Word: barkers
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...discipline, four soldiers from the 1-502nd's 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, would perpetrate one of the worst war crimes known to have been committed by U.S. forces during the Iraq war, or any war for that matter. On March 12, 2006, Specialist Paul Cortez, Specialist James Barker, Private First Class Jesse Spielman and Private First Class Steven Green raped 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamzah Rashid al-Janabi and murdered her, her parents and her 6-year-old sister...
Specialist James Barker described the paradoxical yet typical swings combat-weary soldiers have between thinking they are doomed and thinking they are invincible. "I knew I was going to die, it was just a matter of time, so I just didn't care. I would run straight at somebody shooting at me instead of taking cover. That was my mentality: I'm already dead so, f___ it, what can anybody do to me? I'd gotten shot at so many times and blown up so many times, and hadn't taken a scratch that it's like...
...March 12, Green was pulling predawn guard in the gun truck at TCP2. He'd been up for 18 hours. "I've had it," he thought to himself. This was it. Not long after, he was hanging out with Barker and Cortez in the courtyard area...
...Barker agreed...
...better idea," he said. "We've all killed hadjis," Barker said, using an epithet common among soldiers for Iraqis, "but I've been here twice and I still never f___ed one of these bitches." Cortez's interest was piqued. They talked about it, the three of them, semiseriously but somewhat distractedly as they did other things throughout the rest of the morning. Sometimes Barker and Cortez would confer privately, sometimes Green and Barker would, and sometimes all three of them would talk...