Did He Go Too Far?

(4 of 5)

Few of the Marines expected much fighting when they were assigned to Mahmudiyah, just outside Baghdad. Then the insurgency erupted. Newly arrived units took more casualties in a few days than their predecessors had in eight months. Pantano recalls watching a convoy of Marine humvees pass his platoon. "We wave, then realize something is wrong. Tires and windows were shot out, blood was seeping through, out the bottoms of the humvees. Ten humvees had busted out of a kill zone but were shot to hell. There was one KIA, and nearly everyone else was wounded one way or another." Officers interviewed by TIME say that as the emphasis shifted from peacekeeping to combat, commanders issued new rules of engagement that gave the Marines much more latitude in deciding when to use deadly force.

On April 15, the Marines in Mahmudiyah achieved a small breakthrough. Two captured rebels pointed the Marines to the location of a group of insurgents and an arms cache. Pantano's platoon set out for the targets, two large compound-style Iraqi houses, just off a highway. As the Marines approached one of the houses, a car sped away. The Marines shot out the tires, and Pantano arrived with his command element--a Navy corpsman and a radio operator--to check the car.

Pantano had the men's hands tied with plastic handcuffs. As he did so, he received word that a large arms cache had been found in the house the men had just left. Pantano ordered the Iraqis to comb their car for guns and explosives in case it was booby-trapped to blow. He had the men's handcuffs removed, and the two suspects started to pull off panels and seat covers.

What transpired over the next few seconds is disputed by Pantano's lawyers and the Marines. Pantano's defense counsel says that as the two Iraqis pulled off the seat covers, they started talking quietly to each other. Pantano told them, in his rudimentary Arabic, to shut up. They went silent, then started speaking again, this time in muffled voices. Then the two men turned toward Pantano as if to jump him. He told them to halt, and when they did not, he opened up with his M-16. He kept firing until he was sure they were dead. Then, perhaps in shock, he wrote Mattis' words on the sign and placed it on the car--although he soon had second thoughts and took the sign off and threw it away. He slashed the tires that had not been shot out so that the car could not be used by other insurgents, his lawyer Gittins says.

But one of the two witnesses to the shooting gave investigators a different version of events. The witness, a sergeant who was Pantano's radio operator, says the lieutenant shot the unarmed Iraqis without provocation. Officers from 2-2 say the sergeant had a track record of underachievement, and Gittins and several Marine officers say the sergeant had a grudge against Pantano after Pantano removed him from a squad-leader position. Gittins says the other witness, the corpsman, confirms that Pantano shouted a warning and says he saw the men move suddenly. The only difference is that the corpsman, from the angle he was watching, thought that the men might have been trying to escape.