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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 16th, 2006 - Amid War, Some
Violence may be Personal |
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Amid War, Some Violence May
Be Personal From a Squad of Nine, Six Are Charged in Crimes Against Iraqis, and
Three Are Dead By Sonya Geis and John Pomfret Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, July 16, 2006; A03 On March 12, a 15-year-old
Iraqi girl was raped, and she and her father, mother and sister were gunned
down in their home. Three months later, three
U.S. soldiers were slain by insurgents. One was shot and two others were
kidnapped and killed and their bodies mutilated in what a group linked to al-Qaeda
declared was retribution for the attack on the Iraqi family. Four soldiers and one former
soldier have now been charged in connection with the rape and homicides.
Another soldier has been charged with failing to report the incident. One of the questions
surrounding two of the most dreadful incidents of the war is whether they are
connected. Did the alleged rape and murder of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops
beget the torture and slaying of their own comrades? Earlier this month, the
Mujaheddin al-Shura Council posted a gruesome video on the Internet showing
the soldiers' disfigured bodies and said they were executed to
"avenge" the rape and homicides. Army investigators deny the claims
and say there is no connection between the incidents, though military
spokesmen did not respond to questions last week about why they believe that. Whether or not the episodes
are connected, it is clear that the soldiers themselves were connected, bound
by their experiences in combat. Members of the same unit, many of them were
friends with one another. The alleged rape and homicides came to light,
investigators said, only when some of the soldiers underwent a "combat
stress debriefing" prompted by the deaths of the three soldiers. The soldiers were all members
of 1st Platoon, B Company, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, assigned
to the 101st Airborne Division. Some family members said they believe there
must be some connection between the two incidents. "There's nine guys on a
squad," said Nancy Hess, mother of Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, 21, who is
one of the five charged in the crimes. "Three of them were killed. Six
of them are being charged." The three were Spec. David
J. Babineau, shot during an ambush in which Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc.
Thomas L. Tucker were kidnapped. Menchaca was found with his throat slit, and
he was so badly beaten he was unrecognizable. Tucker had been beheaded. In addition to Spielman,
those charged are Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spec. James P. Barker, Pfc. Bryan L.
Howard and a former private, Steven D. Green, who had been discharged from
the military for a personality disorder. Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe has been
charged for failing to report the incident. Spielman was close to
Menchaca, Tucker and Babineau, his mother said. She said her son and other
soldiers discovered Babineau's body at a checkpoint after Menchaca and Tucker
were kidnapped. "His very best friend was laying there," Hess said. Yribe's mother, Roberta
Dachtler, said her son was particularly close to Babineau and eulogized him
in a memorial service at the regiment's base camp south of Baghdad.
"David was one of my son's closer friends," she said. "Tony is devastated as
he knows that you are, and wants you to know that you will never be alone,
and that he cares a great deal about you," Dachtler wrote in a message
posted for Babineau's family on a Web site devoted to U.S. troops killed in
Iraq. Green attended a service for
Babineau at Arlington National Cemetery in June. Barker expressed his
sympathy to Menchaca in his own way. In late June, just before he was charged
in the alleged rape and homicide, Barker placed a note on the slain soldier's
MySpace.com Web page. "R.I.P," it read. "We ran a muk. I will
miss you, sleep well my friend." Menchaca, Tucker and Babineau
were ambushed at a checkpoint on June 16. Three months earlier, on
March 12, soldiers from their platoon were drinking alcohol against orders
and decided to rape the Iraqi girl they had seen pass through their
checkpoint, authorities said. The girl and her family lived nearby, and the
soldiers went into the house, raped the girl, shot the family and set the
house on fire, according to the charges. Initially, they told their superiors
that insurgents had killed the family. Despite the terrible crime with
which they are charged, the soldiers were in many ways typical military
recruits, friends and relatives said. Some had had brushes with
the law. Others had left high school. They went by nicknames such as Vanilla,
Bunky and the No-Town Soldier. They came from little towns and small cities.
