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| Combat Marines Defend Pantano |
| Thursday, March 03, 2005 |
A U.S. Marine being investigated for murdering Iraqi citizens has received strong support from his fellow combat soldiers and officers who believe the charges are bogus.
A special investigative hearing will soon be held about the actions of Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano relating to the deaths of two Iraqi during combat in Fallujah in April of 2004.
Time magazine recently noted, "[This] trial will be one of the most closely watched of any to come out of the Iraq war."
Sometime in the next couple of months, Lt. Pantano will appear before a Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 32 investigating officer at Camp Lejeune, N.C. At issue: are there reasonable grounds to believe Pantano committed the offenses of a pair of premeditated murders on April 15, 2004 while serving as a platoon commander in Iraq?
As he did as an infantry platoon commander in Iraq, Pantano will be fighting for his life, this time in a military courtroom, not the bloody streets of Iraq where Marines have been engaged in the worst kind of close-in urban warfare.
The preliminary hearing will be open to the public and so, most likely, will a general court-martial, should it follow, noted Time. "This one will get tried on TV - not at some small base in the middle of nowhere," said a former Marine lawyer.
Marines Rally to Pantano
According to the Time report, many of Pantano's fellow officers believe that the case reflects the gap between the way military leaders prefer to portray the war in Iraq to the public and the grim, blood-and-guts way it is actually being fought.
"The single biggest problem with the Iraq operation is that the military is at war but the nation is not," sums up one officer.
Several Marine officers who served with Pantano in Iraq, and who spoke to TIME on condition of anonymity, criticized the Marines for pursuing the case. Pantano, they maintain, had two choices. He could hold fire and risk his life and those of his men, or shoot to kill.
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posted by J.R. @ 5:33:00 PM   |
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