Defenders of the good. Meeting interesting new people and killing them. Seen in the OC Register a few days ago:
July 27, 2009 - 12:00 AM Soldiers cite discipline breakdown in IraqThe Associated Press COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Soldiers from an Army unit that had 10 infantrymen accused of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter after returning to civilian life described a breakdown in discipline during their Iraq deployment in which troops killed civilians, a newspaper reported Sunday....
“Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated,” said Daniel Freeman. “You came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley,” an armored fighting vehicle.
Taxi drivers got shot for no reason, and other people were dropped off bridges after interrogations, said Marcus Mifflin, who was eventually discharged with post traumatic stress disorder.
“You didn't get blamed unless someone could be absolutely sure you did something wrong,” he said
...Since 2005, some brigade soldiers also have been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, DUIs, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides.
The unit was deployed for a year to Iraq's Sunni triangle in September 2004. Sixty-four unit soldiers were killed and more than 400 wounded – about double the average for Army brigades in Iraq, according to Fort Carson.
...Anthony Marquez, a friend of Freeman, was the first in his brigade to kill someone after an Iraq tour. In 2006, he used a stun gun to shock a drug dealer in Widefield, Colo., in a dispute over a marijuana sale, then shot and killed him.
Marquez's mother, Teresa Hernandez, warned Marquez's sergeant at Fort Carson that her son was showing signs of violent behavior, abusing alcohol and pain pills and carrying a gun.
“I told them he was a walking time bomb,” she said.
Hernandez said the sergeant later taunted Marquez about her phone call.
“If I was just a guy off the street, I might have hesitated to shoot,” Marquez told The Gazette in the Bent County Correctional Facility, where he is serving a 30-year prison term. “But after Iraq, it was just natural.”
The Army trains soldiers to be that way, said Kenneth Eastridge, an infantry specialist serving 10 years for accessory to murder.
“The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody,” he said. “And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off.”
...Another sergeant shot a man in the head while questioning him, lashed the man's body to his Humvee and drove around the neighborhood.
The Army's criminal investigation division interviewed unit soldiers and said it couldn't substantiate the allegations.
The Army has declared soldiers' mental health a top priority.
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