Community reactions to the verdict

Rebecca: the jury is deliberating green's guilty now.
i'm pulling for guilty. i think that's the finding the jury will make and i believe it's the finding most will expect if they've followed the case.

Stan: Are they going to find Steven D. Green guilty in Kentucky?
I don't see how they can't. (And he is guilty.) You've got eye witnesses testifying to his part in the gang-rape, to his part in the killings, to his part in planning it, to his bragging about it repeatedly after.
So I don't see an "innocent" verdict coming out of the jury.
But who knows, right?
I would vote guilty.
I think he'll be found guilty.
I'm not sure what the sentence will be, but I do think he's going to be found guilty. (And I think he is and that the prosecution established that.)


Thursday the verdict in Steven D. Green's War Crimes trial was announced and this feature is just gathering some of the community writing from last week. Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, the 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was gang-raped and murdered by US soldiers, has long been a topic at this site and at all community sites.

Kat: The jury found War Criminal Steven D. Green . . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

and guilty.

All counts.



Marcia: Abeer got some justice today. It was a long time coming. March 12, 2006 she was gang-raped while her parents and kid sister were murdered in the next room and then Green joined the gang-rape and followed that by murdering her. Now Green's been found guilty and that is what we all knew to be true. C.I. analyzed the defense's bungled arguments and presentation perfectly this morning.

Betty: Abeer, I am sorry you were gang-raped and killed. I am sorry that you did not live to see 17. I am sorry you were gang-raped and sorry that it happened while you screamed as you heard your sister and parents murdered in the next room.
I am sorry that you, an innocent civilian, saw your life destroyed as a result of this illegal war.
I am sorry that you will never get to pursue your dreams.
I did not forget you over the last couple of years and I will not forget you now. You are my sister always and I do not forget what my country did to you.

Marcia: Abeer will be remembered. Those of us who care will not let her be forgotten.

Mike: That's Steven D. Green and we never dissect him on the news. He's not even mentioned. Elizabeth Edwards is trotting out her "Poor Me" act yet again and the press can't stop talking about that. Elizabeth, stop doing interviews, you are embarrassing yourself. Maybe if the junk news (like Elizabeth and John Edwards) could hit the trash bin, we could get serious talk about war crimes in our media?

Ruth: War Crimes took place.
And shame on all the people -- men and women -- who choose to ignore the ongoing trial in Kentucky of Steven D. Green. But it is especially appalling as a woman who saw the second-wave came alive, as a feminist who really throught the world was changing, to see what so-called 'feminists' of the third-wave choose to write about. It is appalling to notice all the silences. These are the 'feminists' who live on junk food and crap it back out online and want to call that 'doing their part.' It is disgusting.


C.I.: What was done to her family was horrible. What was done to her was even worse. Think about the gang-rape. It starts when her parents and sister are led out of the room. Abeer's fighting and screaming. And then she hears the gunshots. She knows her parents and her sister have been shot. She knows the bullets didn't 'bounce off' so they're either bleeding or dead and she heard screams. Who did Steven D. Green shoot first? Her kid sister? So Abeer heard her mother screaming after the first shot? Or maybe Green took out Abeer's father first in which case she heard her mother and her sister screaming?
As she was being gang-raped.
And then Paul Cortez and James Barker are done with the gang-rape as Steven D. Green enters the room. It's his 'turn.' And she's being raped again and by the man she knows has just killed her parents and her sister. Between the physical pain and the emotional pain, hopefully by that point she was in shock. If she wasn't, she knew he was going to kill her. He's killed everyone else in the house. He's raping her, she's been raped by two other men. He's killed her parents and her sister and now he's got to kill her because she's the last witness.
If she's not in shock, she may be praying they kill her quickly. Not just because of the pain she's in but because two of her brothers aren't home yet. She may be thinking that if it drags out any longer, her younger brothers will come home and they'll be the next murdered.
Who knows what was going through her head or if she was in such a state of shock that she wasn't even thinking at that point?
We don't know and none of our outlets have bothered to treat her like the person she was and to consider it from her point of view. They've largely ignored her. I'm glad the Times finally mentions her name today and, considering the paper's record, I won't blame the reporters for waiting until paragraph thirteen to mention her name. That's not what reporters generally do. They generally give a name and then use "she" and "her". They don't open with "she" and "her" and continue to use those for paragraph after paragraph. It's unnatural and it feels like editing. So I'm not going to blame them for it and I will applaud them for getting her name into the paper.
But even today, when she's finally in the paper, someone's made the call that she's not worth naming until pargraph thirteen of a fourteen paragraph story. Even when her name finally makes the New York Times, she's pretty much an unnamed extra in what should be her story.

Trina: On the issue of getting the word out on the case, I want to take a moment to note three people.
I'll start with Brett Barrouquere of AP who has covered this story since 2006. He had not yet hit the three year mark but it was looming. A great deal of what the world learned about all the trials on these War Crimes came from Barrouquere. He was also the only reporter from the MSM who covered Green's trial each day.
I want to note Evan Bright. He covered every day of the trial as well. Bright is a high school senior. C.I. heard about him from friends at the US AG and they interviewed him for Third ("Evan Bright Puts Big Media To Shame"). Bright doesn't think he'll end up being a reporter after college but, if you ask me, he's a natural with real talents. I do hope someone's advised him to include his coverage of the trial as part of his college application.
Third? C.I. C.I. never let go of this story. She was on it when it started and she regularly called out the lies and the silences. For nearly three years. She knows the case incredibly well and has the facts down pat. In part due to a friend who needed help researching Green for a movie but also because that's C.I. She did an amazing job. When no one was covering it, she was on it. This month and last, her coverage included reporting on an analyzing court filings up through the court orders for some witnesses on the prosecution's list. She walked you through the judge refusing to allow some of the more ludicrous lines of defense Green's attorneys wanted to make. That was reporting. And she's the only one who did that. No one else went through those court documents and reported on them. When she started doing that in April, she was hoping to build some interest in Abeer outside the TCI community. Thinking covering Green's ridiculous requests would peek interest. That really didn't happen. But she covered Abeer and when the trial started, she made sure Abeer was mentioned each trial day repeatedly to ensure Abeer wasn't forgotten.


Like Cedric and Wally, in "Steven D. Green convicted" and "THIS JUST IN! CONVICTED!," we'll emphasize Trina's remarks. Jody e-mailed asking about that and Wally's mother saw Trina's post, called Wally and asked if he and Cedric had finished their joint-post? When Wally said no, his mother asked him to consider including Trina's comments in it. Wally and Cedric read the above and realized that said it all.