Why would anyone disagree with your premise? Yeah, I've held my tongue for a long time as well but I've been a silent supporter of the 2dLt throughout. I do agree with you that this is best for all concerned. There could be no other option for a man of integrity and one mindful of his Duty.
Where we may cross paths is in the fact that I personally do not believe this case should've ever made it to the Art 32 hearing to begin with. Basically the field investigation was thrown back into the teeth of the actual officers in the field that made no such Art 32 hearing recommendation. This entire case was politically motivated from the star witness to the prosecution. Five months after the fact?
Also the two in question were known muj and were caught leaving a building containing a full array of weapons and bomb making materiel. They were not innocents regardless of reports to the contrary. 2/2 was in the AO for the second time and had a strong intel network established. I give you the point that there's no way you could've known that without being there. It's not relevant to the case as much as it is to the character of the 2dLt. Or lack of character as some have so vociferously proclaimed from their warm chairs stateside.
And now no one wins. Least of all the Grunts that have to break in a new shavetail in combat. Regardless of the actions of the 2dLt his experience and leadership will be sorely missed.
There is one resignation missing that needs to be procured. Until that happens this whole ordeal will never be laid to rest and I hope that for the first time in this whole fiasco the Corps does what's right and proper. Before it creates problems that can cause further harm to the BN.
pre·med·i·tat·ed [ pree méddi tàytəd ]
adjective
planned: not committed in a moment of passion or mindlessness, for example, intense rage or drunkenness, but thought out and decided on beforehand
Just my opinion and mine alone. Take it or leave it as you see fit! - JHD
The way history interprets this case is still up for discussion. My opinion is that the officers whom I have known are a fine cut of men and women. I learned to trust them by sharing experiences which remain with me to this date.
JarheadDad,
You are right. there should have never been an A32 for the Murder Charges. And I am sure we would have never heard of this if an A32 was opened for the other stuff.
Rudy,
That is the only way to learn to respect someone. You can always respect someone's rank but that doesn't but learning to respect the person is something else.
I read that Coburn was now moving into aviator training. Why is this Marine not being punished for his actions? I'm guessing this is who jarhead DAd is talking about.
I agree with your insights Mustang.
Regardless of these guys being muj..once dead...there is no need for further overkill - no pun intended.
He acted accordingly - up to a point - then he let emotion overcome reason and discipline. This cannot be tolerated in the military or chaos ensues.
Mustang - you are spot on when you say - "these are the tactics of the bad guys. This is immoral and should not be tolerated. Remember the US Contractors that were hung in the streets. This is not the actions of a leader in the US Military. This is a poor example to set for the troops."
We are NOT them..and we must never forget that. We need to be held to a higher standard..even in times of combat...and we must uphold that higher standard...especially with an unlawful enemy who uses women and children as shields, and claims that the killing of women children and civilians is justified by Jihad!
I have no doubt that a backroom deal was cut, Lt P. resigned in exchange for charges being dropped.
And yeah a book deal and movie is already in the works!
Mustang,
I think your take is perfect,he went over board AND is innocent of murder.
I am afraid this Lt. will be "paying " for this for years to come in his own mind.
He did go a little to far. I do agree there. But I can't judge him for that. I am not there. I do not go through day to day life feeling I may be shot around the next corner. It was not me there holding them at bay. I don't worry about being blown up within the next few minutes. I can say with the pressure of all that I would not be thinking logically every second.
I agree,but Mustang has a valid point from a command angle,too.
My own view of me is I am not fit to command troops and couldn't hold a candle to Lt. Pantano's courage.
I paid a small part of his defense costs,so I revere his service. He definitely should never have been charged with murder,IMO.
I agree with your take a 100 percent! This would have never made the light of day if he hadn't gone hog wild afterwards with the trigger and the sign. We can't afford to look like a bunch of manics these days. These little black marks add up, with being a somewhat transparent military, we need to show our good side. If you think you might regret something you're about to do later, don't do it. Bunch of this stuff is coming back to bite people in the ass, sometimes years later.
I concur with your assessment; I immediately thought of the same scenario when I first read the news. I'm former Navy (O-4) with legal officer experience.
I'm an Honorably-Discharged Veteran; but the closest I ever got to combat was standing SAC Alerts in Upstate New York. I know that's not close enough.
