Rembering 14 yr. old old girl, raped and murdered

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12.

We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion.

When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the U.S. tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops -- claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman. Now, Article 32 hearings -- the military equivalent of a grand jury -- have ended at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base in Iraq (U.S. troops are exempt from Iraqi prosecution). In September, a general will rule whether the accused should be court-martialed. The defense already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): in four months preceding the crime, 17 of the accused GIs' battalion were killed; their company, Bravo, suffered eight combat deaths.

But as the U.S. spun the victim's identity, investigators knew her name: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.

Abeer means "fragrance of flowers." She was 14 years old.

The soldiers noticed her at a checkpoint. They stalked her after one or more of them expressed his intention to rape her. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky mixed with a high-energy drink and practicing their golf swings, they changed into black civvies and burst into Abeer's home in Mahmoudiya, a town 50 miles south of Baghdad. They killed her mother Fikhriya, father Qassim, and five-year-old sister Hadeel with bullets to the forehead, and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and lit them on fire to destroy the evidence. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

These details are from a sworn statement by Spc. James P. Barker, one of the accused along with Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan Howard; a fifth, Sgt. Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack but not with having participated.

Then there's former Pfc. Steven Green. Discharged in May for a "personality disorder," Green was arrested in North Carolina, pled not guilty in federal court, and is being held without bond. He's the convenient scapegoat whose squad leader testified how often Green said he hated all Iraqis and wanted to kill them. Other soldiers said Green threw a puppy off a roof, then set it on fire. The company commander noted Green had "serious anger issues."

Who is this "bad apple"? A good ole boy from Midland, Texas.

"If you want to understand me, you need to understand Midland," says President Bush. Steven Green understands Midland -- his home until his parents divorced and his mother remarried when Green was eight, already in trouble in school. A high-school dropout, Green returned to Midland to get his GED in 2003. Then, in 2005, he enlisted. He immersed himself in a chapel baptismal pool at Fort Benning, Georgia -- getting "born again" while being trained how to kill legally and die heroically. He was 19, with three convictions: fighting, and alcohol and drug possession.

Once, the Army would have rejected him. But he enlisted when, desperate for fresh recruits, the Army started increasing, by nearly half, the rate at which it grants what it terms "moral waivers" to potential recruits. According to the Pentagon, waivers in 2001 totaled 7,640, increasing to 11,018 in 2005. "Moral waivers" permit recruits with criminal records, emotional problems, and weak educational backgrounds to be taught how to use submachine guns and rocket launchers. Afterward, if they survive, they'll be called heroes -- and released back into society. (One ex-soldier praising the military for having "properly trained and hardened me" was Timothy McVeigh).

The U.S. military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and "independent contractors," we do have a draft: a poverty draft. That's why the Army is so disproportionately comprised of people of color, seeking education, health care, housing. But the military inflicts other perks: teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish that.

One notorious training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness."

"Soft targets"? Civilians. Her name means "fragrance of flowers."

Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (updated edition 2001, Washington Square Press), I presented far more evidence than space here permits on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend both spring from the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic -- a pervasive message affecting everything from U.S. foreign policy (afflicted with premature ejaculation) to "camouflage chic," and glamorized gangtsa styles?

This definition of manhood is toxic to men and lethal to women.

But atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn't rape a staple of war long before The Iliad? Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? Didn't warring Somali clans in the 1990s, sometimes joined by UN Peacekeeping troops, rape "each other's women"? Weren't the five surviving Somali women then stoned to death by Islamists for "adultery"? And weren't the earliest reports from another small, troubled country -- of rape attacks on villages by gangs called Interahamwe ("Our Heroic Boys") -- ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. "Not our nice American GIs? Must be a few bad apples." Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? The photos of sexually tortured men leaked, but photos of abased and abused women prisoners are still classified, for fear of greater world outrage. Have we forgotten two U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995, battering, raping, and abandoning her naked in a deserted area? She somehow survived and reported them, though her PTSD doubtless haunts still. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that Asian feminists organized entire movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring around U.S. ports and bases, including the hundreds of reported rapes of U.S. women soldiers by their fellow GIs (plus the joint epidemic of rape and evangelicalism at the U.S. Air Force Academy).

