The specifics of this case are made more sickening by the fact that they did not occur in a vacuum. Several cases of U.S. forces killing unarmed Iraqi civilians are pending in military courts, and they have badly mangled America’s already bad image in the region.

N.Y Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Monday, Aug. 7 — A former American soldier who is accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi and killing her and three members of her family told fellow soldiers that “all Iraqis are bad people” after his unit began taking heavy casualties, according to testimony at an American military hearing on Sunday.

The former soldier, Steven D. Green, a private who was discharged in May after a psychiatric evaluation, also sought help for combat stress while deployed in Iraq, according to his former battalion commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk.

Colonel Kunk was one of four witnesses who testified on Sunday. The hearing, which is expected to continue for several days, is the latest chapter in the prosecution of the case involving Mr. Green and five active-duty soldiers, all of whom are accused of involvement in the rape and killings on March 12 in the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad.

The case, one of several recent ones in which American soldiers have been accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians, has embarrassed the American military, infuriated Iraqis and strained relations between the American authorities in Baghdad and their Iraqi counterparts.

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