posible active shooter Chattanooga Naval Reserve Center

[dragon]

Reports: Shooting at Chattanooga Naval Reserve Center 01:56

(CNN)Authorities were investigating an "active shooter incident" late Thursday morning at the Naval Reserve Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Fire Chief Randy Jackson said.

"Horrific incident in our community," tweeted Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke. "We will release details as they are confirmed. Prayers to all those affected."

Jackson said paramedics were standing by but had not transported anyone at this time.

Photos posted on Twitter by media outlets showed police blocking a road and a large number of patrol cars.

A witness told CNN that she saw a man with "a high-powered rifle" fire multiple shots from a silver Mustang. She said she was watching through a window from inside a restaurant.

Gina Mule said she heard "Pow, pow, pow!" around 10:50 a.m. ET.

"I don't know how many shots he fired, but it was a lot," she said.

Chattanooga State University asked people on its main campus to stay inside because of a "confirmed shooting," the school said on Twitter.

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[dragon]

confirmed 2 shootings at different locations 1 officer down

[dragon]

Really surprised no one commented especially our military members, anyway 4 marines dead, 3 wounded. Gunman was Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez.

Chattanooga, Tennessee (CNN)A day after gunman Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez ended the lives of four Marines and wounded three other people, hundreds in Chattanooga gathered in prayer to mourn their deaths.

There were Christians. There were Muslims. A cross-section of the Tennessee community packed Olivet Baptist Church for the Friday night vigil.

"I thought it was beautiful ... the community coming together," Iman Ali told CNN affiliate WTVC. "It was truly something beautiful and I wanted to be there to honor the lives of those Marines."
Muslim community condemns Chattanooga shooting

Muslim community condemns Chattanooga shooting 04:07
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Korean War veteran Arch Burton talked of the collective hurt the nation was experiencing.

"We fought to preserve this great country which is America and when one is down, all are down," he said.

There was also talk of healing and moving forward as a community.

"Tonight, love and forgiveness and belief in one another was the theme, because that's what 'Chattanooga Strong' means," Mayor Andy Berke told affiliate WDEF.

The military has released the names of the four slain Marines. They are: Thomas Sullivan, a native of Hampden, Massachusetts; Squire "Skip" Wells, a native of Marietta, Georgia; David Wyatt, a native of Burke, North Carolina; and Carson Holmquist of Grantsburg, Wisconsin.

Timeline: U.S. military recruiting center attacks, from New York to Chattanooga

The investigation

Authorities have seized four guns connected with Abdulazeez, a law enforcement official said.

Abdulazeez had a handgun and two long guns in his possession when police killed him Thursday at a Navy Operational Support Center, and another rifle was seized when police searched his home, the official said.

The 24-year-old engineering graduate wore a "load-bearing vest" that allowed him to carry extra ammunition, said Ed Reinhold, special agent in charge of the regional FBI office.

It doesn't appear that the weapons were purchased recently, the law enforcement official said. Reinhold said earlier Friday that "some of the weapons were purchased legally and some of them may not have been."

The rampage

Thursday's shooting spree began at a strip mall when Abdulazeez opened fire on a military recruiting center.

Over the next half-hour, the gunman, a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, drove his rental car to the Navy operational support center seven miles away, a law enforcement official said.
How the Chattanooga shooting unfolded

How the Chattanooga shooting unfolded 03:37
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Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher told CNN that police followed and engaged Abdulazeez somewhere on the road after that, then again at the second site. He said authorities are still trying to determine whether police saw him ram the gates of the center, get into the facility and shoot and kill the four Marines.

He kept police at bay for some time before himself being killed.

"All indications are he was killed by fire from the Chattanooga police officers," Reinhold told reporters Friday. "We have no evidence he was killed by self-inflicted wounds."

A senior defense official told CNN several of the Marines in the recruiting center were combat veterans.

When the shooting broke out, they went into combat mode, had everybody drop to the floor, and then "cleared the room" by having everyone go out the back, the official said. All seven people in the center survived, and reports indicate those Marines helped save lives.