In 1998, a landmark UN decision recognized rape as a war crime -- though this raises the question: If rape in war is a crime against humanity, then what is it in peacetime?The International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual-violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few nice American guys are found guilty -- as Green and his buddies might be. Then all returns to "normal." They're sacrificed to save the ranks of those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonize obscenely about "moral values" while issuing moral waivers.

But this crime we cannot let pass into oblivion. She was 14 years old and her name was Abeer.

It means "fragrance of flowers."

Robin Morgan's new book, Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right, comes out in September (Nation Books). She is a co-founder of The Women's Media Center.

[Ban Hammer 13,633]

Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12.

We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion.

When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the U.S. tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops -- claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman. Now, Article 32 hearings -- the military equivalent of a grand jury -- have ended at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base in Iraq (U.S. troops are exempt from Iraqi prosecution). In September, a general will rule whether the accused should be court-martialed. The defense already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): in four months preceding the crime, 17 of the accused GIs' battalion were killed; their company, Bravo, suffered eight combat deaths.

But as the U.S. spun the victim's identity, investigators knew her name: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.

Abeer means "fragrance of flowers." She was 14 years old.

The soldiers noticed her at a checkpoint. They stalked her after one or more of them expressed his intention to rape her. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky mixed with a high-energy drink and practicing their golf swings, they changed into black civvies and burst into Abeer's home in Mahmoudiya, a town 50 miles south of Baghdad. They killed her mother Fikhriya, father Qassim, and five-year-old sister Hadeel with bullets to the forehead, and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and lit them on fire to destroy the evidence. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

These details are from a sworn statement by Spc. James P. Barker, one of the accused along with Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan Howard; a fifth, Sgt. Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack but not with having participated.

Then there's former Pfc. Steven Green. Discharged in May for a "personality disorder," Green was arrested in North Carolina, pled not guilty in federal court, and is being held without bond. He's the convenient scapegoat whose squad leader testified how often Green said he hated all Iraqis and wanted to kill them. Other soldiers said Green threw a puppy off a roof, then set it on fire. The company commander noted Green had "serious anger issues."

Who is this "bad apple"? A good ole boy from Midland, Texas.

"If you want to understand me, you need to understand Midland," says President Bush. Steven Green understands Midland -- his home until his parents divorced and his mother remarried when Green was eight, already in trouble in school. A high-school dropout, Green returned to Midland to get his GED in 2003. Then, in 2005, he enlisted. He immersed himself in a chapel baptismal pool at Fort Benning, Georgia -- getting "born again" while being trained how to kill legally and die heroically. He was 19, with three convictions: fighting, and alcohol and drug possession.

Once, the Army would have rejected him. But he enlisted when, desperate for fresh recruits, the Army started increasing, by nearly half, the rate at which it grants what it terms "moral waivers" to potential recruits. According to the Pentagon, waivers in 2001 totaled 7,640, increasing to 11,018 in 2005. "Moral waivers" permit recruits with criminal records, emotional problems, and weak educational backgrounds to be taught how to use submachine guns and rocket launchers. Afterward, if they survive, they'll be called heroes -- and released back into society. (One ex-soldier praising the military for having "properly trained and hardened me" was Timothy McVeigh).

The U.S. military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and "independent contractors," we do have a draft: a poverty draft. That's why the Army is so disproportionately comprised of people of color, seeking education, health care, housing. But the military inflicts other perks: teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish that.

One notorious training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness."

"Soft targets"? Civilians. Her name means "fragrance of flowers."

Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (updated edition 2001, Washington Square Press), I presented far more evidence than space here permits on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend both spring from the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic -- a pervasive message affecting everything from U.S. foreign policy (afflicted with premature ejaculation) to "camouflage chic," and glamorized gangtsa styles?

This definition of manhood is toxic to men and lethal to women.

But atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn't rape a staple of war long before The Iliad? Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? Didn't warring Somali clans in the 1990s, sometimes joined by UN Peacekeeping troops, rape "each other's women"? Weren't the five surviving Somali women then stoned to death by Islamists for "adultery"? And weren't the earliest reports from another small, troubled country -- of rape attacks on villages by gangs called Interahamwe ("Our Heroic Boys") -- ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. "Not our nice American GIs? Must be a few bad apples." Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? The photos of sexually tortured men leaked, but photos of abased and abused women prisoners are still classified, for fear of greater world outrage. Have we forgotten two U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995, battering, raping, and abandoning her naked in a deserted area? She somehow survived and reported them, though her PTSD doubtless haunts still. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that Asian feminists organized entire movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring around U.S. ports and bases, including the hundreds of reported rapes of U.S. women soldiers by their fellow GIs (plus the joint epidemic of rape and evangelicalism at the U.S. Air Force Academy).

