Green, accused of raping and murdering an teenage Iraqi girl, is from Midland Texas. He is a high school dropout and was recently discharged honorably due to a personality disorder.
Speaking in general terms, Veterans Outreach Counseling Center team leader Kent Knight said 15 to 20 percent of Midland veterans returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom have received counseling at his agency.
Knight said 15 to 20 percent of veterans returning from the war are having problems adjusting to life after the war. “The remaining 85 percent may be having it but don’t want anyone to know about it. If they admit to their family they are having a problem, that’s pretty much the end of it,” he said.
15 to 20 percent of returnees need help?. That’s some serious wreckage. Those are the ones in serious pain too. I worked the oil fields in Midland for a year in ’75, it wasn’t a huggy-kissy kind of place where you talk about your feelings. Maybe it’s changed, but for oil field workers, ranchers, rednecks, etc. to go to war, come back, and have 15-20% needing help (that the military isn’t providing) means something horrific is going on over there.
Things are well beyond horrific for Iraqis of course, for the remaining family of the 14 year old girl who was forced to watch family members be murdered before she was raped and slaughtered. Yet many of the current prosecutions happened because other soldiers were sickened by what they saw and went to the authorities. What happens when they come home? Nightmares for years? Alcohol and drug abuse? We’re already seeing homeless in LA who are Iraq war vets…
Rich man’s war
“Bobby had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm
Red white and blue to the bone when he landed in Kandahar
Left behind a pretty young wife and a baby girl
A stack of overdue bills and went off to save the world
Been a year now and he’s still there
Chasin’ ghosts in the thin dry air
Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war”
— Steve Earle
[tags]Steven Green[/tags]