On their MySpace pages, they played heavy metal music, appeared brash,
fantasized about one-night stands with movie stars, boasted about their cars
and talked trash about their enemies in Iraq. Spielman's friends in his
home town of Chambersburg, Pa., told the local newspaper he was a fun-loving
young man nicknamed "Vanilla" after, on a dare, he cut his hair to
look like 1990s pop star Vanilla Ice. A 2002 high school graduate, he took
technical courses and made the honor roll his senior year, they said. On Spielman's MySpace page,
he listed his interests as "Shooting stuff, meeting people, My car and
workin on it." His heroes, he wrote, are the "men and women that serve
our country, especilly the Army and Marines, furthermore the grunts." Green's life was apparently
the most troubled of all the indicted. Raised mostly in Midland, Tex., his
parents divorced when he was 4. When he was 15, his mother was jailed for six
months for drunken driving. Two years later, Green dropped out of Coleman
High School, an institution for students who have trouble in regular school.
Days before he joined the Army last year, Green spent three days in custody
after being arrested for underage possession of alcohol. Previously, he had
been arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia. Relatives said they believed
the Army would help straighten him out. By December of last year, a picture
of Green about to shoot a lock off the door of an abandoned Iraqi house was
featured beside an Army public relations article. Green received an honorable
discharge and left the army in mid-May after 11 months. He was discharged
because of an "anti-social personality disorder," according to
military officials and court documents, although officials said his discharge
was not related to the alleged crime. Barker, 23, was raised a
Jehovah's Witness in Fresno, Calif. He worked as a go-cart attendant before
joining the Army, his friends said. He has two children with a wife he is
divorcing, and a newborn at home with a girlfriend. The friends, who call him
"Bunky," were staggered by his arrest. "We never thought of
him doing something like that. He was a pretty swell guy," Jesus Caranza
told the Fresno Bee. "When he left for the Army, he didn't really want
to go, but he went out of obligation because he had nothing else going for
him. No job." Barker posted a note on a
friend's MySpace page on May 29: "I miss you so much, all the fun times,
i wish it could still be that easy, but hay now i get to shoot at people all
day, lol." Friends described Cortez as
a quiet man of deeply religious beliefs who favored skateboarding and track
in the Southern California town of Barstow, where he was raised. Cortez's
mother, Pat Adams, raised her son in motels in the area and lives in one now.
She declined to speak with reporters. Cortez was stationed for a
while at Fort Carson, Colo., but was reassigned to the 101st Airborne
Division in January 2005 and deployed to Iraq. "He would never do
something like that," former girlfriend and Central High School
classmate Alicia Fox told the Desert Dispatch. "He would never hurt a
female. He would never hit one or even raise his hand to one. Fighting for
his country is one thing, but not when it comes to raping and murdering.
That's not him." Howard always wanted to be a
soldier, his father said. "He just was fascinated by it; he talked about
it even at a younger age, and he just loved it," Lynn Howard said.
"His goal was to get in the Army and get in the Rangers and do what he
could for his country." Lynn Howard said his son
"never gave me any trouble, not once. That's why I don't
understand." Bryan Howard spent his high
school years in Huffman, Tex., in JROTC, where he excelled, his father said.
His teacher in the program, 1st Sgt. Terry Vaughn, told the Houston Chronicle
that Howard "was an awesome kid in high school. No discipline problem
and a pleasure to teach." Howard's friend, Michael
Doke, said Howard "showed up early every day and reported in after
school. We also did color guard together and went to basketball games and
football games to do the flag." His friend earned good grades and is a
fun-loving person, Doke said. When he heard the news of
Howard's arrest, "The first thing I thought is, I figured it was someone
from his unit or squad and they're lumping everyone together, because that's
what they do," Doke said. "A couple people from the squad do
something, and the whole squad gets into trouble." Researcher Julie Tate
contributed to this report. © 2006 The Washington Post
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