In 1998, a landmark UN decision recognized rape as a war crime -- though this raises the question: If rape in war is a crime against humanity, then what is it in peacetime?The International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual-violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few nice American guys are found guilty -- as Green and his buddies might be. Then all returns to "normal." They're sacrificed to save the ranks of those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonize obscenely about "moral values" while issuing moral waivers.

But this crime we cannot let pass into oblivion. She was 14 years old and her name was Abeer.

It means "fragrance of flowers."

Robin Morgan's new book, Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right, comes out in September (Nation Books). She is a co-founder of The Women's Media Center.

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

2- i take offense to calling the military a mercenary force. and a former worker of mine is over there as a contractor, he's forbidden to carry weapons. so what's your point about contractors? they are unarmed. about the poverty draft - i and many others don't qualify for that. my dad was a mid grade naval officer and my mother a school teacher. that made us middle class. hardly what one would call poverty level. and the military still remains a great way to get out of the slums and get an education. the part about the military being made up disproportianly of minorities is bs. check it out, you'll find out that it pretty much follows along the racial makeup of the usa.

3- your this is my rifle ####### is from a movie. try full metal jacket.Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness." in order, tel - transporter erector launcher. the vehicle for moving scuds and frogs around. nice try. thrust ratio - an aviation term. deep earth penetration - a description of a heavily fortified bunker. potent nuclear hardness is a bunker built to withstand a nuclear blast. oh and you left out "penetration to the rear area" which is a description of what mobile forces (tanks in particular) would do in the case of a major conflict, striking deep into the rear area to interdict supply lines and disrupt enemy lines. the soviet term for it was operational manuever group.

4- "Soft targets"? Civilians. no, an unarmored vehicle or building that is not built to withstand large caliber fire.

6 - Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? and also in china, go study up on the comfort girls from korea.

thanks for another slanted and yet misinformed post about the us military steven

[dalegg 143]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

2- i take offense to calling the military a mercenary force. and a former worker of mine is over there as a contractor, he's forbidden to carry weapons. so what's your point about contractors? they are unarmed. about the poverty draft - i and many others don't qualify for that. my dad was a mid grade naval officer and my mother a school teacher. that made us middle class. hardly what one would call poverty level. and the military still remains a great way to get out of the slums and get an education. the part about the military being made up disproportianly of minorities is bs. check it out, you'll find out that it pretty much follows along the racial makeup of the usa.

3- your this is my rifle ####### is from a movie. try full metal jacket.Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness." in order, tel - transporter erector launcher. the vehicle for moving scuds and frogs around. nice try. thrust ratio - an aviation term. deep earth penetration - a description of a heavily fortified bunker. potent nuclear hardness is a bunker built to withstand a nuclear blast. oh and you left out "penetration to the rear area" which is a description of what mobile forces (tanks in particular) would do in the case of a major conflict, striking deep into the rear area to interdict supply lines and disrupt enemy lines. the soviet term for it was operational manuever group.

4- "Soft targets"? Civilians. no, an unarmored vehicle or building that is not built to withstand large caliber fire.

6 - Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? and also in china, go study up on the comfort girls from korea.

thanks for another slanted and yet misinformed post about the us military steven

Hey, what about #5?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

2- i take offense to calling the military a mercenary force. and a former worker of mine is over there as a contractor, he's forbidden to carry weapons. so what's your point about contractors? they are unarmed. about the poverty draft - i and many others don't qualify for that. my dad was a mid grade naval officer and my mother a school teacher. that made us middle class. hardly what one would call poverty level. and the military still remains a great way to get out of the slums and get an education. the part about the military being made up disproportianly of minorities is bs. check it out, you'll find out that it pretty much follows along the racial makeup of the usa.

3- your this is my rifle ####### is from a movie. try full metal jacket.Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness." in order, tel - transporter erector launcher. the vehicle for moving scuds and frogs around. nice try. thrust ratio - an aviation term. deep earth penetration - a description of a heavily fortified bunker. potent nuclear hardness is a bunker built to withstand a nuclear blast. oh and you left out "penetration to the rear area" which is a description of what mobile forces (tanks in particular) would do in the case of a major conflict, striking deep into the rear area to interdict supply lines and disrupt enemy lines. the soviet term for it was operational manuever group.

