A smear that prospered far too long
By ARTHUR HERMAN
NY POST EXCERPT:
Last Updated: 10:57 PM, December 19, 2011
Posted: 10:43 PM, December 19, 2011
Five years late, Ilario Pantano has been fully vindicated. Now where does he go to get his reputation back?
A dogged NCIS investigator has proven that Pantano, then a Marine lieutenant, should never have been put up on war-crimes charges back in 2004-5. But that doesnt wipe away the endless smears thrown at him since.
Maybe the media and the bloggers hated him so much because he lived the classic American success story.
Born to a poor family in Hells Kitchen, Pantano showed the smarts to get a half-scholarship to the elite Horace Mann School then put off college to join the Marines in the first Gulf War.
After that tour, he came back and worked nights to finish college, then landed a job at Goldman Sachs until he re-enlisted shortly after 9/11.
In April 2004, 2nd Lt. Pantano was leading his squad in Iraqs deadly Sunni Triangle when they stopped two Iraqis fleeing in a car from what turned out to be an insurgent ammo dump. Pantano ordered the pair to search their own vehicle to make sure it wasnt booby-trapped. When they charged at him instead, he opened fire.
But one Marine, a disgruntled sergeant Pantano had disciplined more than once, claimed the two men had been kneeling and that Pantano shot them from behind. All other testimony contradicted him, yet that was the witness the Judge Advocate Generals investigating officer chose to believe when he charged Pantano with murder.
<<<SNIP>>>
Pantano lost in the general election, and might have faded into oblivion except for William Rodriguez of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, whod always been bothered by the lynch mob atmosphere, as he put it, surrounding Pantanos trial, as well as the fact that thered been no autopsy of the two Iraqis.
After five years of trying, Rodriguez finally convinced the Marines to exhume the bodies, and this last month proved that the two men had indeed been shot from the front, not the behind.
Five years too late, Ilario Pantano has finally found justice as have those Marines accused in the Haditha case, who had the charges against them dropped over time, as well.
But two nagging questions remain. When will the media quit treating every war incident involving Americans as if it were My Lai? And when will our military justice system stop second-guessing our troops on the battlefield and let them do their job?
End Excerpt
Good job Special Agent Rodriguez!
By ARTHUR HERMAN
NY POST EXCERPT:
Last Updated: 10:57 PM, December 19, 2011
Posted: 10:43 PM, December 19, 2011
Five years late, Ilario Pantano has been fully vindicated. Now where does he go to get his reputation back?
A dogged NCIS investigator has proven that Pantano, then a Marine lieutenant, should never have been put up on war-crimes charges back in 2004-5. But that doesnt wipe away the endless smears thrown at him since.
Maybe the media and the bloggers hated him so much because he lived the classic American success story.
Born to a poor family in Hells Kitchen, Pantano showed the smarts to get a half-scholarship to the elite Horace Mann School then put off college to join the Marines in the first Gulf War.
After that tour, he came back and worked nights to finish college, then landed a job at Goldman Sachs until he re-enlisted shortly after 9/11.
In April 2004, 2nd Lt. Pantano was leading his squad in Iraqs deadly Sunni Triangle when they stopped two Iraqis fleeing in a car from what turned out to be an insurgent ammo dump. Pantano ordered the pair to search their own vehicle to make sure it wasnt booby-trapped. When they charged at him instead, he opened fire.
But one Marine, a disgruntled sergeant Pantano had disciplined more than once, claimed the two men had been kneeling and that Pantano shot them from behind. All other testimony contradicted him, yet that was the witness the Judge Advocate Generals investigating officer chose to believe when he charged Pantano with murder.
<<<SNIP>>>
Pantano lost in the general election, and might have faded into oblivion except for William Rodriguez of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, whod always been bothered by the lynch mob atmosphere, as he put it, surrounding Pantanos trial, as well as the fact that thered been no autopsy of the two Iraqis.
After five years of trying, Rodriguez finally convinced the Marines to exhume the bodies, and this last month proved that the two men had indeed been shot from the front, not the behind.
Five years too late, Ilario Pantano has finally found justice as have those Marines accused in the Haditha case, who had the charges against them dropped over time, as well.
But two nagging questions remain. When will the media quit treating every war incident involving Americans as if it were My Lai? And when will our military justice system stop second-guessing our troops on the battlefield and let them do their job?
End Excerpt
Good job Special Agent Rodriguez!
