Battleland

Afghan Massacre Suspect: News From Home

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Spc. Ryan Hallock

Time’s Bonnie Rochman files from Seattle on Afghan massacre suspect Robert Bales:

In 2007, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales participated in a bloody, two-day battle in Iraq in which 250 enemy troops died. After the bullets stopped flying, he and his comrades pitched in to assist the wounded and their families. “We ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us,” Bales recounted for the Northwest Guardian, the official newspaper of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., where he is a soldier in the 3rd (Stryker) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. “I think that’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy.”

Now, about five years later, much has changed. Bales stands accused of being the bad guy, allegedly stealing out of his base near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the early morning hours of March 11, and going house-to-house in search of people to kill. He reportedly found 16, setting some of the bodies aflame. Nine of the dead were children. That statistic is particularly horrifying: Bales is a father of two preschoolers, ages 3 and 4.