4- "Soft targets"? Civilians. no, an unarmored vehicle or building that is not built to withstand large caliber fire.

6 - Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? and also in china, go study up on the comfort girls from korea.

thanks for another slanted and yet misinformed post about the us military steven

The girl was raped and murdered, then the atrocity was covered up by the military until one soldier couldn't stomach keeping it inside...otherwise we would have never known about this.

...evidence suggests that military officials knew all about the massacre the night that it occurred.

We also have good reason to suspect that someone made the decision to scapegoat Green. Initial reports in the American press, as well as detailed reports in the foreign media, reveal that Green had plenty of accomplices. Why have no other names floated to the surface? Why do all fingers point to one guy?

I find this eyewitness account persuasive:

On an afternoon in March 2006, a force of 10 to 15 American troops raided the home of Qasim Hamzah Rashid al-Janabi, who was born in 1970 and who worked as a guard at a state-owned potato storehouse. Al-Janabi lived with his wife, Fakhriyah Taha Muhsin, and their four children - 'Abir (born 1991), Hadil (born 1999), Muhammad (1998), and Ahmad (1996).

(Emphasis added.) Abir, also spelled Abeer, was the rape victim. By all accounts, she was a pretty girl. Her youthful beauty was the family's undoing.

The FBI says that the murder party consisted of but four men (including Green), and that the incident came to light only after one of the other perpetrators spoke of it during psychological therapy. (I guess patients don't have confidentiality rights in the military.)

I do not dismiss the higher figure, and I refuse to believe that one man -- one private -- could order soldiers into such an action. Who led the unit? This matter must involve someone of higher rank. At the end of this piece, I will suggest one reason why someone higher-up may have wanted this act of barbarism to occur.

Even if we posit a highly unlikely scenario in which the commanding officer had no advance knowledge of an attack of this kind, the person in charge still must take responsibility for the actions of his unit. Why does this officer's name remain unknown?

The Americans took Qasim, his wife, and their daughter Hadil and put them in one room of their house. The boys Ahmad and Muhammad were at school since the time the Americans invaded the home was about 2pm. The Americans shot Qasim, his wife, and their daughter in that room. They pumped four bullets into Qasim's head and five bullets in to Fakhriyah's abdomen and lower abdomen. Hadil (7 years old) was shot in the head and shoulder.

After that, the Americans took 'Abir into the next room and surrounded her in one corner of the house. There they stripped her, and then the 10 Americans took turns raping her. They then struck her on the head with a sharp instrument - according to the forensic medical report - knocking her unconscious - and smothered her with a cushion until she was dead. Then they set fire to her body.

The following account comes from a neighbor who saw the aftermath:

"Then I went into 'Abir's room. Fire was coming out of her. Her head and her chest were on fire. She had been put in a pitiful position; they had lifted her white gown to her neck and torn her bra. Blood was flowing from between her legs even though she had died a quarter of an hour earlier, and in spite of the intensity of the fire in the room. She had died, may God rest her soul. I knew her from the first instant. I knew she had been raped since she had been turned on her face and the lower part of her body was raised while her hands and feet had been tied. By God, I couldn't control myself and broke into tears over her, but I quickly extinguished the fire burning from her head and chest. The fire had burned up her breasts, the hair on her head, and the flesh on her face. I covered her privates with a piece of cloth, God rest her soul. And at that moment, I thought to myself that if I go out talking and threatening, that they would arrest me, so I took control of myself and resolved to leave the house calmly so that I could be a witness to tell the story of this tragedy.

Hiding emotion under such conditions must have taken a superhuman act of will. The "piece of cloth" is a detail which coincides with the crime scene photo, as described by various news reports.

Here's the part of the story most Americans do not yet know: The authorities soon put a (rather threadbare) cover-up into place.

"After three hours the [American] occupation troops surrounded the house and told the people of the area that the family had been killed by terrorists because they were Shi'ah. Nobody in town believed that story because Abu 'Abir was known as one of the best people of the city, one of the noblest, and no Shi'i, but a Sunni monotheist. Everyone doubted their story and so after the sunset prayers the occupation troops took the four bodies away to the American base.

