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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 14th,
2006 - Accused G.I. was troubled long before Iraq |
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Accused
G.I. Was Troubled Long Before Iraq New York Times By Jim Dwyer and Robert F. Worth July 14, 2006 On
the last day of January 2005, Steven D. Green, the former Army private
accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her family, sat in a
Texas jail on alcohol-possession charges, an unemployed 19-year-old high
school dropout who had just racked up his third misdemeanor conviction. Days
later, Mr. Green enlisted in a soldier-strapped Army, and was later assigned
to a star-crossed unit to serve on an especially murderous patch of earth. He
arrived at the very moment that the Army was increasing by nearly half the
rate at which it granted what it calls “moral waivers” to potential recruits.
The change opened the ranks to more people like Mr. Green, those with minor
criminal records and weak educational backgrounds. In Mr. Green’s case, his
problems were emerging by junior high school, say people who knew him then. Mr.
Green’s Army waiver allowed a troubled young man into the heart of a war that
bore little resemblance to its original declared purposes, but which
continued to need thousands of fresh recruits. Now,
there is shame and rage in the Army — from the ranks of the enlisted to the
officer corps — over the crimes attributed to Mr. Green, who was discharged
in April on psychiatric grounds, and four other soldiers charged with a rape
and four killings in March in Mahmudiya, a town about 20 miles south of
Baghdad. A sixth soldier was charged with failing to report the matter after
learning about it. Mr.
Green’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk, told his brother in a recent
letter that “his worst fears, the nightmare every commander dreams of, has
basically come true,’’ the brother, Peter Kunk, said in an interview
describing the letter. “The
three or four people have apparently been involved in a situation that
reflects so badly on the Army and all the people in these brigades and
companies,” Mr. Kunk said. In
early 2005, a few weeks after enlisting, Private Green immersed himself in a
baptismal pool in the back of an Army chapel in Fort Benning, Ga., one of
hundreds of young recruits who embraced religion as they faced certain
violence. By
year’s end, Private Green, then 20, was patrolling streets in one of the most
bloodily contested corridors of Iraq, the so-called “triangle of death” south
of Baghdad where thousands had died in sectarian violence since 2003. He
served with Bravo Company, First Battalion, 502nd Infantry, part of the
Army’s 101st Division. In
a photograph released by the Army on Dec. 9, Private Green can be seen laden
with gear and aiming a weapon at a lock at an abandoned house. One of his
sergeants, Ken Casica, was quoted on the subject of house searches in a news
release that accompanied the picture. The
next day, Sergeant Casica and Sgt. Travis Nelson, also of Bravo Company, were
shot dead at a checkpoint. Less than two weeks later, two more members of the
company were killed by a roadside bomb. Steven
Green lasted only another four months in the Army, but it was a grim, violent
and chaotic stretch. Seventeen battalion members were killed, two of them
mutilated after being kidnapped; of those killed, eight belonged to Mr.
Green’s Bravo Company of about 110 soldiers. Even
the modest quarters taken over the Bravo Company, an abandoned potato warehouse,
burned to the ground in an accidental fire, destroying letters, video
players, and the small personal tokens the soldiers had slipped into their
war gear. Mr.
Kunk, the brother of the commanding officer of the battalion, said that
Colonel Kunk had regarded this deployment as the most brutal stretch of his
22 years in the service. “This
is the toughest tour of duty he has ever had,” Mr. Kunk said. “You can tell
by his letters. It has taken a terrible toll on him and his men. We’re
heartsick about it. There’s been so many deaths, loss of limbs, injuries.” Born
May 2, 1985, Steven Dale Green spent some of his earliest years in Midland,
Tex., in the western part of the state. His parents, John Green and Roxanne
Simolke, divorced while he was a child, and Mr. Green moved with his mother
to Seabrook, southeast of Houston on the Gulf Coast. She married Daniel Carr
when Steven was around 8. Willy
Godfrey, a classmate of Mr. Green at Seabrook Intermediate School, remembered
when Mr. Green moved into the area for sixth grade in 1997. “He
was always, like, in trouble, doing something in school,” said Mr. Godfrey,
21, an emergency medical technician. “He was always getting into a fight or
saying something mean to a teacher. Something weird. It was just out of
place. Gradewise and stuff, I don’t know if he did good or bad. But he did
not mix well with other people. He was basically mad, or something like
that.” Lisa
Godfrey, Mr. Godfrey’s mother, said she had worked with Mr. Green’s mother at
Seabrook Classic Cafe and they had spoken often about their boys. His mother
had trouble with Steven, Ms. Godfrey, 46, said. “He
was disruptive in his house,” she said. “I don’t know if he killed small cats
or anything, but that’s the kind of kid he was. His mom had a lot of issues.” Another
schoolmate, Danielle Mundine, said Mr. Green used drugs at an unusually young
age for Seabrook. “I think he did drugs and drink in junior high school,” Ms.