Looking for a motive

Authorities are trying to figure out why Abdulazeez -- an accomplished student, well-liked peer, mixed martial arts fighter and devout Muslim -- went on the killing spree.
Mayor: We had no indication shooter was a threat

Mayor: We had no indication shooter was a threat 02:36
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U.S. Attorney Bill Killian said the shootings are being investigated as an "act of domestic terrorism," but he noted the incident has not yet been classified as terrorism.

Reinhold said there is nothing to connect the attacker to ISIS or other international terror groups. Abdulazeez was not on any U.S. databases of suspected terrorists.

He was not known to have been in trouble with the law except for a DUI arrest in April. He apparently was not active on social media -- one of the common ways police investigate terrorism.

His family

The father of Abdulazeez was investigated -- and cleared, twice -- as part of an FBI probe into terrorism financing, law enforcement officials said.
Chattanooga shooter's complicated family life

Chattanooga shooter's complicated family life 02:24
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Officials stressed that Abdulazeez's father was one of many people investigated for their funding of overseas charities, especially after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Most of them were never charged with a crime.

The president of the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga told WDEF that Abdulazeez's father called him after the shooting.

"He was in the dark on what his son has done, he's very devastated," Bassam Issa said. The father "actually apologized for what his son did to the community at large and to the Muslim community and I told him we all feel distraught, we all feel shocked."

Bergen: History of attacks against U.S. military installations

'Something happened over there'

Friend says shooter had moved back to the Middle East

Friend says shooter had moved back to the Middle East 05:27
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While Abdulazeez was a devout Muslim, he didn't appear to be radical, according to some who knew him. He was born in Kuwait but became a naturalized American citizen.

Jordanian sources said Abdulazeez had been in Jordan as recently as 2014 visiting an uncle. He had also visited Kuwait and Jordan in 2010, Kuwait's Interior Ministry said.

A longtime friend said Abdulazeez changed after spending time in the Middle East and "distanced himself" for the first few months after returning to Tennessee.

"Something happened over there," Abdulrazzak Brizada told CNN, saying, "he never became close to me like he was before he went overseas ... I'm sure he had something that happened to him overseas."

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[madd0ct0r]

what's there to comment?

idiot attacks military base and dies. The strip mall start could have been a civilian massacare, but instead he drove to a military base to commit suicide by proxy. The 4 dead died doing the job they signed up for, in a protected base.

[Patroklos]

It was a circumstance where violence was not and should be expected. There is really zero difference between this and an attack on civilians for all practical purposes. A place that statistically should have been a completely safe location was attacked and people died. The families of those four (now five) had no less expectation of them coming home than you do when your mom goes to the grocery store.

[madd0ct0r]

that would make sense if my mum went shopping on a military base. As it is, she survived the troubles in Belfast, so perhaps you mean her shopping trips then?

[Patroklos]

I am pretty sure your average US military base ranks with the safest places on earth, statistically there is zero chance of encountering violence there as opposed to say the corner store (also zero for all practical purposes but not relative to military bases).

You basic premise seems to be because the victims happened to be in the military it is less tragic. We can argue what military people "signed up for" as you put it, but I doubt most would consider being murdered at an office job stateside to be one of those things. I guarantee you neither I or my wife think so. These five were victims of a murderer, that's it. If he turns out to be a terrorist, they were victims like any other.

[madd0ct0r]

you represented my argument pretty correctly. all deaths are tragic, but some are more tragic then others. Shit for the families involved though.

[Channel72]

So, now would probably be a good time for a media analysis here. We've had other threads on this board talking about the biased nomenclature the US media applies to white vs. non-white (and especially Muslim) mass shooters.

So this guy pretty clearly had some affiliation with Islam, but beyond being a Kuwaiti national and having recently traveled to the Mideast, there isn't much to connect him with a Jihadist mentality. Except it's pretty hard to think of any possible fucking motivation here that doesn't somehow involve "Jihad the evil Americans" (unless like, he had some unknown, unrelated beef with that particular Naval Reserve Center...) but you know... waiting for the facts and all that.

So anyway, CNN calls him a "gunman", NYtimes calls him a "gunman", NBC also calls him a "gunman". Bloomberg uses the phrase "shooting suspect", but goes on to speculate about connections with Islamic extremism. Only Foxnews (predictably) trumpets around the word "terrorist" and "terror attack" in headlines.