If Steve Green was the only guilty party -- if we must place all blame on a classic "lone nut" -- then who authorized the official lie? How can we believe the claim that the crime remained unknown until after Green was diagnosed, when an official falsehood went out within hours of the massacre? Are we really supposed to believe that four privates could initiate such a strike and put a cover-up in place?

The American media has carried hints that the Iraqi resistance (we are allowed to use that term now) killed American soldiers in retaliatory strikes. The neighbor's account would seem to verify this notion:

The neighbor went on: "Then we decided that we must not be silent so we asked the mujahideen to respond as quickly as possible. They responded with 30 attacks on the occupation in two days, bringing down more than 40 American soldiers.

So. A number of troops -- perhaps as many as 15 -- planned a horrifying rape and mass murder, which officialdom tried to cover up with a transparent lie. The all-too-predictable result: Vengeance attacks on 40 other Americans. (That number seems high. Of course, it includes non-fatal casualties.) Green's unit has Iraqi and American blood on its hands.

Was this whole operation a bungled psy-op? Were the soldiers instructed to commit an atrocity while posing as insurgents? That theory may be speculative -- but to me, it makes more sense than does the official story.

Think about it. A group of Ameican soldiers leave base -- supposedly without their commanding officer's knowledge. They are dressed as insurgents. They commit a despicable act. They return. Other military men immediately come to the scene and ascribe the crime to the insurgency. The cover story falls apart because the Americans foolishly got the victims' religion wrong.

If you don't like the psy-op theory, feel free to come up with another one that covers all of these facts.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m24438

Edited August 20, 2006 by Steven_and_Jinky

[Ban Hammer 13,633]

Hey, what about #5?

oops my bad

The girl was raped and murdered, then the atrocity was covered up by the military until one soldier couldn't stomach keeping it inside...otherwise we would have never known about this.

it wasn't for long and ergo your statement is false. nice try steven

evidence suggests that military officials knew all about the massacre the night that it occurred.

yes and the bn cdr dismissed it, to his chagrin.

I do not dismiss the higher figure, and I refuse to believe that one man -- one private -- could order soldiers into such an action. Who led the unit? This matter must involve someone of higher rank. At the end of this piece, I will suggest one reason why someone higher-up may have wanted this act of barbarism to occur.

Even if we posit a highly unlikely scenario in which the commanding officer had no advance knowledge of an attack of this kind, the person in charge still must take responsibility for the actions of his unit. Why does this officer's name remain unknown?

there was a nco on scene. he took part in it. the men at that location were under his command. the commanding officer certainly has better things to do than hang out at a checkpoint. his job and especially that of the 1sg, plt ldr, and the plt sgt is to check on them. if you are looking for the name of the company cdr, try looking for a cpt under investigation

If Steve Green was the only guilty party -- if we must place all blame on a classic "lone nut" -- then who authorized the official lie? How can we believe the claim that the crime remained unknown until after Green was diagnosed, when an official falsehood went out within hours of the massacre? Are we really supposed to believe that four privates could initiate such a strike and put a cover-up in place?

he's not a lone nut. he could not have done such without the knowledge of those with him. and yes, they 4 privates (and the nco on the scene) can cover it up - for a while.

Was this whole operation a bungled psy-op? Were the soldiers instructed to commit an atrocity while posing as insurgents? That theory may be speculative -- but to me, it makes more sense than does the official story.

no, it's called poor leadership.

Think about it. A group of Ameican soldiers leave base -- supposedly without their commanding officer's knowledge. They are dressed as insurgents. They commit a despicable act. They return. Other military men immediately come to the scene and ascribe the crime to the insurgency. The cover story falls apart because

the Americans foolishly got the victims' religion wrong.

as i understood it, they were at a checkpoint and abandoned their post to go do such. no, the patrols don't check in with the commander every freaking time they go out. jeesh. try looking up the duties and responsibilities of a plt sgt and plt ldr.

Edited August 20, 2006 by charlesandnessa

[ual777 0]

Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12.

We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion.

When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the U.S. tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops -- claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman. Now, Article 32 hearings -- the military equivalent of a grand jury -- have ended at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base in Iraq (U.S. troops are exempt from Iraqi prosecution). In September, a general will rule whether the accused should be court-martialed. The defense already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): in four months preceding the crime, 17 of the accused GIs' battalion were killed; their company, Bravo, suffered eight combat deaths.

But as the U.S. spun the victim's identity, investigators knew her name: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.

