Another victory in winning hearts and minds: 5 GI's accused of rape and murder

[RTFirefly]

@kaylasdad99

Why, you do a search on the term “moving to Great Debates”, select for “display results by post”, and see what comes up.

It happened in the second post, before any cussin’ had started, though, so I don’t know if this is the one you recall seeing.

Nah, the one I was in had been going for, I’d guess, a couple dozen posts before it was moved.

[RTFirefly]

Just to get back on topic, the AP is reporting that the soldiers apparently planned the attack for about a week in advance.

[mhendo]

@RTFirefly

Just to get back on topic, the AP is reporting that the soldiers apparently planned the attack for about a week in advance.

I’m not sure if they’ve changed or updated the story since you posted, but i see no mention of such planning in that article.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Some more details

Investigators believe American soldiers spent nearly a week plotting an attack in which they raped an Iraqi woman, then killed her and her family in an insurgent-ridden area south of Baghdad, a U.S. military official said Saturday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the attack appeared “totally premeditated” and that the soldiers apparently “studied” the family for about a week before carrying out the attack.

According to the official, the Sunni Arab family had just moved into a new home in the religiously mixed area about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The Americans entered the home, separated three family members from the woman, then raped her and set fire to her body, the official said. The three others were also slain. A senior Army official who also requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing said one of the victims was a child.

:mad:

According to one of the other stories I read, the victims were the woman who was raped, her child, her husband and her husband’s brother.

More:

The senior Army official said the alleged incident was first revealed by a soldier during a routine counseling-type session. The Army official said that soldier did not witness the incident but heard about it.

A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the Army official said.

Did the whole platoon know about this and keep quiet about it for awhile? WTF?

[OttoDaFe]

Of course, it’s now all perfectly clear![ul]
[li]The first soldier who spilled the beans was in a “routine counseling-type session.”[]Why was the session being held? In response to the capture/torture/murder of two members of his unit.[]And who was responsible for the above act? The insurgents![/li][/ul]So if it weren’t for the insurgents, we’d never have known about the rape and murder “incident,” which is almost as good as if it had never happened! So it’s the insurgent’s fault!

(Note for the sarcasm-impaired: the above is indeed sarcasm. Although I wouldn’t be thunderstruck if some version didn’t show up on a blog somewhere.)

I don’t know whom/what I grieve more for: my country, the woman and her family, the two dead soldiers,* the list goes on. But it’s a lot easier to identify whom I despise (aside from the perpetrators, of course): the sanctimonious cocksuckers who started this debacle, and put them in a position where the atrocity could happen. I’d wish them in Hell (at the proper time, of course—no death wishes to see here, move along), but I doubt if Satan would want the competition.

*While it’s not certain they were targeted because they were from the same unit as the pond scum (apologies to pond scum) who committed this outrage, it seems likely.

[RTFirefly]

@mhendo

I’m not sure if they’ve changed or updated the story since you posted, but i see no mention of such planning in that article.

Holy crap, that’s almost an entirely different story now. I won’t be relying on them for a permanent link anytime soon.

DtC’s link seems to cover the same ground, though.

[ParentalAdvisory]

@Excalibre

I guess I don’t agree. I think some people do things that are so bad that they indeed deserve death. But I don’t think that the State has the authority to sentence them to death. When I say that someone deserves death, I can do so with the confidence that I don’t have the power to give it to them - thus I don’t have to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are guilty. I don’t believe the State should have that power either, and I think the problems with death penalty trials being performed incompetently are the major logistical problem with it. Further, though, I don’t think it’s right for a society to hold the power of life and death over its inhabitants; I think the death penalty is barbaric and that it has no place in civil society.

Are you saying that deserving death, and the death penalty, are two different things? Because I don’t see how a factually poven rapist getting killed in wartime as revenge, is any different then a factually poven rapist getting the needle by a U.S. State. If you think that some people do bad enough things that deserve death, that is support for death as a penalty, as Monty stated. It makes no difference if a civil society supports it, or you don’t mind if it happens outside of the state, as long as you didn’t authorize it via a vote of office.

I guess I don’t get how you could not agree with this.

[Bill_Door]

@John Mace

(Snipped some stuff) But I do agree with the general idea of this thread-- these soldieres do, if they are guilty, deserve our worst scorn-- and for exactly the reason DtC says in his thread title. Acts like this endanger these guys’ fellow soldiers and marines in a time of active hostilities-- unforgivable! Still, that’s the easy part. Everyone is going to agree with that. If you’d prefer to read a thread full of “me, too” posts, that’s your perogative. Not many people do, though.

John Mace , There are a lot of people who would think that raping a woman and murdering her and her child and her brother and her husband would merit more scorn than endangering their fellow soldiers and marines. Especially given that in the New Improved War in Iraq those are supposed to be the people we’re trying to liberate and all that.

When you say that the fact that what these guys did was unforgivable because it endangered the lives of the comrades-in-arms, you give credence to the theory that if this had been hushed up it would have been a better resolution. That’s what caused the acts to be concealed in the first place. As if this could be kept quiet anyway. Those people are living there, they know who raped that woman and murdered her and her family.

It’s like we when we were secretly bombing Cambodia. It wasn’t a secret from them, bombs were falling on them for fucks sake. It was a secret from us.

[ElvisL1ves]

@mhendo

I’m not sure if they’ve changed or updated the story since you posted, but i see no mention of such planning in that article.

Try this one. One of them is out of the Army and being tried in civilian court:

According to an 11-page federal affidavit, Green and three other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., had talked about raping the young woman, whom they spotted while working at the checkpoint . The document said Green and the other soldiers drank alcohol, then changed out of their uniforms to avoid detection before going to the woman’s house.

Once there, the affidavit said, Green took three members of the family – two adults, a male and a female, and a girl estimated to be 5 years old – into a bedroom, after which shots were heard from inside.

Sounds like premeditation to me, if true. But wait, it gets better:

The age of the young woman was unclear. FBI documents estimated her age at 25, but a neighbor of the family said the rape victim was 14 and her sister was 10.

The Washington Post reported that the rape victim was 15 and that her mother worried her daughter had attracted the attention of US soldiers at a checkpoint.