Christian Whiton: It's Time for a Political War on Pyongyang. US veteran who killed unarmed Iraqis wins Tea Party support. The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja.
The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons. Pantano ordered the two men to search the car for a second time and then, with no other US soldiers in view, unloaded a magazine of his M16A4 automatic rifle into them, before reloading and blasting a second magazine at them – some 60 rounds in total. Over the corpses, he left a placard inscribed with the marine motto: "No better friend, No worse enemy. " Six years later Pantano is on the verge of a stunning electoral victory that could send him to the US Congress in Washington. Tea Party backing candidate who allegedly shot unarmed Iraqis 60 times. By Tuesday, October 26, 2010 11:37 EDT A Tea Party-backed candidate who allegedly murdered two unarmed Iraqis could win a seat in the House of Representatives, The Guardian reports.
Thirty-nine-year-old Ilario Pantano, who is running for North Carolina’s 7th congressional district as a Republican, was charged with the premeditated murder of two Iraqi civilians in 2005 while serving as a second lieutenant with the US Marines. In April of 2004, Pantano and his platoon stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. While the majority of his platoon was away, he and two others ordered the detained Iraqis to search their own car for weapons and then allegedly unloaded two full magazines of his M16A4 rifle into them. Sergeant Daniel Coburn, who was 27 at the time and one of the three soldiers at the incident, recalled wondering “when the lieutenant was going to stop, because it was obvious that they were dead.”