So based on this (small sample) of major US news outlets, there doesn't seem to be too much of a media inclination to jump to using the word "terrorism", even in a case like this where it's pretty fucking clear that the most obvious explanation here is that the guy had sympathies for the Jihadist mentality - but likely acted alone.

On another note - if this does turn out to be motivated by a desire to participate in Jihad against the US (which seems really likely), it's interesting to note that this sort of "crowd-sourced Jihad" is exactly the kind of thing that groups like Al-Qaeda, and later ISIS, had hoped to produce en masse but were never able to really successfully inspire to a degree that gained significant traction. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the US intelligence community as well as the American public feared things like "terrorist cells" - a phrase which now sort of seems as dated as "Cyberspace" or "Information Super Highway". Back then the fear was that US cities would be heavily infested with organized "terrorist cells" with connections to larger networks like Al Qaeda. Except that never happened... it turned out Al Qaeda simply couldn't organize anything as complex as a large network of "cells" throughout the US and Europe. They were sort of able to establish a small network throughout Europe, but most of these networks ended up being dismantled or bankrupted by counterintelligence forces.

So, instead, organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS basically decided that instead of trying to set up these elaborate networks themselves, they'd just "outsource" terrorism to the "crowd" (sorry for all these 2015 buzzwords), and inspire lone actors throughout the US and Europe to just engage in Jihad by themselves. This latest incident in Tennessee may be an example of that sort of thing. Except even that seems to have totally failed to materialize into anything beyond a few sparse incidents here and there. It seems that Jihadist organizations just totally suck at inspiring any sort of mass movement or uprising outside of their local sphere of influence.

And tying this back to the media coverage, I think it's refreshing to see that most major media outlets are not overblowing this whole thing as some kind of major terrorist attack or some sort of major problem that we should all fear (well, except Fox I guess.... why is reality so predictable sometimes?) Instead, most media organizations are reporting this whole thing in a pretty level-headed fashion - describing the attacker as a "gunman" who may have had some sort of unclear connection to Islamic extremism. This verbiage certainly doesn't convey the idea that Islamic terrorism is really some kind of major imminent danger (hint: it's not), and a lot of the news coverage even went out of it's way to mention how other Muslims attended the prayer vigils, and how the attacker's father is dismayed and saddened by what his son has done. Overall, I'm mostly pleased with how the media is covering this incident.

[Sea Skimmer]

So based on this (small sample) of major US news outlets, there doesn't seem to be too much of a media inclination to jump to using the word "terrorism", even in a case like this where it's pretty fucking clear that the most obvious explanation here is that the guy had sympathies for the Jihadist mentality - but likely acted alone.

Indeed it seems to be the basic principle at work in the US media in the last several years. If a direct connection to foreign agents/jihadist isn't shown you don't call the person a terrorist, no matter how blatantly the acts seem to have been intended as terrorism. I suppose that's fair enough because accuracy aside, it suppresses the political advantage foreign factions can gain from the actions of lone wolfs in the United States. On the other hand this strongly risks deemphasizing the home front relevance of continuing US military actions overseas which is dangerous in its own right.

So, instead, organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS basically decided that instead of trying to set up these elaborate networks themselves, they'd just "outsource" terrorism to the "crowd" (sorry for all these 2015 buzzwords), and inspire lone actors throughout the US and Europe to just engage in Jihad by themselves. This latest incident in Tennessee may be an example of that sort of thing.

It really does make sense. Two or three people might be able to organize without being detected, but they cannot accomplish much that a single person could not. Even if you have funding meanwhile a larger cell beings becomes exponentially more detectable because of its communications requirements. And the supply of jihadists actually able to enter and integrate with western society is very finite, to the point of being nearly zero from a place like Yemen, so they cannot simply throw numbers at the problem and hope to come out ahead. Self radicalization/recruitment from within meanwhile is pretty much a recipe for only obtaining single agents.

[Lord MJ]

There is a controversy among conservatives that Obama took too long to have the flags lowered to half staff, while he had within hours the gay pride lighting over the white house after the SCOTUS decisions.

They are in a tizzy about how Obama cares more about gays than our brave soldiers dying. This despite the fact that Obama has ordered flags lowered multiple times during previous attacks.

