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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 6th, 2006 - Ex-GI Accused in
Iraq Rape Had Rocky Past News article
by the Associated Press |
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Ex-GI Accused in Iraq Rape
Had Rocky Past By Allen G. Breed The Associated Press Thursday, July 6, 2006; 8:52 AM Until Steven D. Green was
charged with raping an Iraqi woman and killing her family, his life seemed as
unremarkable as the flip-flops and Johnny Cash shirt he wore to court. He was
a high-school dropout from a broken home who joined the Army to get some
direction, yet was sent home due to an "anti-social personality
disorder." Now, the 21-year-old could
get the death penalty if convicted in the horrific crime that has strained
the U.S. military's already troubled relations with the Iraqi people and sent
shock waves around the world. Steven Dale Green grew up in
the west Texas oil town of Midland, which claims President Bush as a native
son. Green's parents divorced when he was 4, and his mother remarried four
years later. His upbringing was not
without complications. His mother pleaded no contest in 2000 to a drunken
driving charge and was jailed for six months. Midland school officials
said Green attended classes from 1990 to 2002 but only made it through 10th
grade, suggesting he might have been held back at least once. After dropping out, Green
moved about 80 miles north to Denver City, the former oil town along the New
Mexico state line that is listed as his official hometown. He got his high
school equivalency degree in 2003. According to a report in the
Midland Reporter-Telegram, Green was arrested for misdemeanor possession of
alcohol on Jan. 31, 2005. Days later, just a few months shy of his 20th
birthday, he enlisted in the Army. He was deployed to Iraq from
September 2005 to April 2006 as an infantry soldier in B Company, 1st
Battalion of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 101st Airborne
Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky. It was there that he was
sent to patrol the so-called "Triangle of Death," an area southwest
of Baghdad known for its frequent roadside bombings. Military officials say
more than 40 percent of the nearly 1,000 soldiers in the region have been
treated for mental or emotional anxiety. Green was apparently one of them. He was given a discharge May
16 for what military officials in Iraq told The Associated Press was an
"anti-social personality disorder." The officials spoke on
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. A psychiatric condition,
anti-social personality disorder is defined as chronic behavior that
manipulates, exploits, or violates the rights of others. Someone with the
disorder may break the law repeatedly, lie, get in fights and show a lack of
remorse. Military officials said the
accusations of Green's involvement in the rape and killings, on or about
March 12, came to light during a counseling session for soldiers following
the June 16 abductions of two fellow soldiers who were killed and reportedly
mutilated by insurgents. According to a federal
affidavit, Green and other soldiers targeted the young woman after spotting
her at a traffic checkpoint near Mahmoudiya. On the day of the March attack,
the document said, Green took three members of the family - an adult male and
female, and a girl estimated to be 5 years old - into a bedroom, after which
shots were heard from inside. The young woman's body was found burned; the
other bodies were found in a house that had been burned, the document said. Under Army regulations, a
soldier can be discharged only if a personality disorder "is so severe
that the soldier's ability to function effectively in the military
environment is significantly impaired." The diagnosis must be made by a
psychiatrist or doctoral-level clinical psychologist who is authorized to
conduct mental health evaluations for the military. Loren Thompson, a military
analyst at the Washington-based Lexington Institute, said it is standard
practice to discharge soldiers whose profiles suggest they are incapable of
maintaining military discipline. "Despite all the
stories about the military having trouble recruiting, it is considered
anathema to retain somebody like that," said Thompson. "It isn't
Army policy to retain somebody who isn't dependable. I'm certain this person
slipped through the cracks. ... The whole point of boot camp is to find
people who can't hold up under stress and get them out before they get in the
field." Scott L. Silliman, a
military law expert at Duke University and retired Air Force colonel, said
Green's diagnosis does not make it easier for his attorneys to plead
insanity. "That may be something
that a federal court, in punishing upon conviction, might consider
extenuating," Silliman said. "But is it in any way a legal excuse
for what he's been charged with? No." Green had a tired expression
this week as he was led into a court wearing his baggy shorts, flip-flops and
T-shirt. Greg Simolke, Green's uncle,
told The Washington Post that his nephew had visited relatives in North
Carolina last week on his way from a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery
for a member of his platoon who was killed in Iraq. He said Green seemed to
have found "direction in his life." Green was charged Monday. "He thought it was a
good thing to be serving his country," Simolke said. "When he was
here for this visit, he seemed like the same old Steve. I don't understand
what happens in a war, so I don't know how these things happen." Associated Press Writers
Ryan Lenz in Iraq, Estes Thompson in Raleigh, N.C., Lita Baldor in Washington,
D.C., Steve Quinn in Dallas and Elizabeth Dunbar in Louisville, Ky.,
contributed to this report. © 2006 The Associated Press External link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070600150.html In
Cold Blood: Iraqi Tells of Massacre at Farmhouse A cousin describes finding the shot and
shattered bodies. A U.S. soldier is in custody. By Raheem Salman and J. Michael Kennedy Los Angeles Times July 6, 2006 8:14 am Baghdad
- He was the first to enter the charred farmhouse where the bodies of his
relatives lay strewn about the floor, shot and bludgeoned to death. And
he watched more than three months later as a U.S. Army officer took the two
surviving children in his arms, barely able to hold back tears as he told
them that the people who had killed their family would be punished. "Never
in my mind could I have imagined such a gruesome sight," Abu Firas
Janabi said of the day in March when his cousin, Fakhriya Taha Muhsen; her
husband, Kasim Hamza Rasheed; and their two daughters were slain and their
farmhouse set ablaze. "Kasim's
corpse was in the corner of the room, and his head was smashed into
pieces," he said. The 5-year-old daughter, Hadel, was beside her father,
and Janabi said he could see that Fakhriya's arms had been broken. In
another room, he found 15-year-old Abeer, naked and burned, with her head smashed
in "by a concrete block or a piece of iron." "There
were burns from the bottom of her stomach to the end of her body, except for
her feet," he said. "I
did not believe what I was seeing. I tried to fool myself into believing I
was in a dream. But the problem was that we were not dreaming. We put a piece
of cloth over her body. Then I left the house together with my wife." At
least four American soldiers from a nearby checkpoint are the prime suspects.
