Being All He Could Be

Today's WaPo Outlook section has a truly disturbing interview conducted by Andrew Tilghman with Steven Green three weeks before he raped and killed an Iraqi girl. Tilghman says that the interview was nothing that struck him as out of the ordinary at the time, despite how disturbing it is to us. Tilghman notes that at the time, at that place, the cold-bloodedness and mentally disturbing language Green used seemed to Tilghman as "chiefly a rare example of honesty."

In addition to publishing the interview, which shows an incredibly unstable mental personality at work, Tilghman provided the interview (without revealing Green's name) to three mental health professionals for their analysis. Their analysis is all the more frightening to me when you look at Green's answers as Tilghman did at the time as a "rare example of honesty."

Did you know that one-sixth of the troops being accepted into the military today are brought in on wavers. That is three out of every 20 troops are men or women who would not ordinarily be considered for military service.

How many of those waved-through troops are mental time bombs?

Excerpts from Green's interview:

"I came over here because I wanted to kill people. . . . The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be. I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience. And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever.' .

"I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was nothing. Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'"