[Sea Skimmer]

Given what a jackass Obama was over the Fort Hood attack, in full knowledge that his actions meant wounded US service members were not receiving benefits while the ass who shot them still got full pay before trial, I see zero reason why anyone should cut him slack on this. At least not when you pile all his other stuff on top of it, scaling up drone attacks, mass spying, blatantly ineffective policies for intervening in new wars ect.. its not like he's trying to downplay the entire subject which would at least be consistent.

[Simon_Jester]

So based on this (small sample) of major US news outlets, there doesn't seem to be too much of a media inclination to jump to using the word "terrorism", even in a case like this where it's pretty fucking clear that the most obvious explanation here is that the guy had sympathies for the Jihadist mentality - but likely acted alone.

Indeed it seems to be the basic principle at work in the US media in the last several years. If a direct connection to foreign agents/jihadist isn't shown you don't call the person a terrorist, no matter how blatantly the acts seem to have been intended as terrorism. I suppose that's fair enough because accuracy aside, it suppresses the political advantage foreign factions can gain from the actions of lone wolfs in the United States. On the other hand this strongly risks deemphasizing the home front relevance of continuing US military actions overseas which is dangerous in its own right.

It also suppresses the political advantage domestic factions can gain from the action of lone wolves. This is not a small issue when we've been sucked into at least one war that seems to have proved a disastrous mistake in hindsight... in large part because of Americans' willingness to do anything to "fight the terrorists," regardless of how tenuous the connection to "the terrorists" really was.

Also, treating individual murderers as probably-not-terrorists helps to keep our perception of the threat level in line with the statistical facts. These lone-gunman terrorists are, on average, killing fewer people than were killed in similar attacks by random psychos. It is therefore logical to argue that the lone-gunman terrorists are not a significant threat compared to the scale of our society. And that the resources required to stop such a threat (how would you even do that, censor the Internet while drone-bombing everyone in the Arab world who makes an unfriendly tweet about the US?) would be much better spent saving other lives in other ways.

So, instead, organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS basically decided that instead of trying to set up these elaborate networks themselves, they'd just "outsource" terrorism to the "crowd" (sorry for all these 2015 buzzwords), and inspire lone actors throughout the US and Europe to just engage in Jihad by themselves. This latest incident in Tennessee may be an example of that sort of thing.

It really does make sense. Two or three people might be able to organize without being detected, but they cannot accomplish much that a single person could not. Even if you have funding meanwhile a larger cell beings becomes exponentially more detectable because of its communications requirements. And the supply of jihadists actually able to enter and integrate with western society is very finite, to the point of being nearly zero from a place like Yemen, so they cannot simply throw numbers at the problem and hope to come out ahead. Self radicalization/recruitment from within meanwhile is pretty much a recipe for only obtaining single agents.

The closest analogy I can think of was US attempts to penetrate Soviet security. Infiltrating whole groups of spies was such a pointless exercise doomed to failure and I suspect the CIA never even tried it- there simply were not enough Americans or other foreigners capable of integrating with Soviet society even had the Soviets been more trusting of immigrants.

And frankly, I think our internal security today may well be as good as the Soviets' was- if it isn't, then we're certainly spending a lot of money very ineffectively. Either way, that should give us pause.

Given what a jackass Obama was over the Fort Hood attack, in full knowledge that his actions meant wounded US service members were not receiving benefits while the ass who shot them still got full pay before trial, I see zero reason why anyone should cut him slack on this. At least not when you pile all his other stuff on top of it, scaling up drone attacks, mass spying, blatantly ineffective policies for intervening in new wars ect.. its not like he's trying to downplay the entire subject which would at least be consistent.

I think Obama never really had a plan for dealing with the 'terrorism' issue except to assume it has gone out of the minds of the American public. By 2008 this was arguably true for purposes of winning an election, but it keeps popping up.

Meanwhile, he seems unable to give up on the power of Big Data, or on using technological solutions to suppress the terrorist problem. I suspect that that secret committee he claims spends its time signing off on people to be killed by drone strikes is his equivalent of the Vietnam-era habit of high-level senior officials sitting around discussing the targeting of individual air strikes against Vietnamese targets. The illusion that having control over (and micromanagement of) the process means they have a 'plan' for coping with a situation where in fact there is no plan.