The case, which includes the alleged rape of the older daughter, has caused a
firestorm in the United States and Iraq. And the soldiers, including one
charged Monday with rape and murder, have become lurid symbols of the
American military at its worst. The
image has not been helped in recent weeks by the emergence of other
accusations that U.S. soldiers had killed Iraqi civilians. Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki complained Wednesday that immunity from Iraqi
prosecution had encouraged atrocities by American troops. And the U.S.
military is clearly on the defensive. On Wednesday, Army Maj. Gen. William B.
Caldwell IV, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, defended the troops here,
complaining that the "acts of a few outweigh the deeds of many." Janabi,
who has emerged as a potential witness, has been interviewed by a U.S.
investigator. He
lives about half a mile from the scene of the killings, just outside the town
of Mahmoudiya. It's agricultural country, where the small farms are divided
by mesh wire fences and the people who toil on them make a subsistence
living. Janabi
and his wife were home March 12 when a neighbor ran to tell him that the
farmhouse of his cousin and her husband was on fire and that he could see
slain family members inside the burning building. Janabi
said that when he arrived at the house, he began to call for others to help
him. "But
nobody came," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Mahmoudiya,
describing the eeriness he felt as he and his wife stood there. "I felt
that I had made a disastrous decision. I felt I had made a mistake to rush so
quickly to the house, because if the murderers were still there, they would
kill me as well." He
and his wife had to douse some of the flames before they could enter the
home. The
couple had found the two young boys in the family crying as they stood
outside the farmhouse, where they could see the bodies inside. The boys had
been at school when the killings occurred but were home by the time Janabi
and his wife arrived. Together,
they went to a checkpoint guarded by Iraqi soldiers to tell them what had
happened. Then they went back to the house and watched as the bodies were
placed in nylon bags and taken to a nearby Iraqi base. Janabi
said Abeer was not in school and, like other peasant girls, seldom left the
house. But he said that three days before the killings, the Rasheed family
was at his house and his cousin was complaining that the American soldiers at
the nearby guard post were constantly searching her house. Janabi said the
parents believed that the "girl was the target." "I
suggested they come and live in the house beside mine that was empty,"
Janabi said. "But they said, 'There are a lot of families close to us,
and nothing bad will happen.' " Janabi
said he returned to the burned-out house the day after the attack as
villagers gathered to scavenge for furniture. He asked the villagers whether
they knew of any enemies that Kasim had made. They answered no, saying he was
just a poor farmer like them who barely made ends meet, working in a Baghdad
factory to earn an extra $3 a day. But the villagers had heard stories about the
slayings. In
one story, the killers wore black shirts and military pants. In another, they
were wearing track suits, and in a third, there was a dog with them. Janabi
said he suspected the Americans because the dozens of shots fired would have
been heard by U.S. troops at the nearby checkpoint. And from what he could
gather, the killers were at the house for more than two hours, too long for
them to have gone unnoticed by the Americans. He also said he suspected that
whoever carried out the killings had used Kasim's AK-47 assault rifle, the
only item that Janabi said was missing from the house. Initially,
U.S. military officials said the killings were the result of intra-Iraqi
feuding, a plausible conclusion given the dozens of revenge killings that happen
each day in the country. But a U.S. soldier came forward recently with rumors
of American involvement in the alleged rape and killings. On
Monday, Steven D. Green, 21, a former private with the 502nd Infantry
Regiment, was charged in Charlotte, N.C., in the case. The Army has said that
no other soldiers have been charged or detained, but that several were under
close supervision in Iraq. Janabi
said he learned of the inquiry involving the soldiers last week, and an
American investigator asked him to tell his side of the story. "He
was saying that he wants to find out the truth," Janabi said. "I
told him I didn't want any money or compensation. The most important thing is
that the criminal must be punished in a punishment in the same level of the
crime he committed. He must not be imprisoned for four to six months and that
is all." Janabi
said he asked the investigator why all this was happening now, when the
killings took place three months earlier. "He
told me that a soldier confessed and we want to know the truth," he
said. Then,
Janabi said, the investigator told him that a high-ranking U.S. officer
wished to pay his condolences to the family. The next day, he brought
Fakhriya's cousin, Mohammed, to the base along with the two boys to meet the
commander. "He
hugged the children and kissed them several times," Janabi said.
"It was hard for him to control his tears." The
discussions, Janabi said, now center on whether the bodies can be exhumed for
autopsies. He said they received only a cursory examination when they were
taken to the Mahmoudiya hospital in March. Janabi
said that the two boys were with their uncle in the village of Iskandariya,
but that their faces told the effects of their misery. "They
lost their father and mother," Janabi said. "They lost their house
and sisters. Basically their family was too poor and they have not inherited
anything. Their life is deplorable." External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rape6jul06,1,2904626.story |