The dregs of humanity

Handcuffed suspect Steven Green leaves court Monday in North Carolina.

The Iraqi victim of an alleged premeditated rape-murder plot by US service members was only 15 year old, it has been revealed:

BAGHDAD, July 2 -- Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided in a neighbor.

As pretty as she was young, the girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint that the girl had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Mahmudiyah, her mother told the neighbor.

Abeer told her mother again and again in her last days that the soldiers had made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said this weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl's mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10.

Fakhriyah feared that the Americans might come for her daughter at night, at their home. She asked her neighbor if Abeer might sleep at his house, with the women there.

Janabi said he agreed.

Then, "I tried to reassure her, remove some of her fear," Janabi said. "I told her, the Americans would not do such a thing."

Abeer did not live to take up the offer of shelter.
...
On March 13, a man identifying himself as a relative claimed the bodies for burial, the hospital official said. An hour after the man left with the bodies, U.S. soldiers came to the hospital and asked about the bodies, the hospital official said.

The next day, the hospital official said, soldiers scoured the area, trying to find the funeral for the family.

"But they did not find it, simply because the relatives did not do it, because the death includes the rape of one of the family members, which is something shameful in our tradition," the hospital official said.

"The family kept the news a secret, fearing the disgrace," he said. "They thought it was done by militias, not U.S. forces."

Reached by telephone Saturday at his home in Iskandariyah, south of Mahmudiyah, a member of the extended family would not discuss the incident.

"What is the benefit of publishing this story?" said Abeer's uncle, Bassem. "People will read about this crime. And they will forget about it the next day."



I watched a little bit of some talking head interviewing a former Marine -- now book author -- who had been accused of some atrocity in Iraq, and found not guilty. He of course urged the public not to jump to conclusions, and to allow the military to finish their investigation. (I wish I could recall who the hell he was, or even the title of the book, which could help, pffft) He then continued on to speak of the number of military members in Iraq and to compare that number to any city in the US with a similar size population and say that the atrocities that have come to light and are committed by our military are normal when compared to the criminal population in a US city.

The interviewer didn't even ask if we shouldn't have higher standards or expectations from the people we send in with positions of authority to foreign lands, and armed to the hilt.

Update: An Iraq war Veteran has been arrested and charged in Federal court with the rape and murder of a 15 year old Iraqi girl and murder of her family members. The former member of the 101st's 502nd Infantry Regiment had been discharged with a personality disorder on some unspecified date before the crimes came to light.