What Might Have Set Off Fort Hood Gunman?

Leading Forensic Psychiatrist Explores Possible Motivations

(CBS)  Mental health professionals are scrambling to explain what could have prompted a gunman to go on a rampage in Texas' Fort Hood Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding 30, before being shot by a female police officer who was among the first to arrive on the scene.

Military officials identify the alleged shooter as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist.

On "The Early Show" Friday, one of the nation's top forensic psychiatrists, Dr. Michael Welner, said, "It's shocking. It's shocking for any health professional to be involved in taking life, especially from a profession where you're trained in empathy. Even if you are more stiff, more stand-offish, you're trained up. But in a way, we may draw answers not just from his being a psychiatrist, but from what he was doing at the base."

Welner, speaking under the presumption Hasan was indeed the shooter -- explained to substitute co-anchor Debbye Turner Bell that the nature of Hasan's work could have played a major role "because he was counseling people who were dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder from a location and a place where he identified with the enemy. And this is how it fits together. We heard ("Early Show" co-anchor) Harry (Smith) this morning already report with someone on the scene who said he heard, 'Allahu Akbar' being shorted.

"There are ideological mass shootings. A person who is treating people with post-traumatic stress disorder is in an environment where they verbalize, so he's dealing with victims who may have verbalized a tremendous amount of resentment and anger for people he identified with. And we know about mass shooters that they are alienated and it is their alienation that enables mass shooting. You have to hate everyone to feel comfortable killing anyone. And a random mass shooting, you embrace the possibility, and as an educated professional, that anyone may die."

More Coverage of the Tragedy at Fort Hood:

Gunman Saying, "Allahu Akbar" as He Fired?
Fort Hood Suspect's Home Searched
Answers Sought in Ft. Hood Shooter Rampage
Radical Ties Not Ruled Out at Ft. Hood
Store's Video May Show Ft. Hood Suspect
Anti-Muslim Backlash Immediate
Fort Hood Rampage Suspect Sill Alive
What Was Shooter's Motive?
Soldier Opens Fire at Ft. Hood; 13 Dead
U.S. Army Base Violence Has Bloody History
Obama: Fort Hood Shooting "Horrific"
Fast Facts: Fort Hood
Tragedy at Fort Hood

Bell, herself a medical professional -- she is a veterinarian -- remarked that what happened "just seems so counterintuitive" because you would think a psychiatrist would have the skills "to cope with some of these felling of alienation."

"It is, but it is not," Welner observed. "The mass shooter acts from righteous indignation. In other words, 'I'm a healing person, but my ideology and my righteous belief and my feeling that, " 'I'm doing something in the name of what I believe in more than my professional ethics dominates my thinking," will push me to do what I do." '

Welner added, "There's obviously much more that we need to learn. There are common qualities of mass shootings. This happened at his workplace and there are workplace mass shootings. ... Based on my experience, I will tell you this: It is especially important to understand where the shooting started and what the trigger point was, because the shooting becomes random, but it starts with a selected point."

[susangale]

ARE YOU KIDDING>>>>>>>WHAT SET HIM OFF????????????

THE SAME THING THAT "SET OFF" THE 9-11 ATTACKERS

[susangale]

ARE YOU KIDDING>>>>>>>WHAT SET HIM OFF????????????

THE SAME THING THAT "SET OFF" THE 9-11 ATTACKERS

[revlin1]

Is everyone here missing the point? HE wasn't the victim of PTSD, but he sure has caused many people to become victims of PTSD with what he did AND HE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING. In one simple word: (and we don't need a veterinarian to tell us) the motive was TERRORISM/Muslim based.

[ibsteve2u]

"...so he's dealing with victims who may have verbalized a tremendous amount of resentment and anger for people he identified with."

I.e., not the most brilliant personnel move the Pentagon ever made.

[redrockraven]

This man was obviously mentally deranged and the fact that he was is a psychiatrist or a muslim may be totally irrelevant. However, the Reichwingnuts, Glen Beck lovers and Klu Klux Klan members can explain everything to the rest of us, based upon their own bigotry, hatred and prejudicial fear mungering.

[gekkobear]

Yeah, he'd never been deployed, but he was suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder?

and my leg hurts because next week it will be run over by a car.

But it had nothing, nothing at all, to do with his speech about his religion and how the Koran wants him to kill and behead the infidel; that is completely unrelated.

Must have been stress from something that hasn't happened yet.

Damn. trying to follow your logic; now my head hurts. That or I'm suffering a head injury next month and I'm feeling that pain now.

[navyenduring]

I can't believe what I am reading. This guy is a Muslim extremist sympathiser. He had been reprimanded in the past for arguing with his patience about the war and was growing ever more resentful. Whether he was trained by the extremists or personally believed in the extreme measures, we don't know. When an elephant is in the room and people are afraid to admit an elephant is in the room, how gullible.

[bradfregger]

This is an example of the danger that we face because of the extreme political correctness that exists at this time. There is no doubt that this killing spree was the act of a Jihadist committed to the ultimate goals of fanatical Muslims. To suggest otherwise, to suggest that this act had anything to do with the pressures our military personnel are under, as some are, is not only naive, but actually dangerous.

I have been warning people of the danger that we face from fanatical Muslims since the 90s. If we continue to ignore what's happening, if we continue to let extreme political correctness shape our response to these terrorists acts (and, whether you like it or not this was a terrorist's act perpetrated by a fanatical Muslim who was determined to kill those who had supported the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iran) ... our "chickens (really will) ? come home to roost."