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. 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.
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 in June 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 been charged with complicity in the crime.
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.
Even the most psychologically fit recruits have buckled under the stress of watching their buddies die around them. 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, the 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.
