An American Lion

Fort Hood, Texas [the circular structure is where the shootings are believed to have taken place]

There has been a shooting incident on the main base at Fort Hood, Texas:

A soldier opened fire at a U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, unleashing a stream of handgun fire that left 12 people dead and 31 wounded.

The commander of the Fort Hood Army post, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, had said in a 5 p.m. news conference that the shooter had been killed, but said at 9:15 p.m. that he had only been wounded and was hospitalized in stable condition.

A Fort Hood press release said that “more than one shooter fired shots into the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center and Howze Theater on Fort Hood” and Cone initially said that eyewitnesses described multiple shooters. But at the 9:15 p.m. news conference he said he believed that there was only one shooter.

Two soldiers were detained and later released. CNN is reporting that a third suspect is still being held.

The shooting began around 1:30 p.m., Cone said. He said all the casualties took place at the base’s Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.

The hospitalized shooting suspect has been identified as Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

The CBS News investigative unit reports that Hasan, 39, is a licensed psychiatrist who has lived in Bethesda and Silver Spring, Md. and Roanoke, Va. A spokesman for Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison says Hasan was upset about an upcoming deployment to Iraq.

Related: Shooting Suspect ID’d as Army Psychiatrist

The victims of the shooting have not been identified but Cone said that the slain included U.S. soldiers and a civilian police officer working at the base. He said that no children had been killed to his knowledge.

This is absolutely tragic. I have been on Fort Hood. It is a massive, sprawling base.

In today’s Army, virtually everyone makes Captain and Major now, and a poor evaluation wouldn’t necessarily have meant that Hasan was going to be blocked from making a rank equal to O-5. It is a little strange to note that he had been given a bad evaluation—most likely after being promoted. Given that we don’t know the nature of the evaluation, I don’t know why that information was allowed to get out to the press.

These people have a lot on their plate. Getting it wrong about the shooter should not be held against them.