Marine Lieut. charged with murder for killing Iraqi's

[Tgace]

After reading the Time piece a little more thoroughly, im leaning towards it being a "good shoot". In a combat situation where you have a vehicle fleeing the zone, you dont have the luxury of LEO techniques like detain and wait for EOD. You have the BG (personally I would have only had 1 BG check but this guys in a war zone Ill give him a little latitude), check the vehicle in case its booby trapped. That way hes the booby that gets trapped not me. The BG starts acting "hinky" wont follow commands (given in his own language) and makes a sudden move....seems pretty simple to me. If they were cops theyd be up for murder, but this is War and they are Marines.

If you stop the car and initially restrain the occupants until you decide what to do....then you decide to have them search the car....you have to remove the restraints.

 

[ginshun]

It is a shady case, all around. Based on what I have read about it the guy seems justifed in his actions.

One thing that I am sure of, is that whatever the outcome, it sends the message to current troops that they need to hesitate and think twice about there actions, even in the middle of a war zone.

That is the wrong message IMHO.

 

[ginshun]

I heard some more on this last night. Apperently the guy who is the accuser in this case is a guy under the Lt.'s command, that was demoted for poor performance. He also didn't file the complaint/accusation until two months after the incident happened.


Shadier and shadier.

 

[ginshun]

Senator Walter Jones of North Carolina has set forth house resolution 167, calling for the US government to drop all charges against Lt. Pantano.

Here is a link to H.R. 167

(it is in PDF format)

It is short and to the point. Please take the time to read through it, and if you agree call your congressmand and tell him/her to support it.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Oh, just FYI--a Navy SEAL Lieutenant, "Lieutenant L." is on trail in San Diego for the death of a man he and his Team arrested (fair enough--he deserved it, most likely), hooded, beat with their fists and with rifle barrels, then turned over to the CIA at the most famous Baghdad prison.

The CIA apparently chained this guy's wrists behind him, then hung the wrist-chain from a wall hook about eight feet off the ground so that his arms were twisted backwards and up, and continued to beat him. That's how they found him, dead, next morning.

But it's not torture!

 

[Tgace]

What does that have to do with this thread? A little trollish there.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Whoops, my mistake. The fact that a Navy lieutenant has been charged with murder for killing an Iraqi has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that a Marine lieutenant has been charged with murder for killing an Iraqi.

If it did, why, that might show some pattern in our military...fortunately, the Marines are in no way connected to the Navy, and killing one Iraqi has nothing to do with killing another Iraqi, and murder is a totally different crime than...hey, wait a minute...than murder?

Clearly, just another of my leaps of logic.

 

[Tgace]

Two totally different situations...the Marine was in the middle of an active battlefield situation dealing with what he perceived of as a hostile threat. The SEALS had a prisoner in a secure location.

It would be like equating me shooting somebody on the street when he came out of a car with what I though was a gun in his hand (even if it turned out to be a cell phone) to me beating a suspect to death in the station trying to get a confession. Apples and Oranges.

Bringing in an entirely different example, totally outside of the scope of this conversation, with an obviously inflammatory "tone" designed to incite an argument is troll behavior IMO.

If the bridge fits.....

 

[Flatlander]

If it did, why, that might show some pattern in our military...

Well, honestly, you would need to show a demonstrable connection running deeper than the fact that both soldiers operate under the same CIC in order to illustrate a significant connection.

I agree, this is irrelevant. Different circumstances, different commands, different operations, really.

 

[Tgace]

Its an attempt to take every "bad" thing done by a serviceman and equate it to a systematic problem.

If I were to take crime stats. catagorized by race and make a judgement statement about that entire race based on those stats, what would you call me?

 

[RRouuselot]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032357,00.html?promoid=rss_world

I was just wondering what some people on here thought of this situation, and the way it is being handled.

IMO, this is just plain ridiculous. These guys are in a war zone for gods sake! People are getting killed every day, all around them. Now they have to worry about stuff like this.

Couldn't agree more......charging someone in a war zone with murder is kind of like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.

 

[rmcrobertson]

1. Yes--why should we pay attention to that wacky UCMJ, or those simply ABSURD Geneva Accords?

2. Uh...maybe they're both charged with the same thing? And, uh...maybe both accusations have to do with violating the same sections of the UCMJ, and suggest being kinda out-of-control?

 

[Tgace]

OK...why dont you start a "SEALS Charged with murder" thread then?

This one was about if a Marine, in battle, made a justifiable shooting of somebody he believed was a threat. Not about a SEAL who killed a prisoner during interrogation. Apples and Oranges (again)

 

[ginshun]

1. Yes--why should we pay attention to that wacky UCMJ, or those simply ABSURD Geneva Accords?

2. Uh...maybe they're both charged with the same thing? And, uh...maybe both accusations have to do with violating the same sections of the UCMJ, and suggest being kinda out-of-control?

First off, you can't connect two crimes just because they both invoved murder charges brought against military personel. There is absolutly no connection between the two, and IMO there is no pattern. Its like connecting someone shot by a cop in a roadside incident, and someone else killed by a cop from a different department durring an interogation. Does that show that cops like killing people? No, it doesn't, and connecting he situation that you mentioned with the one that this thread is about, is very faulty logic at best.

And how about a link to the case you are talking about? I would actaully like to read some facts of the case, as opposed to taking your version of events at face value. Just because you seem like taking sides agaist our military doesn't mean everyone does.

I short, if you have something to say about Lt. Pantano's case, either for him or against him, then feel free, but don't just throw out random torture allegations against a different person and try to connect the two to try and make him and our military in general out to be the bad guys.

If the case you are talking about is actually one that you are interested in, and have interst in discussing, then start a thread about it.

 

[ninjaboyelroy]

While I have no opinions one way or the other on the specific story referred to in the original thread, i do take issue with the charecterization of Iraq being a "war zone".

The war is over. Saddam is in custody.

The current situation is not a war but, for want of better terms, peacekeeping/making/nation building as well as dealing with an extremely nasty insurgency situation.

 

[ginshun]

Maybe you are right, and it is not technically a "war zone" but for all intensive purposes it is. Especially seeing as how more Americans have died since the war "ended" than did while it was still going on.

 

[PeachMonkey]

Independent of whether these individuals commited murder, the idea that people in a war zone should never be charged with murder is the kind of idea that leads directly to atrocity, to mass murder, and to genocide.

You don't have to be a historian to know this -- I would think that flipping through a grade-school history book, or even occasionally landing on the History Channel, would teach you that.

 

[ginshun]

Did anyone say that soldiers in a war zone should never be charged with murder? I don't think I did.

This thread is about a specific case, where a guy is getting a raw deal. The more you look into it the more it is plain to see. I am not saying that soldiers are incapable of making bad decisions. I am saying that this guy didn't.

A couple of things just smell bad in this case. The fact that the only one making accusations of wrongdoing was a guy who Lt. Pantano demoted a couple months earlier. The fact that Lt. Pantano was given an excellent evaluation and recommended for promotion a couple of months AFTER the accusations were made. The whole case is just a crock IMO, and in a lot of other peoples too.

All opinions are welcome, if you disagree with me, by all means say so, but lets keep the discussion limited to the case at hand.

 

[PeachMonkey]

Did anyone say that soldiers in a war zone should never be charged with murder?

Actually, yes:

charging someone in a war zone with murder is kind of like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.

 

[RRouuselot]

Actually, yes:

Thanks for misquoting me.