Iraq I: Abeer Qassim Hamza Is Still Dead
March 26th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
Steven Green is the poster boy-man for much of what is wrong about the Iraq war.
This petulant loner was allowed to enlist in the Army and was fast-tracked to the war zone despite a history of drug, alcohol and emotional problems and a petty criminal record back in Midland, the titular home of the Bush family in Texas oil patch country.
Green had been in Iraq for only a few weeks when he was found to have “homicidal ideations” by Army psychiatrists. Nevertheless, he was sent back into combat before finally snapping on March 12, 2006, when he corralled some buddies and talked up the idea of raping Abeer Qassim Hamza, a pretty 15-year-old who lived with her family near the checkpoint in the so-called Triangle of Death south of Baghdad that Green’s unit had been manning without relief for days.
In fact, shadowy Sunni insurgents had driven the men of Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, to near the breaking point. They seldom engaged in face-to-face combat, but there was gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks almost daily and Green’s comrades were dying at the rate of at least one a week during this pre-Surge strategy period.
Bravo Company had lost eight men alone and would lose several more in the coming months as a direct result of Green’s heinous actions.
After getting liquored up on black market Iraqi whiskey, a violation of war-zone policy, Green and one of his three confederates changed into into Iraqi civilian clothing and made arrangements for a buddy to monitor the radio at the checkpoint so they could go “kill and hurt a lot of Iraqis,” as one confederate later told an investigator.
Once at Abeer’s house, Green herded her father, mother and Hadil, her 7-year-old sister, into a bedroom. Abeer’s brothers, Ahmad and Muhammad, were at school.
Green shot the father several times in the head, the mother several times in the abdomen and the sister several times in the head and shoulder with an AK-47 that the family was legally allowed to keep in the house, proudly announcing to his buddies, “I just killed them, all are dead.”
Green then turned on Abeer, whom U.S. officials initially claimed was 20 or 25. As if that justified what happened next.
Abeer’s dressing gown and bra were torn from her body and her legs tied. Green and two other soldiers then took turns raping her. By the time they had finished, blood was flowing from her vagina. Green then shot Abeer in the head two or three times, threw a blanket over her torso and set the family’s bodies afire in a crude effort to cover up the atrocity.
Back at the checkpoint, Green burned his blood-drenched clothing and swore everyone to secrecy.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 5:07 am and is filed under Military Affairs, Sunnis, Iraq, Law & Legal Matters. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
