Under Fire Combat Marine Tells His Story

First, let me mention this to all the hand wringers, terrorist appeasers and assorted other leftists, this is NOT law enforcement, this is combat. In combat you do Not wait to read them their rights, which they have none of any way, if they do not stop when ordered to do so, they are a threat. In combat you kill threats, before they kill you. It is that simple.

Ilario Pantano did just that and is now facing an Article 32, which is premeditated murder. Pantano' like the Marine he is, has come out fighting after a long silence. In this article, which is the fourth in a series, Pantano speaks out on Dateline with Stone Phillips.

Pantano relates how this all began:

"On April 15th, his unit got a tip from some Iraqis in a town south of Baghdad, but the vigilant, wily Pantano says he smelled a set-up to an ambush. There were too many details in the tip – and even a map – all too good to be true.


"And the most critical clue was that the people who gave us this information drew a map," the officer told Phillips. "We had never had that kind of a windfall of information. So this thing smelled like an ambush immediately."


Trusting his instinct of pending danger, Pantano related how he reacted. "We went in heavy. We had machine guns with us because we fully expected we would be ambushed by some larger force as we had seen just days prior.


"In the process of starting [my] squads moving forward [toward the house identified by the tipsters], we saw a white sedan start pulling away from the house. And I - I ordered the vehicle to stop.


"We fired a couple of shots into the ground, and they knew to stop the car. I had to grab my radio operator and my corpsman and go after the car because it was now away from the target house down the road.


"I order my corpsman to do a - a search of the car. He looks, finds nothing.


"When I heard [over the radio] that there was this arms cache [found] at the house, I thought these guys are bad guys and that they know they've been caught.


"I wanted the car looked at more thoroughly, and I wanted them to do it. I wanted them to take the car to the bones, and I didn't want to risk one of my Marines, or my sailor, my corpsman, in this - what could be a dangerous procedure."


Armed with an M-16 semi-automatic rifle, Pantano watched the Iraqis as they began to search the car, one the front seat, the other the back. He says they began speaking to each other in muffled tones in Arabic:


"I give them a command in Arabic to stop. They continue, then there was this moment of quiet. I felt - I could feel like the oxygen getting sucked out of my lungs. I could feel this thing was happening. There was this beat, and they both pivoted to me at the same time, moving towards me at the same time. And in that moment of them, you know, of them disobeying my command to stop and pivoting to me at the same time, I shot them.



'I didn't Wait to See If There Was a Grenade'



"I didn't wait to see if there was a grenade. I didn't wait to see if there was a knife. And unfortunately, there are a lot of dead soldiers and Marines who have waited too long. And my men weren't going to be those dead soldiers and Marines and neither was I.


"There wasn't time for a warning shot. There was time for action, and I had to act. It becomes - it becomes very personal. It stops being about war and moving blue arrows and little pieces and big pieces and we'll hold this bridge and take this ground. These guys tried to kill me. That's what I'm feeling. And the language that's - that's going through my head at that point was ‘no better friend, and no worse enemy.'"

In my combat experienced opinion, Pantano acted properly and with the safety of those in his charge in mind. We are dealing with an enemy here, that is using any means to kill Americans. Lt. Pantano's job is to see that those in his charge do not become statistics to be broadcast in the MSM, much to the delight of terrorists appeasers, supporters and the American Military hating left. There is a petition of support for Lt. Pantano. I urge all of you to sign it. - Sailor