A former Wall Street trader who rejoined the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks will not be tried on murder charges for killing two suspected Iraqi insurgents, a Marine general decided Thursday.
The decision by Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, commander of the 2nd Marine Division based at Camp Lejeune, ends the prosecution of 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, whom prosecutors accused of killing the men without justification.
What was ABC news thinking reporting this? Everyone knows there are hundreds of thousands of soliers and sailors and not everyone of them has been accused of murder. Why is this news?
Why was he even on trial? Until I see a Marine manual saying this is acceptable, I don’t want to see any more of these trials. Doesn’t ABC news know that prosecutors sometimes lie and their only goal is to get convictions, so of course they are going to charge people with murder? This is news?
Why, we built painted a school today in Mosul. Why isn’t that news?
Damn liberal media with their anti-military bias.
*** Update ***
I realize now that I spelled soldiers wrong in one of the first paragraphs, spelling it ‘soliers.’ Using the new media standards, you can thus dismiss this entire post because of the small factual error.
*** Update ***
For the humor impaired, this was supposed to be a joke.
*** Update ***
On a serious note, via Ace, I see that these charges were pretty much bullshit from the get go, and that the NY Metro likened Mr. Pantano’s calling to the Marines akin to his being in a ‘sleeper cell.’
It is no easy job defending a free and open press when they can’t restrain themselves and all to often make idiotic statements like this.
Like a damned sleeper cell? Unconscionable.
Jeff
Good Lord (and I say that in a general, agnostic, haven’t been to church except for weddings and funerals in five years kinda way), I’m wondering if the guy who I’ve been telling people mirrors my opinions on the unfortunate direction of the Republican party is actually turning into a whiter, thinner Oliver Willis.
John Cole
It was supposed to be a joke.
Jeff
I understand that. So was mine.
Jeez, some people need a map.
Gary Farber
“…that the NY Metro likened Mr. Pantano’s calling to the Marines akin to his being in a ‘sleeper cell.'”
John, I’m wondering if you read the whole article. If so, do you regard it as generally a slam at Pantano? You’ve served, and I haven’t, so I’d quite like to know, particularly since you felt it worthwhile to slam the piece and magazine as “unconscionable.” What do you think of the entire piece?
J. Caesar
I still found the whole incident troubling. I don’t believe it was murder, and this soldier shouldn’t have been courtmartialed, but General Patton should give him a good whack to the back of his head.
I don’t understand his thinking on two points:
#1. I don’t understand why if they feared the car was rigged with explosives they allowed the prisoners to search it. I figure with the rash of suicide bombers, if they had the trunk loaded with C4 why wouldn’t they detonate it?
So you’d think the marines would have been pretty far away, just in case. But if they were that far away, how would they have heard them talking?
Just seems like a bad idea overall.
Secondly… Whether it was murder or not… the guy wasted two clips of ammo. How many clips does he carry? What if they’d been ambushed and had to fall back to the house for cover until rescued. Wouldn’t he want the ammo for soemthing important like that?