Mundine, 19, said. “He did have some friends.” In
2000, Mr. Green’s mother spent six months in jail on a drunken-driving
conviction, records show. Around that time, Mr. Green returned to Midland,
where his father still lived. There, he attended Viola M. Coleman High
School, which offers courses for students who have difficulty with regular
academic programs. He dropped out by 2002, around the 10th grade, but
received a graduate equivalency diploma in 2003 from Midland Community
College. Mr.
Green was convicted in October 2001 of possession of drug paraphernalia and
fined $350. Five months later, he was charged as a minor in possession of
tobacco, and was fined $300, according to records in Midland Municipal Court.
On Jan. 31, 2005, he was arrested and charged as a minor in possession of
alcohol, and again was fined $350. This time, he did not pay the fine, but
served jail time. “He
laid off the fine in jail,” Sheriff Gary Painter of Midland County said. Mr.
Green did not volunteer to work in the kitchen or at other jobs, which would
have shortened his stay, Sheriff Painter said. He served four days. The
jail records hint at some complications in his family life. Mr. Green did not
list either parent as a contact, but listed a man in Denver City, Tex., about
80 miles away. Sheriff Painter said he was not permitted to release the name
of the contact. But Mr. Green had lived in Denver City with Daniel Carr, his
former stepfather, who was estranged from Mr. Green’s mother. In
Denver City, B. J. Carr, the father of Daniel Carr, said Mr. Green had lived there
with his son, who works in oil fields in Oklahoma. The
Army has released little information about its review of Mr. Green’s
background before he joined the service. The
share of Army recruits who received “moral waivers” for criminal records
increased last year and through the first half of 2006 by 15 percent from 10
percent or 11 percent before the war, according to statistics released this
week. (According to the Pentagon, the number of waivers in 2001 totaled
7,640. The figure increased to 11,018 in 2005, and for the first six months
of this fiscal year totaled 5,636.) Asked
how the Green situation might apply to someone who tried to enlist today,
Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.,
said it was not possible to apply the Army’s standards to a hypothetical
case. “A
waiver is based on the actuality of the person, the totality of their life,
the information we have on them — what have been their shortcomings, what
have they done in their life to overcome a previous minor mistake,” Mr. Smith
said. On
March 13, two months afte he was released from the Midland jail, Mr. Green
was one of eight soldiers baptized during a Church of Christ service at Fort
Benning. “You
hold that weapon for the first time, a lot of guys are holding weapons for
the first time in their lives, and you know this M-16 is meant for engaging
the enemy,” said Jason Garber, 19, who was baptized that day but did not
complete training. “You wonder, if I do die, where am I going to go?” A
year later almost to the day, a federal criminal complaint says, Mr. Green
and the four other soldiers charged in the case drank alcohol, changed into
black clothes and then raided the home of a husband and wife and their two
daughters. Mr.
Green, the complaint charges, went into a room and killed the parents and the
younger daughter. Then, it says, he and a second soldier sexually assaulted
the 14-year-old, shot her and tried to burn her body. Reporting
for this article was contributed by Thayer Evans in Seabrook, Tex.; Carolyn
Marshall in Fort Campbell, Ky.; and Barbara Novovitch in Denver City, Tex.
Alain Delaqueriere contributed research. Copyright
2006 The New York Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/us/14private.html |