Update: one of the injured has sadly died, bring the death toll to thirteen.

It's a long standing supposition that a fair to large percentage of Psychologists-iatrists are in great need of the services of their colleagues. I'm sure he did endure some racism, I'm white and I 'endure' racism (you're white you wouldn't understand, Hmm I grew up poor around rich kids I think I might), I pray that these are the death throws of a dying practice but, that's a whole different blog. The military,as you well know, is what is known as an adversarial system designed to make the people under it mean in every sense of the word and at the same time the alliances formed between men under this system tend to last beyond a lifetime, men he served with as a teen were at my grandfather's funereal more than 60 years later. This is also why using the US ARMY as an occupation force was one of if not Bush's worst idea(s), our soldiers aren't trained to police people but to take land, hell even our MPs aren't trained to police civilians but, soldiers.

What was he to do ask for troops from the UN the same organization that was aiding Saddam in skimming cash off the "Oil for Food" program (and as we all know guilty of many human rights violations in their deployments). This is why we didn't use French, German or Russians they were all taking illegal oil, it was illegal because these same nations had signed to make it illegal. And all of the above were guilty of running the embargo that would have made the war in Iraq unnecessary had it been allowed to work.

As much as we continue appreciate the English & the Aussies aide in this, it was probably a very bad political idea to bring the Union Jack back to Iraq. However of the "coalition" forces the Brits are the only ones to have successfully occupy foreign land, as such to me it seemed odd that the Brits operated essentially alone in their own region, it would have made more sense to me that they be split among the US units as advisors to help our boys learn to show 'respect' to those they seek to control.

Well, we should all that feel it does some good, pray for the families of the dead, and the soul of the Major.

BTW thanks for posting this Steve, it's another coin on the scale that may eventually swing to a conscription force.

I got this information from the BBC World Service and Reuters. When I posted it, there was little accurate information or none on the mainstream services. But I guess it has had wall to wall coverage in the mainstream media since then.

It was breaking news Thursday night and the protocol is to shut down a base if there's unexpected gunfire so it's taken til morning to get reasonable info out, I knew he was a doctor from the initial report & that 12 had died on the scene but the rest was news to me since I've not been watching the news today.

Ok I really don't know why someone would do this!! I mean if you were about to be deported in a few days well duh you will be sad but you shouldn't go on a killing spree!

Deployed isn't Deported. They make it amply clear to all peacetime 'volunteers' that they could wind up at war, yet after they've cashed all those peacetime checks and gotten their educations paid for many 'volunteers' have the nerve to claim they didn't volunteer for "this", I am all for a draft registration/conscription force if it's needed and if people are being compelled to endure more than 2 years under deployment it's needed but, if the soldiers at large feel they're safer in the field beside other "professionals" then I think it's wisest to listen to the men. AND view this fellow as the freak he is, if the recent news is correct about his subversive activities then the military needs to consider more frequent/invasive evaluations of their staff and enlisted personnel.

The most recent thing I've heard is he was possibly posting radical things on Jihadist websites.