Warlord No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

Chapter One Article 32 HearingClosing Arguments Camp Lejeune, North Carolina30 April 2005 "Premeditated murder." Major Stephen Keane, the lead government prosecutor, was using his most persuasive courtroom voice. Even though this was the fifth and final day of the Article 32 hearing -- the military equivalent of a grand jury -- Keane might have been pressing his case to a general court-martial's panel of senior officers. "...The elements are that these two people are dead," he said, striding between the prosecution's table to the left and the dais in the right corner where the investigating officer, Major Mark Winn, presided. "That the death resulted from Second Lieutenant Pantano shooting them. His own confession and the witness statements established that..." My civilian defense counsel, Charlie Gittins, seated beside me to the left, tensed in his chair, about to rise and object. With close-cropped hair and reading glasses on the tip of his nose, Charlie looked benign, maybe an accountant or a State Farm agent. Big mistake. Charlie was a pit bull, a meat eater. He'd graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and practiced law as a Marine officer, ultimately becoming a lieutenant colonel in the reserves. And during years in private practice, he had earned a reputation as the most effective defense attorney practicing at the military bar. Keane was taunting us with the word "confession." In the twelve months since that sunset encounter with the insurgents near Mahmudiyah, I had been debriefed by my intel guys and made one official statement to the executive officer of Regimental Combat Team 1. Sure, I killed people, and I commanded my men to kill even more of them, but I had neverconfessedto any crime. "...The killing of these two people by the accused was unlawful." Keane let his words register. There was a closed-circuit television camera mounted in the right rear corner of the courtroom, feeding the proceedings to the press in another building. "...At the time and place of the killing the accused had a premeditated design to kill these people..." Now Charlie did rise to object. But Major Winn overruled him, noting he would not permit objections to the closing arguments, whether the government's or ours. Keane rocked confidently on the soles of his tan boots. He was lanky in pressed cammies, seemingly a combat-hardened Marine. But he had no combat experience. None. Still, he was dangerous. His mission was to see me executed or sitting in federal prison for the rest of my life. In combat you learn to focus intently on the noises and movements that could kill or wound you or your men. An unnaturally straight line in the sand beside a road that might mark the buried det cord of an IED. Men changing a tire up on an overpass. A freshly cut palm trunk floating down a canal. You also learn to filter out the nonessential sensory input...the stink of a dead donkey covered with flies, the "Mista! Mista!" of ragged kids begging for MRE candy...a mortar hitting too far away to be dangerous. That's how you survive war; it's an adaptation a good officer makes to bring his men home alive. For the five days of the hearing, and even the months leading up to it, I'd been in this type of survival mode. Some days it seemed like I had never come off that patrol. I wondered if I ever would. Part of my mind scanned the windowless courtroom, the overhead fluorescent tubes so much brighter than that April afternoon south of Baghdad. My eye glided once more across my defense table. Charlie was still hunched, ready to object if Keane pressed his luck, despite Major Winn's admonition. To my right, the Marine Corps defense counsel, Major Phil Stackhouse, listened intently to his opponent's argument, jotting an occasional note on a legal pad. His short white hair marked him as the cool water bPantano, Ilario is the author of 'Warlord No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy', published 2006 under ISBN 9781416524267 and ISBN 1416524266.