Abeer means "fragrance of flowers." She was 14 years old.

The soldiers noticed her at a checkpoint. They stalked her after one or more of them expressed his intention to rape her. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky mixed with a high-energy drink and practicing their golf swings, they changed into black civvies and burst into Abeer's home in Mahmoudiya, a town 50 miles south of Baghdad. They killed her mother Fikhriya, father Qassim, and five-year-old sister Hadeel with bullets to the forehead, and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and lit them on fire to destroy the evidence. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

These details are from a sworn statement by Spc. James P. Barker, one of the accused along with Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan Howard; a fifth, Sgt. Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack but not with having participated.

Then there's former Pfc. Steven Green. Discharged in May for a "personality disorder," Green was arrested in North Carolina, pled not guilty in federal court, and is being held without bond. He's the convenient scapegoat whose squad leader testified how often Green said he hated all Iraqis and wanted to kill them. Other soldiers said Green threw a puppy off a roof, then set it on fire. The company commander noted Green had "serious anger issues."

Who is this "bad apple"? A good ole boy from Midland, Texas.

"If you want to understand me, you need to understand Midland," says President Bush. Steven Green understands Midland -- his home until his parents divorced and his mother remarried when Green was eight, already in trouble in school. A high-school dropout, Green returned to Midland to get his GED in 2003. Then, in 2005, he enlisted. He immersed himself in a chapel baptismal pool at Fort Benning, Georgia -- getting "born again" while being trained how to kill legally and die heroically. He was 19, with three convictions: fighting, and alcohol and drug possession.

Once, the Army would have rejected him. But he enlisted when, desperate for fresh recruits, the Army started increasing, by nearly half, the rate at which it grants what it terms "moral waivers" to potential recruits. According to the Pentagon, waivers in 2001 totaled 7,640, increasing to 11,018 in 2005. "Moral waivers" permit recruits with criminal records, emotional problems, and weak educational backgrounds to be taught how to use submachine guns and rocket launchers. Afterward, if they survive, they'll be called heroes -- and released back into society. (One ex-soldier praising the military for having "properly trained and hardened me" was Timothy McVeigh).

The U.S. military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and "independent contractors," we do have a draft: a poverty draft. That's why the Army is so disproportionately comprised of people of color, seeking education, health care, housing. But the military inflicts other perks: teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish that.

One notorious training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness."

"Soft targets"? Civilians. Her name means "fragrance of flowers."

Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (updated edition 2001, Washington Square Press), I presented far more evidence than space here permits on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend both spring from the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic -- a pervasive message affecting everything from U.S. foreign policy (afflicted with premature ejaculation) to "camouflage chic," and glamorized gangtsa styles?

This definition of manhood is toxic to men and lethal to women.

But atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn't rape a staple of war long before The Iliad? Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? Didn't warring Somali clans in the 1990s, sometimes joined by UN Peacekeeping troops, rape "each other's women"? Weren't the five surviving Somali women then stoned to death by Islamists for "adultery"? And weren't the earliest reports from another small, troubled country -- of rape attacks on villages by gangs called Interahamwe ("Our Heroic Boys") -- ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. "Not our nice American GIs? Must be a few bad apples." Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? The photos of sexually tortured men leaked, but photos of abased and abused women prisoners are still classified, for fear of greater world outrage. Have we forgotten two U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995, battering, raping, and abandoning her naked in a deserted area? She somehow survived and reported them, though her PTSD doubtless haunts still. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that Asian feminists organized entire movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring around U.S. ports and bases, including the hundreds of reported rapes of U.S. women soldiers by their fellow GIs (plus the joint epidemic of rape and evangelicalism at the U.S. Air Force Academy).

In 1998, a landmark UN decision recognized rape as a war crime -- though this raises the question: If rape in war is a crime against humanity, then what is it in peacetime?The International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual-violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few nice American guys are found guilty -- as Green and his buddies might be. Then all returns to "normal." They're sacrificed to save the ranks of those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonize obscenely about "moral values" while issuing moral waivers.

But this crime we cannot let pass into oblivion. She was 14 years old and her name was Abeer.

It means "fragrance of flowers."

Robin Morgan's new book, Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right, comes out in September (Nation Books). She is a co-founder of The Women's Media Center.

Steven, I'm sorry but this article is stupid. So is your insinuation that the troops are dressing as insurgents. Im not saying you are, just these two premises.

