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.”
