It wasn’t until the West Coast update of Nightly News that Brian Williams got the facts straight. To be fair, it wasn’t completely his fault. Everyone was wrong. Fort Hood officials had been telling anyone within earshot that Nidal Malik Hasan had died during the attack, that heroic actions by an officer (also dead, according to these sources) stopped the massacre and killed the gunman. More than six hours later, these same officials dropped a bombshell; not only was the shooter still alive, the heroic officer was still breathing as well. Here’s an early erroneous report from the Associated Press…

Fort Hood’s commanding General says one alleged shooter is also dead.

Well, he’s not dead. Hasan remains in critical condition, in a coma but expected to live as of this posting. All reports suggest he’s not talking but I’m guessing that he opens up eventually.

Myth 2: Hasan’s Religion Played No Role In Shooting

At this point, I agree with the President, it would be foolish to jump to any conclusions until we have all of the information in this case. This advice hasn’t stopped countless media outlets (check out this wire search of ‘Hasan PTSD’) from pushing their theory that this was some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Hasan must have obtained PTSD by proxy as he never actually served in any foreign engagements. Still, facts are pesky things, and these media outlets needed something to blame the bloodshed on, something other than Hasan’s religion.

Several sources are reporting that Hasan screamed ‘Allahu Akbar‘ as he fired two handguns into a crowded room. He arrived that morning wearing Islamic garb. He handed out Korans to his neighbors. He praised the work of suicide bombers and defended their tactics on religious grounds. He called the ‘War on Terror’ a war on Islam. He gave a lecture on beheadings, unprompted. Everyone who has come in contact with him has spoke of his devotion to Islamic beliefs. Hasan’s family is of Palestinian descent and he made his vociferous opposition to U.S. foreign policy known to those who would listen. Do you see a trend building here? Post-traumatic stress disorder, natch.

Myth 3: Hasan Suffered From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Of all the terrible coverage of this story, Larry King took the cake.

[King] That… [Johnson] That’s crap… Hello? [King] Are you doing, Tom, by mentioning Islamic last name, are you doing speculating of your own? [Kenniff] I am speculating, and that’s true, we have very limited information right now but we’re all speculating and what I’m saying is, my speculation seems to fit a lot more in with the reality of this case [Johnson] No. No it doesn’t. You’re talking… I think you’re talking out your butt.

The clip ends with PTSD sufferer and former POW Shoshana Johnson suggesting that it’s ‘dangerous’ to imply anything other than PTSD was at play here. This is beyond foolish. There’s speculation coming from all sides here. The only difference between Tom Kenniff’s speculation that religious motive played a part and the other three dunces pointing to PTSD is that Kenniff actually has some evidence to support his theory. There is nothing — absolutely nothing — to suggest that a man who never served in anything other than a classroom somehow suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. And seeing as he was a professional in this field, wouldn’t he be able to self-diagnose?

Hasan’s friends suggest he was a happy man. There is nothing in his file that would put PTSD in play and he never complained about anything outside of his opposition to the policies of the United States and its armed services to anyone on record thus far. Hopefully we can get past this idiocy and get down to a solid motive in this case. While it’s likely that either religious leanings or radical politics played a role in this massacre, I think it’s highly unlikely that a man who never saw action overseas came down with post-traumatic stress disorder by osmosis of some sort and wasn’t able to use his professional training to diagnose himself. I believe this mostly because I live in a reality-based world. It’s also quite possible, probable even, that, on some level, Hasan was just plain crazy.

The fact is, we don’t know anything for sure just yet.

Myth 4: Hasan’s Was Afraid To Fight In A War

I’ll make this short and sweet. I may never know him. What I do know is that he wasn’t scared to ‘go to war.’ Hasan went to war all right, he went to war in Texas. He went to war against the very people that put him through medical school. He chose sides, took up arms and executed a war plan. Sadly, he chose the other side and murdered at least a dozen people in the process.

Myth 5: There Were Three Shooters Involved In The Attack

Reporting in real time is a dirty process. You run every tip, hint and source through the does-this-seem-plausible filter and you run with what comes out clean on the other side. But leaving the public thinking three, possibly more, shooters were on the loose for hours is inexcusable.

[Shepard Smith] We’re talking about the largest U.S. military installation in the world with 33,000 people there, three different locations that we know of, three different gunman all shooting army personnel.

Not quite. The entire attack occurred in one building and all signs point to there being a single shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan. This was an information breakdown of the most extreme. From confused Fort Hood authorities swamped by a catastrophe to cable channels buying into the theories of frightened eyewitnesses to fact checkers apparently asleep at the wheel, it was a failure on all fronts.

Myth 6: Hasan Was Bullied By Fellow Soldiers

Nidal Malik Hasan wasn’t some newbie grunt, he was a Major in the United States Army. This rank puts him in a position of authority over about 95% of enlisted soldiers. So I seriously doubt random enlistees were bullying him about his religious background. What I do imagine, and what seems to line up with the facts here, is the assertion that a man with a strong opinion about U.S. foreign policy got into a heated argument or two with folks who disagreed. Sure, there was an incident where his car was vandalized and an ‘Allah’ sticker was removed, but the police arrested that joker and the wound healed. There’s no information to suggest that Hasan was ‘picked on’ by anyone at Fort Hood or elsewhere. We have to draw a line between battling over political views, which can become heated at times, and mocking or persecuting someone solely because of those views or religious beliefs.

Myth 7: Hasan Gave No Hints An Attack Was Coming

As outlined above, the Fort Hood shooter was acting quite odd before the shooting. Though most interviews feature some pundit claiming ‘no one saw this coming,’ it’s clear that at least some people did. Those people just so happen to work at the FBI. So his fellow soldiers, superiors and even the Feds saw this one on the horizon. Was there a moment when the hammer could have been dropped and lives could have been saved? Maybe not. But if we were looking for symptoms, Hasan wasn’t hiding them from us. As all lunatics do, this crazy left a trail of breadcrumbs.

The real question is, why did those people still want him to go to Afghanistan?

The book isn’t closed on this story just yet and there’s quite a bit more to be learned. But media coverage of this event has been shockingly bad from the get-go and it’s not getting much better with time. I know as well as the next guy that CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and a million other outlets have a ton of time and space to fill. I happen to think filling that time with complete jackasses like Dr. Phil is a disservice to everyone. I also think grabbing onto the popular meme (in this case, PTSD as the diagnosis) is particularly ridiculous in this case as it attempts to justify the cold-blooded murder of more than a dozen innocent people. At the end of the day, whether Nidal Malik Hasan was a radical Islamist, an American patriot, a victim of bullying or a man who mysteriously came down with a syndrome he doesn’t fit the profile for doesn’t matter. What matters is that this sick son of a bitch resorted to violence to prove whatever insanely off-base point he was trying to make.

So please… stop with the misinformation, would you?

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