Washington Post says 'Pentagon Guards Trained For Attack'

A Washington Post article describes two ex-military Pentagon guards who "did exactly what they were trained to do," when John Patrick Bedell opened fire. Interestingly, the article describes the two guards as "grazed by bullets, treated for minor injuries and released Thursday night." This is surprising given what one would assume was the point blank nature of the attack.

A press release on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority website also describes a drill taking place a little more then a week ago which simulated "gunfire between two shooters in the station. "

A previous Of Goats And Men post outlines how often drills have been known to strangely coincide with terror events.

Again, as in the Stack case, besides the similarity that both California software engineer perpetrators were working on defense related projects, also many of the participants of both events were ex-military. In the Stack case, both the victim Vernon Hunter as well as the 'hero' Robin De Haven were both ex-military. So when one reads in the Washington Post article how for one of the Pentagon guards who was an ex-Marine "the training just snapped in and [he] just reacted," this can't help but remind us of Robin De Haven who mentioned in an interview with Wolf Blitzer that his army training also snapped in to gear.

BLITZER: What was going through your mind?

DEHAVEN: My -- my Army training. I spent six-and-a-half years in the Army and two -- two tours in Iraq -- was -- was going through my head. And I figured I -- I could do something.

I'd -- I've had some -- some experience in triage and -- and battlefield with IEDs and RPGs and gunfire. And -- and that's the first thought was maybe I could help, because I'm more used to dealing with traumatic situations like that. I have a clear head and a calm head -- to try to help those people. And luckily I did.