Historically, three (four? five? Depends on how you count) successive presidential administrations took exactly whatever minimal steps they thought were needed to avert disaster in Vietnam, exercising often very detailed control over the process of the war, while basically just letting the grand-strategic decisions make themselves, or making new strategic decisions for relatively foolish and trivial tactical or political reasons.

The result is that we lost the war. If there was any way at all to win it I truly don't know, but I'm sure that the type of leadership we had then is unlikely to win ANY messy-and-complicated conflict. And on terrorism Obama provides that kind of leadership. Like Johnson or Nixon he wants to "win the war," but like them it is virtually unthinkable that he will actually succeed.

[Channel72]

The closest analogy I can think of was US attempts to penetrate Soviet security. Infiltrating whole groups of spies was such a pointless exercise doomed to failure and I suspect the CIA never even tried it- there simply were not enough Americans or other foreigners capable of integrating with Soviet society even had the Soviets been more trusting of immigrants.

It's generally very difficult for non-American Muslims to get citizenship, but it's not particularly difficult for them to enter the country on work Visas or whatever. It shouldn't be particularly difficult for a motivated Jihadist whose not (yet) on some CIA watch list to simply take up residence in an ethnically diverse American city. That's more or less what the 9/11 crew did. They lived in San Diego for a while, I think - although that was pre NSA-surveillance state, of course.

And yet, Jihadist attacks on US soil remain so startling rare that, as you say, they are pretty much outnumbered by random psychos. The Columbine shooters probably did more damage than any post 9-11 Jihadist attack on US soil. The reason for this, as controversial as it may be, probably has a lot to do with - yes - the surveillance state that we've set up, as well as the fact that Al Qaeda and other such groups have a lot of difficulty funding anything beyond their local sphere of influence (which basically amounts to North Africa, parts of the Middle East, and Pakistan/Afghanistan), because all the communication/money-transfers/etc. are just too easy for counterintelligence forces to detect.

In the years following 9/11, I used to drive over the 59th street bridge like, almost every day. Every time I drove over that bridge, there was a silly checkpoint where they'd pull over certain cars for inspection. But they never pulled me over, and most cars weren't stopped. I used to think, seriously, what the fuck is preventing someone from just driving over this bridge, or any one of the numerous bridges/tunnels into Manhattan, with a car loaded with explosives in the trunk? It was a really scary thought.

And yet... it just... never... happens.

Apparently, the number of motivated Jihadists who:

• (1) Can get a visa and funding to travel and live in the US
  (2) Can procure funding for a terrorist attack
  (3) Are willing to die
  (4) Can gain access to explosive materials without being caught

...is apparently close to ZERO at this point. And I doubt Al Qaeda is willing to fund a mission to the US that just involves a low-casualty machine gun attack, like what occurred in Chattanooga, because the pay-off isn't worth it.

So instead, all we get are these scattered attacks from self-motivated American Jihadists, which basically don't amount to anything that isn't already going to happen anyway via random psychos, like that idiot in California who went on a rampage because he couldn't get a date or whatever.

The key question then: is the NSA-surveillance state mostly to thank for this? Or do Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist groups just suck really hard, after their one-hit wonder on 9/11? Since groups like ISIS don't seem to have too much trouble attracting recruits and sympathizers within their local sphere of influence, and since Jihadist suicide attacks are rather frequent in Iraq and elsewhere, I can only imagine that the US surveillance and drone programs have so seriously disrupted terror network operations and funding sources (mostly Saudi donators and various forms of organized crime that generate revenue) that they simply can't operate on an organized, global scale anymore, or at least not outside of the MENA region. Or is it simply that groups like Al-Qaeda are stretched too thin involved in local militant activities in Syria and elsewhere?

[Esquire]

It's the second. [Terrorist oganizations being basically incompetent as regards attacks on US soil, that is.] New security procedures are only implemented after the latest terrorist wannabe fails to accomplish his objective - see the shoe-bomber, the underwear bomber, that guy with the liquids, etc. All the competent terrorists have been occupied in the Middle East for quite a while, now; the whole modern security appartus is mostly just chasing its own tail.