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Obama decries 'crime against our nation'

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama Saturday called the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, a "crime against our nation" and those who defend it.

"It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "But it's all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims."

The president praised heroics amid the chaos and terror.

"Even as we saw the worst of human nature on full display, we also saw the best of America," he said. "We saw soldiers and civilians alike rushing to aid fallen comrades, tearing off bullet-riddled clothes to treat the injured, using blouses as tourniquets, taking down the shooter even as they bore wounds themselves."

Obama said he had met Friday with FBI Director Robert Mueller, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other federal officials about the attack and would continue to closely monitor the investigation.

Fort Hood officials said a U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nadil Malik Hasan, pulled out two handguns, one a semi-automatic, and fired more than 100 shots Thursday in a processing center where soldiers go to get physical and dental checkups and take care of paperwork before being deployed. The attack killed 13 people and wounded at least 30.

"It was in this place, on a base where our soldiers ought to feel most safe, where those brave Americans who are preparing to risk their lives in defense of our nation lost their lives in a crime against our nation," Obama said.

"Soldiers stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world called and e-mailed loved ones at Fort Hood, all expressing the same stunned reaction: 'I'm supposed to be the one in harm's way, not you.'"

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 11/07/2009

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