Steven Green stands accused of horrible crimes. Combat stress can do some terrible things to the human mind, but it seems from reports like this young man went wrong a long time before he arrived in Iraq.
Green clearly faced daily danger. He watched fellow soldiers die in front of him.
He described how after an attack on their traffic checkpoint, he and several others pushed one wounded man into the back seat of a Humvee and put Casica, who had a bullet wound in his throat, on the truck’s hood. Green flung himself across Casica to keep the dying soldier from falling off as they sped back to the base.
“We were going, like, 55 miles an hour and I was hanging on to him. I was like, ‘Sgt. Casica, Sgt. Casica.’ He just moved his eyes a little bit,” Green related with a breezy candor. “I was just laying on top of him, listening to him breathing, telling him he’s okay. I was rubbing his chest. I was looking at the tattoo on his arm. He had his little girl’s name tattooed on his arm.
None of what he experienced excuses the crime he is accused of. The wheels of justice are turning, but there are many unanswered questions, not least of which is – how could a crime like this have been pulled off? Where were the NCOs and officers? What happened to the moral compasses of those involved, assuming they had them to begin with?