A sad end to a brutal story
Barstow's Sgt. Paul E. Cortez has agreed to plead guilty to many charges against him for his role in the rape and killing of an Iraqi teen and the killing of her family in a village outside Baghdad in 2006. Five soldiers altogether have been charged with various crime in the deaths.
Though there are still bureaucratic details to slog through and a possible trial for Cortez to defend against the charge that the murders were premeditated, it's safe to say that the main of the news on this issue has come and gone. The ending is not one that Barstow residents would have preferred.
It is interesting to note the restraint shown during the evaluation and development of this case. We suspected when we first reported on the charges that there would be efforts to politicize the crimes. That hasn't happened. We haven't heard people holding up this horrible crime as some sort of example about the military's efforts in Iraq.
The Associated Press, however, did analyze the situation that led up to the killings. Former Pfc. Steven Green, treated by some as the ringleader of the attack, had been diagnosed as "homicidal" by a military health team three months before the killings. He was given small doses of a drug to help regulate his mood, and that was about it.
It's particularly hard to try to go back and try to armchair quarterback the way a soldier's mental state should be handled. Frustration breeds the kind of generalized solution that we intellectually know won't work: "Just kill them all," or "Just lock them all up." We've all said things like this. We know deep down these tactics don't work, but it's the frustration speaking.
In this case, the soldiers apparently acted in an extremely brutal, unbelievable fashion to their frustrations. Cortez is taking responsibility for his role. In all likelihood he'll be spending the rest of his life in prison. While we condemn this despicable massacre, Cortez's admission of responsibility speaks to the better side of his nature as told to us by his family and friends.
Whether this case is an isolated example of the appropriate leaders not responding to a mental health issue or indicative of a deeper problem, we can't say. We can only hope the military is looking at how Green's case was handled and learning how to keep soldiers from being mentally overwhelmed from the violence they have to face.
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