Investigators began piecing together on Friday how and why an Army psychiatrist facing deployment to a war zone gunned down dozens of people a day earlier at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base.

This guy seems to have pre-traumatic stress disorder. Just the thought of being sent to war sent him over the edge. How did he reconcile joining the army in the first place with not wanting to be sent to war?

This is a tragedy that should never have happened.

-janelane, sympathetically

Suspect Was to Be Sent to Afghanistan - NYTimes.com