Over the last few years, however, the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase. As we’ve become better at preventing complex, multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turned to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society. It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009; in Chattanooga earlier this year; and now in San Bernardino. And as groups like ISIL grew stronger amidst the chaos of war in Iraq and then Syria, and as the Internet erases the distance between countries, we see growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino killers.
For six years, the official word was the shooting at Ft. Hood was "workplace violence." As this headline notes, it was six long years later for Obama finally acknowledge it as an act of terror. So there it is. The other official wording that continues to rankle me is saying that 13 were killed in that shooting with an occasional brief reference to one of the victims being pregnant. Pro lifers know better. There were 14 victims killed that day....not 13. Let us acknowledge all the victims.
So when news commentators and print articles continue to label the terror attack at San Bernadino as the deadliest terror attack on US soil since 911 killing 14; I want to remind them that it ties with the one in 2009 at Ft. Hood where 14 were also killed.
As Michelle Malkin writes...
—Fourteen victims fell on Nov. 5, 2009, not 13. Thirteen of our U.S. military personnel died in cold blood at the deployment center. But the death toll was actually 14. Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, was pregnant when Hasan shot her during the first round of gunfire. At a military Article 32 hearing in 2010 (analogous to a civilian grand jury hearing), a survivor of the Fort Hood shootings testified that Velez cried out, “My baby! My baby!”
So for the record, the Ft. Hood shooting was the deadliest terror attack on US soil since 911 with 14 killed and the attack at San Bernadino ties with it.