The investigation into former soldier Steven Green, charged with raping a teenage Iraqi girl and murdering her family, is taking a new turn:

Military officials initially had believed that the three soldiers attacked in the town of Yousifiya were selected because they were in a vulnerable position when separated from the rest of their unit. But as information about the alleged rape-killing has emerged, so have new theories about the kidnapping-murders.

"Was it a target of opportunity or was it a warning: don't do this to our women?" said the military official.

Were the June kidnappings, murders and beheadings of U.S. soldiers in Yousifiya revenge for the March rape and killings in Mahmoudiya? It makes sense to me. The towns are very near each other. But what I don't understand is why only Green was charged. Another soldier, referred to as KP1, also allegedly raped the girl.

by Last Night in Little Rock

For years I wanted to read about the revered Eric Sevareid of CBS News (the reason why below the jump). I collected four books about him, and I'm on vacation reading them. The current biography is from 1995.

I find that in 1965, Morley Safer was covering the Vietnam War for CBS News, and they caputured on film a U.S. Marine using his Zippo lighter to set thatched huts on fire. Back in NYC, the CBS News hierarchy immediately realized the import of what they had, and it ran on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite on August 5, 1965.

Johnson administration officials questioned Safer's loyalty to America and demanded that he be dismissed, but CBS stood by him. Yet it would be a mistake to remember the media's role as one of opposition to the war. For the most part, until 1968, the mainstream media shared the administration's goals. Only gradually did they question first the effectiveness of the means used, and then their morality.

Wikipedia is more blunt:

Safer's report on this event was broadcast on CBS News and was among the first reports to paint a bleak picture of the Vietnam War. President Lyndon Baines Johnson called CBS's president and accused Safer and his colleagues of having "shat on the American flag."

So, TL readers, is de rigeur for those conducting the war of the day to question the loyalty of any American who questions that war, whatever the time period. It belongs to no political party. Apparently never did.

Update: The affidavit in support of the arrest warrant detailing the alleged crimes is here.

Update: Steven D. Green of North Carolina has been charged in federal court with rape and murder:

Federal prosecutors charged a veteran of the Iraq war with murder and rape Monday in connection with the killing of an Iraqi woman and members of her family.
Steven D. Green, a 21-year-old former private first class who was discharged from the Army, appeared in a federal magistrate's courtroom in Charlotte Monday.

More here.

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The Washington Post has new details in the case of the five U.S. soldiers charged with raping an Iraqi girl and killing her family in Mahmudiyah.

Abeer Qasim Hamza was 15 years old. It appears she had been targeted. After raping and killing her they tried to set her on fire.

This is very bad, I sure hope it isn't true. Five U.S. troops are being investigated for rape and murder :

Five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her and three members of her family in Iraq, a U.S. military official said Friday.

The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of assaulting in the March incident, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Site of the incident: Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Just another reason to stop spending so much money on Iraq and take care of our own in need:

Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare - the risk of homelessness. The U.S. government estimates several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night across the country, although the exact number is unknown.

The reasons that contribute to the new wave of homelessness are many: some are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks and roadside bombs; some can't navigate government red tape; others simply don't have enough money to afford a house or apartment

[hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Andrew Sullivan at Time reviews Stephen Miles' book, Oath Betrayed, about doctors who violated the Hippocratic oath by helping to coverup torture of prisoners in Iraq.

Sullivan concludes

After a while, you get numb reading these stories. They read like accounts of a South American dictatorship, not an American presidency. But we learn one thing: once you allow the torture of prisoners for any reason, as this President did, the cancer spreads. In the end it spreads to healers as well, and turns them into accomplices to harm.

That was quick. After writing yesterday about the new Iraqi Government's proposed peace plan to be presented Sunday, 11 insurgent leaders have already rejected it.

Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government.

A senior commander authorised to speak on behalf of other groups warned that they would continue to fight. "As long as there is an occupation and an illegitimate government, the resistance and insurgency will continue," he said.

Newsweek has more on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "master plan."

The Times of London reports it has seen a proposed peace plan the Iraqi Government will submit to the U.N., probably this weekend.

The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal.

The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq; a halt to US operations against insurgent strongholds; an end to human rights violations, including those by coalition troops; and compensation for victims of attacks by terrorists or Iraqi and coalition forces. It will pledge to take action against Shia militias and death squads. It will also offer to review the process of "de-Baathification" and financial compensation for the thousands of Sunnis who were purged from senior jobs in the Armed Forces and Civil Service after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The ACLU filed a freedom of information lawsuit request today seeking information on the Haditha killings of 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children.

The request seeks information about the Haditha incident, about the alleged cover-up of that incident by senior officers, and about other incidents involving the killing of civilians by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request also seeks to ascertain whether military officers attempted to suppress information about these deaths.

Specifically, the request seeks the release of all records relating to the killing of civilians by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan since January 1, 2005, including death certificates, autopsy reports, investigative files, documents related to criminal and administrative proceedings, witness interviews, statistics, policy documents (including "rules of engagement"), paperwork for compensatory payments to relatives of victims, photographs and videos.

As expected, both Senate proposals for a timed exit plan from Iraq were defeated.

The votes, 87 to 13 on one measure and 60 to 39 on the second, reflected not only deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats but within the Democratic ranks as well.

Kerry's bill was the first one voted on. It would have required all troops to be out of Iraq by July 1, 2007.

The second, more generally worded measure was also intended to scale down the American commitment in Iraq. It declared that it was "the sense of the Senate" that redeployment of United States troops from Iraq begin by the end of this year.

Here are the 13 Senators who voted for Kerry's proposal.

7 Marines and one sailor were charged with first degree murder and other crimes this week as the result of the killing of an Iraqi civilian.

In the case of the April killing of an Iraqi civilian, the allegation is that Marines pulled an unarmed man from his home on April 26 and shot him to death without provocation.

That makes 11 members of the military this week charged with murders in Iraq. The investigation into the Haditha killings of 24 civilians is still underway.

80 workers today were kidnapped from a Baghdad factory.

The abduction took place at a state-owned factory complex at Taji where dozens of insurgents commandeered buses taking employees home after work. A source quoted by Reuters news agency said the number of those kidnapped was at least 100 and possibly many more.

It is the latest of a series of mass abductions of workers in Iraq, many of whom have been ransomed or killed.

[hat tip Patriot Daily.]