Lt. Pantano's actions might not meet with the Marquis of Queensbury's approval; but I'm not able to say it was wrong. Adrenalin does a lot to change one's outlook...
I understand some people are saying the two dead guys are innocent... some are saying they had contraband in their vehicle... I wasn't there; but it seems the only guy complaining about Pantano was a guy who should have lost this NCO status for not maintaining security in a combat area...
I wonder if you Gentle Readers know US and Japanese soldiers crucified each other on Guadalcanal? War is not a sterile environment. It takes a massive pschological change to take Americans and change them into efficient killers. It is not pretty; but it is necessary to sacrifice some to allow the rest of us to quietly sip our lattes at StarBucks.
We don't want pseudo-philosophers defending us. We'll end up as lampshades or landfill. The anti-war crowd have proven again and again that they hate us more than they value our freedoms. And none of them would fall on a grenade to save their own mother, much less another soldier...
I fear that we may no longer be the same, strong, united country we were when we fought Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini; but that's no excuse for maligning the men and women who are sacrificing their lives to keep the fight away from our homes...
I'll sit down and shut up now...
If you ain't been there don't question his actions/. Self preservation is 99%, the other 1% is being scared shitless.
JTB & Al bee,
I completely respect and understand your opinions in the matter and I furthermore feel they are very valid opinions. In most situations, I come to the same conclusion that you guys do, but for some reason (probably my training for this mission) I don't feel that way this time.
So while in this case I don't agree with you, I by no means am discounting your opinions.
And I also thank you for feeling free to share your disagreements. I knew they were out there somewhere.
lets see now: "While rolling in and strafing the troops in the tree-line with your 20 mikemike you hosed them with a two-second burst-wouldn't a one second burst have been sufficient? That's overkill, a waste of government resources isn't it?"
Ah yes, "excessive force" in the eyes of the non-participants. SUCH IS THE WAY TO MADNESS. And, as previously noted, the
immediate commanders-the people who normaly initiate Art 32 proceedings-were overruled. This fact alone causes one to look for the location of the skunk, which in this case would probably be the CG 2ndMAR DIV and his staff who apparently initiated the charges. The fact that he backed down has apparently overshadowed the shoddy handling of the preparation of the charges by this very same guy in the first place. Sounds very PC on the front end and very CYA on the back end to me.
The fact that autopsies were not even completed until the ART 32 hearings were over(as opposed to prior to filing charges) speaks volumes.
Were I POTUS (and I am obviously not) I would have this two-star, his advisory JAG staff, anyone in DOD up to, and incl the SecDef, and anyone in the Justice Dept who signed off on laying these charges, separated from the service within 24 hrs and redused one rank for pay purposes.
RVD: a 30-round magazine is TEN trigger pulls (at 3/burst) to empty. Drop the empty, pull a spare out of your web, insert and hit the bolt release. Then pull the trigger ANOTHER ten times.
At some point it should have occurred to Pantano that enough was enough. Either it did, and he decided to continue firing anyway, or it didn't... either way, I don't like what that says about him. No-one's counting seconds here. This isn't a matter of 'four seconds instead of two'. Inability or unwillingness to control one's actions, in or out of combat, is a major weakness in an officer.
And has it occurred to you that maybe the reason it took so long to bring him to trial, was that the brass were desperately hoping that either it would all blow over or that he would resign and save the Corps the embarassment (to him AND to his service) of having to try him publicly? Or does it HAVE to be a conspiracy?
Hi there!
I just wanted to clear something up. There seems to be a lot of talk about Coburn going to an air wing. I don't have confirmation on that yet, but I think the rumor started because of a post on my blog discussing the second character witness for the prosecution, Lt. Graham Hopkins, who was a classmate of Pantano in OCS.
Lt. Hopkins never made it to the stand because it was discovered that he was just like Coburn in that he was a highly substandard troop with a grudge against Pantano. Hopkins, in fact, graduated 175 out of 192 in that OCS class; with a leadership score of 192 - the absolute bottom.
Hopkins is currently in flight training at Pensacola, and I think that some people are mixing up the two and thinking that Coburn is being transferred to an air wing.
If someone knows something I don't, please let me know; however, as far as I know, this is simply a mixup. What I was told is that Coburn will in all probability be released from the Marines due to MOS incompetence; due to the negative reviews he received from Pantano and others in the chain before and after the shooting.
