I wonder how the right wing is going to blame this on obama and how they are going to spin this so the guy should go free

A few bad apples.

Hopefully this one transcends most politics.

Two comments. First, I do not accept the need for the death penalty. Second, that doesn’t mean Green is anything less than a monster.

Agreed on both points. Sadly it’s one where one wonders what would be appropriate punishment.

I don’t know that any punishment can be appropriate. My concern is only that an individual who has committed crimes this heinous should never, ever be given the opportunity to do so again.

Helmut Newton couldn’t have created a more chilling portrait than that mugshot.

That kid may have been a bomb, but the war lit the fuse. God damn the war. God damn all wars.

Justice…at last.

Amen to that.

Seconded.

It hurts down deep to the soul to look at him.

This is someone’s child that we as a people failed repeatedly, who killed someone else’s child and their family.

This was not his failing alone. Dr. Maryam’s words, still haunting nearly two years later, convict us of our role in this tragedy.

I agree and he has cold, dead eyes. Creepy.

One thing that came out. Was that they stalked her. They visited/raided her home repeatedly. And Green repeatedly stroked her face, there was testimony that she found this terrifying.

We’ve got coverage here: Abeer Hamza al-Janabi but for coverage of the trial I’d wholeheartedly recommend Evan Bright’s work as being way superior to anything anyone else has done.

du

My question is why someone like him with a background of “drugs and alcohol, and his petty criminal record” is allowed into the military. Someone like him has trouble written all over him.

Because from roughly ‘03 into ‘08, the Army relaxed their enlistment standards multiple times in order to get the necessary number of bodies to fill the ranks. And this was after increasing the bonuses as well (for enlistment and re-enlistment.

So they took more and more people who at one time would have been denied.

Because the Army needed to make it’s recruiting “goals” and the upper-middle-class SUV-driving Bush-supporting kids just weren’t signing up in droves. The Greens of America, on the other hand, were.

I heard the “waiver boards” were working overtime to get folks like Green into the service, along with gang-bangers, felons and others who would not have been normally allowed anywhere near Basic Training.

Thanks, Darth Dick and Preznit Incompetent Deserter for all you have done to our military and our country.

mark from ireland :: Sowing The Wind :: July :: 2006

Yesterday a reader kindly sent me a link to a report from The Southern Poverty Law Centre about how members of extremist racist groups are joining the army for the same reason and that as with gang members the US army is winking at the practice. She asked not to be identified but gave me permission to say that she lives close to a large military facility and has close family connections with the US forces. She also sent me this graphic in this and explained that she had received it embedded in an an e-mail urging support for Private Steven Green now awaiting trial for rape and murder in Mahmoudiya as “good men like him” would be needed “when the struggle to preserve the white race comes.”

As I haven’t seen your name here before I’ll tell you that that blog is now defunct as the writer markfromireland (my dad) finds that living and working in Irak as he has done for a long time – long before the invasion – precludes him from doing other things.

No to violence solving violence. No to any death penalty.
Just to think he was raised in Texas when george ruled that state.
Not a great example in Texas excellence.

I knew the standards were relaxed, but surely there is a limit. Surely someone along the way must have picked up on the fact that this guy was absolutely wacko.

What did/does your dad do in Iraq?

People did – they chose to do nothing. I believe the commander’s line was something about “we needed to make our numbers”

Humanitarian work (and no he doesn’t work for the occupation) he’s kind of well known around here :-) some of his writings are here:

gorillasguides.com/author/markfromireland/

After an International War Crimes Tribunal he, along with a multitude of others must be removed from society and placed in prison for life with no outward contact with the outside world. They must just wither and pass but the evil must be quarantined for life. An IWCT take away the presidential pardon powers.

Or Mohammed’s and that was before his younger brother was killed.

he’s kind of well known around here

*G* That’s the understatement of the day. A well-respected member of the Lake community. You might tell him SouthernDragon sends his greetings and respects.

Peace to you, du

I remember showing that post to pro-war co-workers. It opened their eyes and started them thinking about something other than their own desires.

I’ll do that when next he gets in touch. He’s offline at present.

Thank you. Stay safe.

Evan Bright has a new post up here:

GUILTY – ALL 16 COUNTS

Question for Rayne and/or any other lawyer. Erdla is a military lawyer. She’s an investigative lawyer in what in your system would be the JAG.

She says that reading everything that in her opinion his defenders were very far from competent. But that she doesn’t know enough about U.S. criminal appeals caselaw to know whether that might get him off the death penalty on appeal.

Any thoughts?

How do ticking time bombs get into the military- when the military asserts that it doesn’t take them. This kid violated about 5 of the restrictions that were supposed to prohibit enlistment.

Then once in, how does the military take the monster out and put into place a disciplined but law-abiding soldier in their place?

Finally, is the military using battle stress and teaching soldiers to “cut corners” to achieve “objectives”?

It seems that there needs to be substantial reforms in training and evaluation in the near future.

sorry if this was answered already…why a civilian trial v. a military trial?

Civilian trial because Green was discharged – honorably – for anti-social personality disorder before (apparently) the military realized he was involved with the crime. Once discharged, he cannot be taken back to military court.

He was tried in a civilian court under the terms of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act because he had left the army before charges were brought. (And the army refused to let he reenlist to give him the chance to have a court martial rather than a civilian trial)

*poof*

For Du at 32…(I forgot to hit the reply button…)

Oh! Wow.

Obviously, I have not been up to speed on this story, so thanks again for bringing it up here. And I did go over to check out young Evan Bright’s work. It’s very good and I recommend it for the rest of the readers!

I have sympathy for our young men and women serving in the military, but not so much for those individuals like Green, who were already a danger to society, whichever society he found himself in. Sorry that’s harsh…

One man. Responsible for at least 7 deaths. And the killing just doesn’t stop. 8 if he gets the death penalty.

Thanks Siun. I seem to be having some pilot errors with the reply button. :|

There are actually more who were already convicted for this particular crime(s), but I will let those more familiar with the story fill you in.

Who knows, maybe this guy would have raped and killed an American girl if he hadn’t been a soldier. But the war probably did a lot to hone those impulses and release inhibitions.

In “Girls of Tender Age,” Mary-Ann Tirone Smith masterfully tells the story of Robert Nelson Malm, who at age 12 started his long career of molesting little girls. He joined the Navy during World War II and eventually found himself on conquered Okinawa. Tirone Smith writes of him: “He could only have sex successfully with preadolescent girls and only after terrorizing and hurting them, leaving some of them unconscious and, possibly, dead. A man could get away with this in Okinawa.” About 10 years later, he raped and murdered an 11-year-old girl in Hartford, Connecticut. He strangled her with her own scarf, tied in a square knot he had learned in the Navy.

In Malm’s case, his military service seems to have exacerbated a latent pathology. Who knows, maybe that was so in this case, too. The military is going to have to be more careful in its screening.

(P.S. If you can, read “Girls of Tender Age.” It’s a fascinating book: half crime story, half personal memoir.)

And goddamn the evil motherfuckers who started this little clusterfuck to enrich their buddies at Halliburton and the oil cartels. Justice needs to be served, pronto!!

Sorry to come back to this so late. I’m afraid I can’t answer your question, am not a lawyer. I hope that one of the lawyers who frequents FDL will see your comment — perhaps even Christy or looseheadprop with their backgrounds could be of some help.

Helmut newton was a faux S&M fashion photographer