Tea Party Official Slams War Criminal Candidate

Deborah Johns, former vice chair of the Tea Party Express, has denounced North Carolina candidate for Congress Ilario Pantano and has endorsed his Democratic opponent. Johns is the mother of a Marine and once organized pro-Iraq War counterprotests against Cindy Sheehan.

Ilario Pantano shot and killed two unarmed prisoners in Iraq while serving in the Marines and survived charges of premeditated murder before returning to America to run for Congress in North Carolina this year.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Johns turned against Pantano after reading the transcript of the military hearing that eventually cleared Pantano of the charges. In April 2004, Pantano killed two unarmed Iraqi detainees, twice unloading his gun into their bodies and firing between 50 and 60 shots in total. Afterward, he placed a sign over the corpses featuring the Marines’ slogan “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy” as a message to the local population.

“That is not a war hero,” Johns said. “It is people like that that give all our military a bad name.”

Read the complete story and updates on The Daily Beast.

16 thoughts on “Tea Party Official Slams War Criminal Candidate”

  1. Why? Because there were misspellings in the barbaric sign? Or was it really because of the shooting? It's so hard to tell in the post-9-11 United States of Amnesia.

    1. "Why?" what? Denounce it, er, him? Maybe because he's a cold-blooded murdering war criminal? That's how I read it.

        1. "cold-blooded murdering war criminal"

          Translate that into standard "American", and what do you get? You get "hero".

  2. Follow the updates on the story and you'll see that the Teabaggers are lining up to support Pantano and repudiate Johns. So much for any signs of hope for the 'baggers.

  3. One of the tea party activists here, radio talk host/lawyer Eric Deters said, on wikileaks release,
    "these things happen in war, notice how Aljazeera was given the scoop?" Maybe 20% of tea baggers don't want innocent ferrigners to also suffer from America's corrupt Big Government.
    The rest are hypocrites or naieve in the extreme.

    1. Actually they're just the same pack of brainless, jingoistic, belligerent war-lovers who have always made up the GOP majority in the modern era. While the teabaggers claim to be "non-partisan," even a cursory look and listen at a teabagger rally will put the idiocy of that lie to rest.

      Only a fool would believe that anything on the Amerikan political scene will change after midnight tomorrow, except for the speed at which our civilizational collapse will continue to accelerate.

  4. . .
    >MvGuy
    >October 27th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
    >Himmler approves!!
    . __________
    . Perhaps that should be:
    Netanyahu Approves !

  5. So it is possible for someone with Johns' shameful past and inglorious associations to still have a shred of decency left and wise up. That's interesting, but not inspiring. She's just a rare anomaly.

    Rather than being provoked into reconsidering their beliefs and assumptions, the intellectually lazy, emotionally stunted and morally infantile members of the Tea party will turn on her as a traitor.

  6. “That is not a war hero,” Johns said. “It is people like that that give all our military a bad name.”

    What "our military"?.
    When would Americans stop using those terms such as our ,we,us ?

    Maybe Johns have a problem with this event,but would she be against the US invading,bombing,destroying other countries by "her military:?

  7. What does it mean when even a warmonger like Johns reads the military transcript and is disgusted, but Pantano doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist based on the same info?

  8. Jingoistic, military-worshipping, kneejerk reactionary, totally uncaring – these words describe 80% of our fellow Americans in this post 9-11 time. Can we regain our senses? Oh sure, even Nazi Germany and Bushido Japan changed – after they were on the receiving end of the full glories of warfare.

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