Charles is dead on with his comments. Further, the military is FAR more simple than most think. Yes there are 'black ops' and such but they are few and far between. 95% of the guys I have met in the military are stand-up guys. The guy that did this is just that, a bad apple. I'm tired of anti-war journalists posting these continual distortions and half-truths. Its disgusting.

[Artegal 1]

As far as I am concerned the Iraqis got justice when they lynched 3 soldiers from this same unit that allegedly raped and murdered this girl and her family. So they should just transfer the unit out issue some summary court martials and be done with the matter.

[MrsAmera 41]

Steven - I think you're right on with this article. (Btw. guys he didn't write it as some of your comments appear - it is from a book). Regardless of what the insurgents did or the soldiers are doing it is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to rape and kill a little girl, irregardless of what any other circumstances are. I think the point Steven is making (and the author of this book is making) is that women end up being brutalized as a result of male aggression. Soldiers are trained to kill, you can't dispute that. Male and female soldiers have been found guilty of atrocities to people. The point is where to draw the line. I really don't believe this young girl was a threat to forces in Iraq and even if for some strange reason she were, gang raping and burning the evidence is not the way to remedy the situation.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

In the 'West' justice will be served.

[Ban Hammer 13,633]

Steven - I think you're right on with this article. (Btw. guys he didn't write it as some of your comments appear - it is from a book). Regardless of what the insurgents did or the soldiers are doing it is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to rape and kill a little girl, irregardless of what any other circumstances are. I think the point Steven is making (and the author of this book is making) is that women end up being brutalized as a result of male aggression. Soldiers are trained to kill, you can't dispute that. Male and female soldiers have been found guilty of atrocities to people. The point is where to draw the line. I really don't believe this young girl was a threat to forces in Iraq and even if for some strange reason she were, gang raping and burning the evidence is not the way to remedy the situation.

that the poor girl was raped and murdered is not in question. i've pointed out in the above how the article is skewed, misrepresents, and flat out sells lies to the readers. this article does nothing other than denigrate and present a warped view of the us military.

[Veiled Princess 1]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

When it first came out the FBI said she was at least 25.

In the 'West' justice will be served.

Hand him over to the authorities in a country that isn't afraid of the death penalty and justice will be served.

[Ban Hammer 13,633]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

When it first came out the FBI said she was at least 25.

maybe you're watching the wrong news sources

[Veiled Princess 1]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

When it first came out the FBI said she was at least 25.

maybe you're watching the wrong news sources

The U.S. military had previously referred to the alleged rape victim as a "young Iraqi woman." A Justice Department affidavit in the case against Green says investigators estimated her age at about 25, while the U.S. military said she was 20. Her father, mother and 5-year-old sister also were killed.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/07/...lain/index.html

I admit.... CNN is, for sure, the wrong source to get your information

[Ban Hammer 13,633]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

When it first came out the FBI said she was at least 25.

maybe you're watching the wrong news sources

The U.S. military had previously referred to the alleged rape victim as a "young Iraqi woman." A Justice Department affidavit in the case against Green says investigators estimated her age at about 25, while the U.S. military said she was 20. Her father, mother and 5-year-old sister also were killed.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/07/...lain/index.html

I admit.... CNN is, for sure, the wrong source to get your information

i never thought she was over 18 anyways, since you often advocate marrying your daughter off at 12 years old. as the victim lived with her parents, obviously she could not be past her teen years.

since you are watching cnn, report to wom for flogging

[Veiled Princess 1]

1- never saw anything stating her age was over 17

When it first came out the FBI said she was at least 25.

maybe you're watching the wrong news sources

The U.S. military had previously referred to the alleged rape victim as a "young Iraqi woman." A Justice Department affidavit in the case against Green says investigators estimated her age at about 25, while the U.S. military said she was 20. Her father, mother and 5-year-old sister also were killed.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/07/...lain/index.html

I admit.... CNN is, for sure, the wrong source to get your information

i never thought she was over 18 anyways, since you often advocate marrying your daughter off at 12 years old. as the victim lived with her parents, obviously she could not be past her teen years.

since you are watching cnn, report to wom for flogging

Actually, in many Arab countries, it is the culture that children remain at home until they are married.... had she been 25 and just not married yet it would have been possible.

I do not advocate marrying my daughter off at 12... you just don't understand my point about that and that's OK.