With all the news of prisoner abuse and killing of innocent civilians in Iraq this book, Warlord is a welcome dose of perspective to the media hype that surrounds these incidents. The book is written by a former Marine lieutenant Ilario Pantano who was a prior service, enlisted Marine who served in the first Gulf War before getting out of the Marines to go to college and work for Goldmans Sachs. He was working in New York near the World Trade Center when 9/11 happened. Witnessing those events in New York motivated him to reenter the Marines at the age of 31 and try to make it through Officer Candidate School. He was one of the top OCS graduates and he entered into the Marine Corps Infantry branch and deployed to Iraq in March 2004.
While serving in Iraq as an infantry platoon leader, LT Pantano was accused of killing two Iraqi civilians by an NCO is his platoon he had demoted from squad leader to radio man due to being incompetent. This demotion essentially ended the NCO’s career thus he was determined to take LT Pantano down as well and the New York Times was more then willing to help him. The book goes through how all the events happened that caused this lieutenant to face the death penalty for defending himself from insurgents trying to kill him, due to a disgruntled NCO, the liberal media looking to score political points against the Bush administration, and the Marine Corps looking to possibly sacrifice this one lieutenant in order to get the Corps out of the headlines. It took support from his family, some dedicated lawyers, veterans groups rallying behind him, and bloggers to expose the lies brought against him by the NCO and the media.
After reading this book you will definitely think twice about believing any of the allegations coming out of Iraq against our soldiers and Marines from the media. A must read for anyone interested in seeing a glimpse of the real situation in Iraq from the perspective of this one US Marine.
