COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
An Itchy Finger
Steven Green went to Iraq eager to 'Kill 'em all.' The Army thinks he took things way too far.
Sarah Childress and Michael Hirsh, Newsweek
August 7, 2006
Even before he went to Iraq, Steven Green scared people. Growing up in oil-rich Midland, Texas, a small community full of pumping jacks, pickup trucks and fast-food restaurants, Green was known as a petulant loner and a hard-drinking druggie. Mostly what people remember is his seething, seemingly random rage. In high school, Green would jump on other kids for offenses like wearing a green shirt, or using a white cigarette lighter—anything he'd arbitrarily claim to hate. His best friend, Mike, recalls remarking to Green once that he wanted to punch another kid standing nearby. "I'll do it!" Green said, and ran over and socked the boy. Another friend remembers the time when they were hanging out at his place and Green wanted to play a Guns N' Roses CD. When the others said they wanted to hear something else, Green put the disc on anyway, blasting the music at full volume until people left, one by one. "A lot of people didn't accept Steve," says Mike, who requested that his last name be withheld.Green's parents had divorced when he was 4; his parents drank, and he drifted from home to home. But he was anxious to better himself, acquaintances say. And the Army seemed to offer everything Green lacked: money, friends, a place to stay, possibly even fame. Boot camp, Green later told friends, was great. He bragged about being a part of the world's most powerful military, and he was excited to get to Iraq. "He wanted to be a hero," says Hugh Bailey, 54, a Vietnam-veteran Marine who befriended Green. When he enlisted in February 2005, Green exultantly told Mike and others, like the mother of one of his friends, Alma Thomas: "I'm gonna go over there and kill 'em all."
Just a week into his tour, Green's mood changed. His unit, the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was on the front lines of the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle town of Al Mahmudiyah. On his MySpace page, which was oddly titled "imalittlegirl," he sent messages to Mike saying he'd seen body parts flying through the air. It was nothing like Red Faction, his favorite videogame. "Dude, I can't do all this. I thought it'd be cool to kill people, but I saw my buddy get shot in the face. It's not pretty," Green wrote, Mike recalls. After one tough day, he wrote, "Screw this s--t. Every time I make a new friend, they get killed."
Exactly what happened to Steven Green in Iraq is not clear. All that is known is that seven weeks after being honorably discharged for what the Army called a "personality disorder," Green was arrested last month for a horrific crime. According to the indictment, he raped an Iraqi girl in Al Mahmudiyah and murdered her and her family. Five other soldiers in the 502nd have also been charged with complicity in the crime. Among the accused is Jesse Spielman of Chambersburg, Pa., whose mother, Nancy Hess, blames the charges on Green. "That kid should have never ever been let in the military," Hess told NEWSWEEK, adding that her son would refer to Green in conversations as "the total idiot who's trying to get out" of the Army. "Goes to show you what kind of scum the military lets in. The recruiters will take anything with warm blood." Green's lawyer, Patrick Bouldin, says he can't comment on the case but added: "Critical comments about Mr. Green from a codefendant or his camp are always viewed with heavy skepticism because of the high likelihood of bias."
Green's case has helped to spur a closer look at the Army's standards for recruitment and training. Green enlisted and passed basic training at a time when the Army was under terrific pressure to bring in new soldiers and had relaxed its entry requirements. In 2005, about the time Green was accepted, the Army raised the limit on the so-called Category 4 recruits it would allow, the designation for soldiers with the lowest scores on its aptitude test. (Green's score is not known.) The Army has also been handing out more waivers—including case-by-case exceptions for criminal offenses—which increased by 3 percent last year. Basic training has slipped as well. In years past, basic was geared to "wash out" those unfit for the stresses of military life. Now it has been reformulated to keep as many recruits as possible. "What you're seeing is the reverse of what made the Army so effective," says Sen. Jack Reed of the Armed Services Committee.
The most recent washout numbers show a dramatic decline in standards: currently only 7.6 percent of new recruits fail to get through their first six months of service, down from 18.1 percent in May 2005, according to the latest Army figures. "That's a heck of a drop," says Leo Daugherty, the Army's command historian at Fort Knox. "The young man who got in [Green] should never have gotten in the Army. He slipped through the system." The Army says it has adapted basic training to lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and helps soldiers to improve their weaknesses. "We will get rid of those individuals who have no business being a soldier," says Col. Kevin Shwedo, director of operations, plans and training for Army Accessions Command. "We're not going to quit on a soldier when they're trainable. That's a big difference."
In truth, it's not clear whether a candidate like Green would have washed out even if his superiors had known about his alleged personality problems sooner. He had posted adequate scores on his General Equivalency Degree test, or GED, a substitute for a high-school diploma. And his troubles with the law were minor: two prior misdemeanor convictions for possession of drug paraphernalia and tobacco as a minor, and being a minor in possession of alcohol. "Around here, kids get those like candy," says one Midland recruiter who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
Even the most psychologically fit recruits have buckled under the stress of watching their buddies die around them. Troubled kids are often the most susceptible. Certainly Steven Green seemed to snap, judging from the government indictment. On the night in question in Al Mahmudiyah, Green dressed in dark clothes, ducked away from his post and persuaded some of his comrades to come along. According to the indictment, he then led them to the house of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. At the home, Green herded the mother, father and a young girl, about 5 years old, into a back bedroom while another soldier threw the teenager to the floor. Green closed the bedroom door. Shots were fired, and he emerged with an AK-47, which had been in the home, and said, "I just killed them. All are dead." He and another soldier then allegedly raped the teenager. Afterward, Green shot her two or three times in the head, killing her, the indictment says. (Green has pleaded not guilty.)
Should the Army have seen trouble coming? It's hard to say. Back in Midland, "he didn't fit in, he never got around to knowing people," says B. J. Carr, Green's former stepgrandfather. With so many people coming and going in his life, "he didn't know what side to be on." But to others like Alma Thomas, Green could be kind and full of energy. When he boasted to her, as he had to his friends, that he was going to Iraq to "kill 'em all," Thomas said she warned him, as perhaps no one else had, that serving in Iraq would be "like a real nightmare that you can't wake up from." Green probably never will.
With Michael Hastings in New York
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14097559/site/newsweek/
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