"I came over here because I wanted to kill people."

By Andrew Tilghman
Sunday, July 30, 2006; B01

Over a mess-tent dinner of turkey cutlets, the bony-faced 21-year-old private from West Texas looked right at me as he talked about killing Iraqis with casual indifference. It was February, and we were at his small patrol base about 20 miles south of Baghdad. "The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be. I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience. And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever.' "

He shrugged.

"I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing," he went on. "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza.' "

At the time, the soldier's matter-of-fact manner struck me chiefly as a rare example of honesty. I was on a nine-month assignment as an embedded reporter in Iraq, spending much of my time with grunts like him -- mostly young (and immature) small-town kids who sign up for a job as killers, lured by some gut-level desire for excitement and adventure. This was not the first group I had run into that was full of young men who shared a dark sense of humor and were clearly desensitized to death. I thought this soldier was just one of the exceptions who wasn't afraid to say what he really thought, a frank and reflective kid, a sort of Holden Caulfield in a war zone.

But the private was Steven D. Green.

The next time I saw him, in a front-page newspaper photograph five months later, he was standing outside a federal courthouse in North Carolina, where he had pled not guilty to charges of premeditated rape and murder. The brutal killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family in Mahmudiyah that he was accused of had taken place just three weeks after we talked...http://tinyurl.com/jf8v4
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U.S. to move 3,700 troops to Baghdad
By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer

The U.S. command announced Saturday that it was sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell the sectarian violence sweeping the capital, and a U.S. official said more American soldiers would follow as the military gears up to take the streets from gunmen.

The 172nd Stryker Brigade, which had been due to return home after a year in Iraq, will bring quick-moving, light-armored vehicles to patrol this sprawling city of 6 million people, hoping security forces respond faster to the tit-for-tat killings by Shiite militias and Sunni Arab insurgents.
The U.S. military hopes more armor will intimidate gunmen, who in recent weeks have become more brazen in their attacks.

"This will place our most experienced unit with our most mobile and agile systems in support of our main effort," said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "This gives us a potentially decisive capability to affect security in Baghdad."

President Bush said this week that he had decided to send more troops to Baghdad after the surge in reprisal killings began to threaten the unity government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which took power May 20.
The wave of violence has dashed administration hopes for substantial reductions in the 127,000-member U.S. mission in Iraq before the November midterm elections.

According to the United Nations, about 6,000 Iraqis were killed in insurgent or sectarian violence in May and June — despite American hopes that the unity government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds would win public confidence and ease the security crisis...http://tinyurl.com/hrumd
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