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Our nation is in mourning for our massacred soldiers at Fort Hood Texas. President Obama spoke at the memorial ceremony yesterday. 13 combat boots with rifles inverted and topped with the fallen soldiers helmets, took center stage at the front of the dais.

 
Our nation is in mourning for our soldiers who were massacred at Fort Hood Texas last Thursday. Many of us were glued to our televisions yesterday during the memorial service at Fort Hood as our fallen soldiers were honored. Thirteen combat boots, each with an inverted rifle topped with the fallen soldiers helmet took center stage at the front of the dais. Each soldier’s picture sat beside his boots. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers and families of the fallen gathered for the memorial service. Sadness was palpable on the soldiers faces as they mourned for their comrades. As it must have been in every home across America.

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Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

It was a terrible day for our country when one of their own opened fire and killed 13 soldiers and wounded 31 others . Many of them were returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Others were preparing to leave for these countries. Those soldiers returning from the war were probably experiencing the first feeling of safety they had felt for many months when they were taken by surprise and shot down in a flurry of bullets coming from two pistols held in the hands of one of their own personnel.

“A lot of people are angry because they feel this could have been prevented,” said Spc. Brian Hill, a 25 year old soldier from Nashville,Tennessee, who was injured in Iraq and walks with a cane. “Somebody should have been paying attention.” The finger pointing has already begun in Washington. The shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a military psychiatrist came to the attention of authorities long before last Thursday’s massacre at Fort Hood.

Communications have come to light that Hasan was in direct contact with an Imam who praised Hasan on Monday on his web site, saying the Army psychiatrist “did the right thing” in attacking soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan’s outspoken views and declining stability have been noted but government officials said they gave no evidence he was likely to engage in violence. Officials said Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of a combinations of factors, including his outspoken opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim. Hasan was shot down by military police and is at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. He is in critical but stable condition and is able to talk. Hasan’s family have hired a lawyer.

Image via Wikipedia

Even as President Obama honored the dead at Fort Hood the investigation intensified in Washington. Questions are being asked about whether officials at several agencies had failed to coordinate as they tracked the suspects activities or to react to warning signs in the months before the attack. Hasan came to the attention of two joint Terrorism Task Forces in December as he corresponded by email as many as 20 times with radical imam Anwar al-Awlaqi, who has exhorted followers in the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere to pursue violent jihad.

President Obama called each fallen soldier by name and spoke of each soldier’s interests, his family and how the victim lived rather than how he died. He pledged to the crowd that the killer will be met with justice in this world and the next. The president spoke of the tranquility and liberty that we enjoy at home and and how the 13 gave their lives for it. After the ceremony the president and first lady walked along the row of boots and placed a commander-in-chief’s coin by each picture.

The saddest and most heartfelt moments were when the role was called and the silence that followed when each of the dead soldiers names were called.

http://socyberty.com/issues/military-suicide/

http://newsflavor/world/middle-east/soldiers-die-in-iraq-due-to-contractors-shoddy-work/

http://thrifter.com/usa-canada/illinois/kennesaw-mountains-unknown-soldier/

http://newsflvor.com/world/usa-canada/honoring-our-soldiers/