I'm afraid that I have to disagree with Mustang23, a soldier for whom I have a great deal of respect, at least in terms of his feeling that there was a lack of proportionality in Lt Pantono's response. I'm not convinced, at least from what I've seen in the case, that 2 mags worth of ammo was overkill. The 5.56mm NATO round is woefully ineffective as an immediate manstopper, and I can certainly envision a situation where, even after 30 rounds, a human body or two is still moving around - in the worst case scenario, with enough conscious control to move a finger and detonate a remote controlled IED in the car before expiring.
If he was justified in shooting at all - and I strongly believe that he was - he was justified in shooting until all movement ceased and the two threats were completely, totally and finally dead.
If I were in the same situation - faced with a potential carbomb and two men who appeared threatening, and who could potentially have a device as small as a keyring door opener that required as little as a single slight finger push to detonate the carbomb - I don't think that I would fire a few rounds and stop to evaluate the situation. I would fire until both bodies were conclusively incapable of any further movement. And, to be honest, I doubt that I would even notice that I had changed magazines. For a well drilled marksman, a magazine change is a pretty automatic act.
I wasn't there, but my interpretation is that the nature of the enemy dictated his response - for the enemy to threaten his life and the life of his men did not require an obvious, overt gesture like pulling the pin of a grenade or pointing a weapon - all it required was that the enemy press a button on a concealed detonator.
The cyclic fire rate on an M-4 is 600 rounds per minute, or 10 rounds a second, or 3 seconds per magazine - and it takes less than a second for a trained shooter to make a magazine change. Again, I wasn't there, but the whole thing could easily have taken place in far less than 10 seconds, under the extreme stress of close quarters combat, within killing range of a potential carbomb. I'm not willing to second guess the number of of rounds fired under those circumstances. (And to DaveP's pointt, the reports I've seen indicate that he was armed with an M-4, not the M-16A2 with its ridiculous burst mode, so emptying a mag would require one trigger operation, not 10.)
Which leaves only the calling card as a possible offense. Was leaving the calling card wrong? Maybe - it's certainly something that US units have done in past wars. I don't know what the RoE says about it, but absent a clear prohibition in the RoE, I don't think it's a sufficiently heinous to be career ending. And I don't think that it would have been, absent the hysteria over the premeditated murder charge.
I do think that Mustang23 nails it when he says that "this has been a black mark on the Corps and needs to be buried." I also agree with him
(sorry about the split comment - haloscan truncated the first one.)
that, given the media attention that would have followed him around, Pantano would have been ineffective as a combat leader. At this point, whether or not there was a quid pro quo agreement, I don't think that he had a real alternative to resignation - given the embarrassment the Corps caused itself through him, had Lt. Pantano stayed on, he would have been a pariah in the Corps, and certainly would not have been afforded a opportunity for a meaningful career.
I disagree with Mustang23 over the root cause, however. Absent some detail that hasn't been made public, I don't think Pantano's actions that day have been demonstrated to have been wrong. (It would be different, for example, if it came out that Pantano had paused, ensured the two men were dead, and then fired into their corpses to mutilate them, or if it came out that the RoE emphasised that calling cards were prohibited. But I haven't seen anything like that established in the reports I've read about the incident.) I think that the Corps overreacted to the potential media response if Coburn went public with an allegation of murder (which is why I believe the commanders on the ground were overruled) and Pantano paid the price.
Maybe, given Coburn's allegations, the Corps had no choice but to prefer charges, and given the media attention those charges engendered, maybe Pantano had no choice but to resign. I'm not convinced, though, that the whole situation couldn't have been handled in a way that preserved the career of a good combat officer and ended that of a substandard NCO, instead of the other way around.
And, while I agree that a "poor example to the troops" has been set, I think that it has been set by a Marine Corps JAG officer somewhere who has let the troops know that, if they resort to automatic weapons fire in close quarters combat, they stand the chance of being subjected to excessive and automatically career-ending scrutiny over that choice.
A wise old sergeant major once told me that "you may love the Army, but don't make the mistake of thinking that the Army loves you back," and I think that applies here to the Marine Corps as well. Pantano loved the Corps, but when, at least from what I know of the case, through no fault of his own, he became a liability to them, they cut him away like a screaming bag-lock. The Marine Corps has a fine sense of public relations, and I think that in this case, they let that overcome their sense of honor.
