Not a veteran. NOT a veteran. *NOT* a veteran. How many times must we go through this?

I was contentedly playing World of Warcraft when I got an in-game message from Demophilius:

“How much are you hoping the shooter isn’t a veteran?”

I had no clue what he was talking about since, like the rest of male Americana save Demophilius, I was watching football. So, I went to my designated homepage, Drudgereport, to see what was up. Sure enough, right there in one of the links at top was the words I feared: “Military Veteran.” Ah $#!^, I thought.

The link took me to a Washington Post article that indeed stated that law enforcement officials stated (anonymously) that they believed the guy was a veteran. Based on past experience, this made me suspect that he wasn’t.

Not to be outdone, the LA Times jumped in with similiar reporting which has now been scrubbed from their article:

Meanwhile, a federal source said a suspect was in custody and identified him as Jared L. Loughner, 22, a U.S. military veteran who served in Afghanistan. The gunman reportedly fired a pistol with an “extended magazine,” the source said.

So, just who the hell is this “federal source” and where exactly did he get this Afghanistan nonsense? I would REALLY like to know.

I specifically remember in the wake of the Hasan shootings how many rushed to speculate that he was a veteran who had been repeatedly deployed. Dr. Phil immediately took to the airwaves to discuss his knowledge of how PTS drove this man to do it, thereby prejudicing all of my brothers and sisters in arms who might have PTS, but never once thought of perpetrating such horrific attacks. Not to be outdone, Veterans for Common Sense blasted out this little nugget:

“We warned the military about this. We warned the military about the need to increase the number of mental health care providers. We warned the military about lowering recruiting standards, about the medical exams for soldiers coming back from the war and needing mental health care and brain injury exams.”

Of course we know now that the Mental Health Professionals that VCS were calling for where in fact represented by the shooter, not some nascent panacea.

Looking back now, I have to wonder: what is it about this lunatic that made them think he was a veteran? A State Rep from Arizona upped the ante, suggesting that he was not only a vet, but an Afghanistan veteran.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

I was lucky enough not to see this, since I never watch Fox News, but Mr Wolf at Big Peace has called for her to apologize, but I won’t hold my breath.

Most of the discussion of this has been on a partisan level I don’t really want to discuss. Kos, Olbermann and the sheriff are all blaming “conservative commenters” like Limbaugh, Palin and Glenn Beck. I’ve known a few tea partiers, and have them on my facebook page, not a one of them lists “Mein Kampf” and/or the “Communist Manifesto” as their favorite books, so not sure where that comes in. The Conservatives meanwhile are noting that the DCCC and Kos himself used the same targeting map, and military language with regards to the campaign that is currently the alleged culprit in this attack.

Again, while I find the discussion interesting, it has no basis in discussion here. But what does I think is the veteran angle. I would really like someone to get to the bottom of where the instant meme that he was a veteran started. Specifically, why was it so inappropriate to speculate that the Ft. Hood shootings were not a case of Islamic terrorism, while speculation was given voice without any information that this shooting validated the DHS report about lone-wolf veterans cum terrorists? I’m sure that the Southern Poverty Legal Center (that helped draft that disgraceful report) was overjoyed, just as it angers me beyond all conceivable bounds. (Byron York of the Examiner has a note-worthy piece on that very subject.)

Nonetheless, you know what role veterans *actually* played in the shooting?

As my friend Jonn Lilyea noted:

74-year-old Colonel Bill Badger tackled Jared Loughner while he was reloading his Glock according to telephone interviews with Fox News. Yeah, you go and try to find the story somewhere.

Col. Badger was also shot in the back of his head before he tackled Loughner. According to Col. Badger, someone whacked Louchner with a folding chair while he was reloading. That gave Badger an opportunity to grab his left arm while someone else grabbed Loughner’s right arm and they forced him to the ground.

I guess it’s more newsworthy when the shooter is thought to be a veteran than one of the guys who ended the shooting is a veteran.

Jonn noted another veteran who is playing a part:

On top of several attendees at the Congresswoman Gifford rally in Tuscon probably being saved by a veteran, Col. Bill Badger, the LA Times says her surgeon is a 24-year veteran who honed his skills near the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan;

Rhee, 49, chief of trauma at University Medical Center in Tucson, said his work in the Navy tending to injured soldiers and Marines and teaching the next generation of battlefield medical personnel unquestionably played a role in his ability to treat Giffords and direct care for the 10 other victims who began arriving in his unit Saturday morning.

“There’s no doubt,” he said. “I was in the Navy 24 years, and I trained to do nothing but battlefield casualty care. When I did go to Afghanistan and Iraq, I wasn’t in a hospital. I was in very forward surgical units, so I was very accustomed to working with very little gear and people and personnel, very little resources, with wounds that are very different than civilian injuries,” Rhee said Sunday. “Did it prepare me? I would say of course it did. And that makes it so that when we have a mass casualty of 11 people here, it’s really not as bad as it can get.”

Hmmm, it seems that vets have done a good portion of the heavy-lifting in this case, yet the only time anyone seems interested in veterans is when a gunman makes a one-day visit to a MEPS station almost two years ago. Still waiting for Mark Potok and his protege Janet Napolitano to announce that community college students are the new threat.

So, serious question here, why is it okay to speculate that the shooter was a veteran when it is unacceptable to ever speculate that he might belong to some other class of persons? Why is it notable (erroneously) that the shooter is a veteran, but not that the guy who tackled him or the surgeon?

I’m wondering in essence what we need to do to get back our name as the protectors of society, and not the violators.