"No better friend, No worse enemy."

After killing the two Iraqis, he left a placard inscribed with the Marine motto "No better friend, No worse enemy."

All charges against Pantano, who was facing a possible death sentence, were later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

The number of rounds, changing the clip and posting the sign suggest...

ah ... what's the words I am looking for?

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. He is standing as Republican candidate in North Carolina's 7th congressional district, which was last represented by his party in 1871.

With the help of the right-wing Tea Party movement, and with the benefit of his image as a war hero acquired from what happened on that fateful day in 2004, he has raised almost $1m (£630,000) in donations and is now level-pegging with his Democratic opponent, Mike McIntyre.

"We are in complete contention. We are certainly neck-and-neck. And we are feeling terrific," he said at a Tea Party rally outside Wilmington.

Pantano is one of the new breed of hardline Republicans thrown up by the turmoil of the economic meltdown and the ensuing Tea Party explosion. He served in the first Gulf war, then worked for Goldman Sachs before rejoining the marines days after the 9/11 attacks.

He was charged with premeditated murder. At a pre-trial military hearing, prosecution witnesses testified that the detainees, Hamaady Kareem and Tahah Hanjil, were unthreatening and that their bodies were found in a kneeling position having apparently been shot in the back.

The defence countered that weapons had been found in the house from where the Iraqis were fleeing. The men had turned on Pantano unexpectedly as he was guarding them. He shouted "Stop!" but they didn't respond and he opened fire in self-defence.

Defence lawyers highlighted inconsistencies in the accounts of the prosecution witnesses and portrayed the main witness, who had been demoted by Pantano, as a soldier with an axe to grind. Forensic evidence was said to conflict with the prosecution case.

In the event, all charges against Pantano were dropped on grounds of insufficient evidence. But the officer presiding over the hearing recommended that Pantano be given non-judicial punishment for having displayed "extremely poor judgment", adding that by desecrating the Iraqi's bodies with his placard he had brought disgrace to the armed forces.

Pantano declined to be drawn on the specifics of his case. "I'm running for Congress. I'm not defending myself for something that happened five years ago," he said.

But what about that placard? "I don't need to explain anything to people. If folk are alarmed, well war is alarming. All of my men that are alive are grateful for my service."

Neither Pantano nor McIntyre, who has held the seat for the Democrats for the past 12 years, have raised the shooting incident in their campaigns. The only criticism, paradoxically, has come from the Republican who Pantano beat in the primary election, Will Breazeale.

"I myself was a veteran of Iraq. I've detained Iraqis, and in my view Pantano is no war hero," he said.

But in this district, which has a large military population due to its proximity to Camp Lejeune, the marine base where Pantano's pre-trial hearing took place, most voters know Pantano's story intimately. "He's a war hero," said a top local Republican official who declined to give his name. And the placard? "Doesn't bother me."

Arthur Plante, a veteran of the US coastguard, said: "If I had been in his situation over in Iraq I would have done the same thing." His wife, Cynthia, also a veteran, said: "I would follow Pantano to war any time, any place. He did what had to be done."

Pantano
recently spoke at Ground Zero in New York where he opposes plans to build an Islamic cultural centre nearby.

An article 32 hearing found no credible evidence or testimony for the accusation and declined to prosecute Pantano, dropping all charges.

Shortly thereafter, Pantano was offered another platoon command back in Iraq. Due to terrorist threats against his family, he resigned his officer's commission and was honorably discharged. These events and his other experiences as a combat Marine during the Persian Gulf War and in Iraq in 2004 are the subject of his successful memoir, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy.

Pantano was born in New York City and grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. His father was an Italian-born tour guide and his mother was a Kansas native who is now a literary agent.

He worked as an energy trader for Goldman Sachs. From 1995 - 1998, he was a member of the start-up team that integrated top-tier investment bank culture (GS) with utility business (BG&E) in Constellation Power, an electricity trading joint venture that was acquired for $11 billion by FPL. Shortly thereafter, he became a movie producer with a New York firm called The Shooting Gallery and co-founded a company specializing in interactive television, Filter Media.

Pantano married Jill Chapman, a fashion model and entrepreneur, who had appeared in Italian Vogue.[2] The couple has two sons

MOTARDED

His men grumbled.enlisted men call officers like Pantano "motarded"--motivated to the point of retardation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilario_Pantano

On June 12, 2006, Pantano's autobiographical account of his experiences, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy,[16] was released by Threshold Editions, Mary Matalin's Simon & Schuster imprint. On July 10, 2006, he appeared as a guest on The Daily Show to promote the book.

Do you know Michael SAVAGE???

Pantano received support from talk radio personality Michael Savage who spent day after day ...
The Savage Nation has an audience of 8 to 10 million listeners on 400 stations across the United States, making it the 3rd most listened to radio talk show in the country

Some, including Savage himself, have characterized his views as conservative nationalism,[9] while critics have characterized them as "fostering extremism or hatred. he supports the English-only movement and argues that liberalism and progressivism are degrading American culture.

He is Banned from entering the United Kingdom
The then UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced on May 5, 2009 that Savage was on a list of individuals banned from entering the United Kingdom as he is "considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence"

During his radio broadcast on that same day, Savage declared that he would sue Smith personally for defamation, calling her a "lunatic"

Savage also called on his listeners to support him by canceling travel and business in Britain as well as by boycotting British-made goods.

When a caller challenged Savage about his talk-show rhetoric, Savage called him a "foaming lunatic... someone in pajamas in a mental asylum... You.re nobody and I.m not going to talk to you!"

"It's quite ironic that someone like Michael Savage sees no hypocrisy in strongly defending his right to the First Amendment only to show outrage and intolerance a few minutes later toward the views of someone else he doesn't agree with."

Sam Leith wrote: "Barring this shock-jock from Britain risks turning a rabid blabbermouth into a beacon for free speech."

On July 12, 2010 the new Conservative Party-led government of Prime Minister David Cameron announced that it will continue to ban Savage from entering the UK

In total Savage has written 29 books. Under the name Michael Savage he has written eight books, including a #1 New York Times bestseller.

In January 2004, Savage published his second political book The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military. His next book, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder, was released on April 12, 2005

In October 2010, Savage released "Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama.s Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security".