I'm a civilian far from Iraq, though I have experience growing up in India - if that makes any sense - what I mean is I've been in places that are pretty alien and inhabited by (sometimes angry crowds) Moslems and Hindus.
I don't think that the Lt. P should have been called-up on this or had it taken this far, and agree that now the Marines should let it go.
As far as I can tell proportionality is a relative scale, and especially in Iraqi circumstances where what I see are beheadings and bomb-murder that is commonplace, this event fits indistinguishably into the scene.
As a shooter on a club of semi-long distance paper-punchers I read gun magazines, and as an off-road motorcyclist I have competed in enduros - what that experience says to me is that in the heat of things, sometimes it's hard to just let go of the throttle and grab the brakes, sometimes a hand thrust backwards just keeps on grabbing for "it", and you get an out-of-control wheelie with the front brake locked.
I understand only a microscopic fragment about stress, exhaustion, and its effects - for me it makes it hard to keep the front end from washing out when it comes down.
I've also never fired a full-auto weapon, my CMP M1-Garand is a semi, but I've heard of people having theirs "double" and more, and have been cautioned to watch for that and be ready to hold on, just in case.
Anyhow, this non-combatant non-Vet is thankful for all you-guys' work on our behalf, and regret especially the apparently brain-dead ungrateful ones around me.
Maybe its just me, but I don't think I'll be buying that book.
From a mental health perspective, his reaction is completely normal. The person who calculates and shoots off 3 rounds (just enough force)worries me MUCH more than this guy. He was angry, a bit scared and lashing out. I would rather have him living next door than the grunt who is calculating. People do NOT understand you don't just turn people on and off with the mentality for killing. Either they are disassocating (depersonalizing) to pull the trigger which leads to MORE Psychiatric problems OR embrace the fact that they killed someone and tuck that little TRAUMA away until the post office makes you made. This guy got it out! He dealt with it right then and there. It frightens me that the marine impression of these "court martials" will do more to induce sociopaths upon their return. Those Marines whose emotions have a very narrow range, they are indifferent to the possibility of physical pain or many punishments and show no indications that they experience fear when so threatened. These folks will be a problem coming home. Resigning from active duty is great for him, but ultimately (and I disagree with your premise) harmful to his subordinates. It instills that depersonalizing events is the Marine way. Fear is not a bad thing, anger can be good. Aristotle said "Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way... that is not easy." The point is human emotion. Varying degrees of response to emotional crisis is so variable. Different in every person. I would want my leader to be someone who expresses anger in the right direction. Anger is a powerful tool! The bipolar nature of human behavior ESPECIALLY in battle, is not easily managed. You war for peace, you kill to live, you hunt so your not hunted, You mourn and rejoice (for survival), destoy for restoration, it goes on and on. Every time I see a soldier who served in Iraq, my heart really goes out for them. They have either suppressed emotions (a time bomb), indifferent to the events (slowly detonation) or emotional (in prison). One way or another, it gets you. Your coming home and I am an advocate for you, because one day you will need someone to be your advocate. The VA gets Vietnam Vets in, MANY times, years after the fighting was over. Some are coming in because trauma from news reports kick in the PTSD. Psychologist (VA)question their motives (I have seen this). No, I would rather you act on the emotion, deal with consequences when its over. The old adage rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6 is so true for the warrior. The gravity of war alone inherently possesses the critique of those benefiting from it.
I'm sorry, but this blog entry made an inexcusable omission of critical facts in the case. The "2 gentlemen" who "rushed up to Pantano" had previously been apprehended and handcuffed by Pantano and his men; they were prisoners of war, and as such Pantano was obligated to protect them from harm.
Instead, for reasons known only to himself, Pantano released them and ordered them to search a vehicle that his own men had already searched to the point of removing seats. In the course of this second search of dubious necessity, Pantano claims that he came belatedly to the realization that the two men, while relieved of their bonds, posed a threat to him, and he killed them.
If the whole thing was not a plot by Pantano to murder the men, then it was an extremely bone-headed lapse in professionalism and minimal concern for safety: Pantano, let me be very clear, is either a murderer or an idiot.
To gloss over the matter that the "2 gentlemen" were securely in Pantano's custody prior to him being "forced to defend himself by killing these two gentlemen" is likewise either a deliberate whitewashing of the events or a revelation that Mustang 23 doesn't know what he's writing about.
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