The results of Bad US Political Policies ( ie: waivers, etc. ) !

For former GI, Iraq only added to his woes
Even before enlisting, rape suspect Steven Green's problems were emerging by junior high school, according to people who knew him then.

By Jim Dwyer, Robert F. Worth
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Friday, July 14, 2006

On the last day of January 2005, Steven Green, the former Army private accused of raping a young Iraqi woman and killing her and her family, sat in a Texas jail on alcohol-possession charges, an unemployed 19-year-old high school dropout with his third misdemeanor conviction.
Days later, Green enlisted in a war-strapped Army and was assigned to a seemingly star-crossed unit to serve on a particularly violent patch of earth.
He enlisted when the Army was increasing the rate at which it granted waivers to potential recruits who otherwise might not qualify. The waivers opened enlistment to others like Green, those with minor criminal records and weak educational backgrounds.
In Green's case, his problems were emerging by junior high school, according to people who knew him. Now, Green, who was discharged in April on psychiatric grounds, and four other soldiers are charged in a rape and four killings that occurred in March in Mahmoudiya, a town about 20 miles south of Baghdad. A sixth soldier was charged with failing to take action after learning about the incident.
On March 13, 2005, a few weeks after enlisting, Green was immersed in a baptismal pool in the back of an Army chapel in Fort Benning, Ga., one of hundreds of young recruits who embraced religion as they faced deployment.
By year's end, Green, then 20, was patrolling streets in one of the most bloodily contested areas of Iraq, a "triangle of death" south of Baghdad where thousands had died in sectarian violence since 2003. He served with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry, part of the Army's 101st Division.
In a photograph released by the Army on Dec. 9, Green can be seen laden with gear and aiming a rifle. One of his sergeants, Ken Casica, was quoted on the subject of house searches in a news release that accompanied the picture.
The next day, Casica and Sgt. Travis Nelson, also of Bravo Company, were shot dead at a checkpoint. Less than two weeks later, two more members of the company were killed by a roadside bomb.
Green lasted only another four months in the Army, but it was a grim, violent and chaotic stretch. Seventeen members of the battalion were killed, two of them mutilated after being kidnapped. Of those killed, eight were members of Green's Bravo Company of about 110 soldiers.
Even the abandoned potato warehouse taken over by Green and the Bravo Company burned to the ground in an accidental fire, destroying letters, video players and the small, personal tokens the soldiers had kept with their gear.
Born May 2, 1985, Steven Dale Green spent his earliest years in Midland. His parents, John Green and Roxanne Simolkie, divorced while he was a child, and Steven Green moved with his mother to Seabrook, southeast of Houston. She married Daniel Carr when Steven was about 8.
Willy Godfrey, Green's classmate at Seabrook Intermediate School, said he remembered when Green moved into the area for sixth grade in 1997.
"He was always, like, in trouble, doing something in school," said Godfrey, 21, an emergency medical technician. "He was always getting into a fight or saying something mean to a teacher. Something weird. It was just out of place. Gradewise and stuff, I don't know if he did good or bad. But he did not mix well with other people. He was basically mad, or something like that."
Lisa Godfrey, Godfrey's mother, said she worked with Green's mother at Seabrook Classic Cafe and that they spoke often about their boys. His mother had trouble with Steven, Lisa Godfrey, 46, said.
"He was disruptive in his house," she said. 'His mom had a lot of issues."
In 2000, Green's mother spent six months in jail on a drunken driving charge, records show. About that time, Green returned to Midland, where his father still lived.
There, he attended Viola M. Coleman High School, which offers courses for students who have difficulty with regular academic programs. He dropped out by 2002, around the 10th grade, but received a GED certificate in 2003 from Midland Community College.
Green was convicted in October 2001 of possession of drug paraphernalia and fined $350. Five months later, he was charged as a minor in possession of tobacco, and fined $300, according to Midland court records. On Jan. 31, 2005, he was arrested and charged as a minor in possession of alcohol, and again fined $350. This time, he did not pay the fine, but served jail time.
Green did not volunteer to work in the kitchen or on the floor, which would have shortened his stay, according to Sheriff Gary Painter. He served four days.
The jail records hint at some complications in his family life.
In jail records, Green did not list either of his parents as someone to contact in case of emergency; he listed a man in Denver City, about 80 miles away. Painter said he was not permitted to release the name of the contact.
In Denver City, B.J. Carr, the father of Daniel Carr, said that Green had lived there with his son, who is working in oil fields in Oklahoma.
The Army has released little information about its review of Green's background before he joined the service.
The share of Army recruits who received waivers for criminal records increased last year to 15 percent from 10 percent or 11 percent before the war and through the first six month of 2006, according to statistics released this week.
Asked how the facts in the Green situation might apply to someone who tried to enlist today, Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky., said it was not possible to apply the Army's standards to a hypothetical case.
"A waiver is based on the actuality of the person, the totality of their life, the information we have on them — what have been their shortcomings, what have they done in their life to overcome a previous minor mistake," he said.

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/07/14iraqmurder.html
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What's not being discussed over the Brownwood "Republican Controlled" Airwaves ! Why is that ?

Racist extremists active in U.S. military
SPLC urges Rumsfeld to adopt zero-tolerance policy

July 7, 2006 -- Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces.
Department of Defense investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," said one investigator. "That's a problem."

Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.

"Because hate group membership and extremist activity are antithetical to the values and mission of our armed forces, we urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to white supremacy in the military and to take all necessary steps to ensure that the policy is rigorously enforced," Cohen wrote in a letter to Rumsfeld.

Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow soldiers and the general public. Today's white supremacists become tomorrow's domestic terrorists.

"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project.

"We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."

source: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?site_area=1&aid=197