnel have committed murder or suicide and assembles them into a montage that suggests that all military personnel are operating on a hair trigger and might explode into violence at any time. She then interviews a guest "expert" who opines that although Major Hasan had not personally experienced the stress of battle, he would have been exposed to it vicariously through the testimony of soldiers he treated. Then the show moves immediately to a long discussion of PTSD that portrays soldiers as victims. What is not discussed is the report that Hasan was a devout Muslim who had in the past urged his co-religionists to rise up against American invaders.
Investigating the murderer's Islamic ties and radical sentiments might seem to be an obvious line of inquiry but the news sources are tiptoeing around the subject.
Patterico has a nice critique of the LA Times coverage of the incident, which initially failed to note that the murderer was a Muslim, and is frequently updating his information. [here]
Jim Treacher is updating the story on Twitter.
Allahpundit has updates at Hot Air.
