Supporters held a third rally this weekend for the Camp Pendleton 8. The Los Angeles Times reports several hundred turned out.

Reader James sends a link to video of the event posted at YouTube. Here it is (moved to extended entry):

The Tracy Press reports Article 32 hearings are set to start as early as this Wednesday:

Military prosecutors want to start hearings as soon as this Wednesday to determine whether to move forward with charges of premeditated murder against two local Marines, five others and a Navy corpsman.
But several of the attorneys told media last week that they didn’t expect the hearings to take place that soon because they haven’t received all of the government’s evidence and will need time to review the information.

Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a Camp Pendleton spokesman, confirmed the so-called Article 32 hearings, the equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, are tentatively slated for next week.

“It will be good to get rolling,” Joseph Low told Lee Enterprises. He represents Cpl. Marshall Magincalda Jr., 22, of Manteca. “But we don’t have all the evidence yet.”

The Marines Corps announced Wednesday the charges against eight members of the Camp Pendleton based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment’s Kilo Company for the alleged April 26 murder of an Iraqi man in the village of Hamdania.

Charges were levied against Lance Cpl. Tyler A. Jackson, 22, of Tracy; Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, 25; Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, 24; Hospitalman 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos , 20; Pfc. John Jodka III, 20, of Encinitas; Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr.; Lance Cpl. Robert B. Pennington, 21; and Magincalda of Manteca.

The charges also include kidnapping, conspiracy, assault, larceny, housebreaking, making false statements and obstruction of justice.

The attorneys and family members of the troops have maintained the men’s innocence.

The next step in the process is the Article 32 hearing.

Low said his client, Cpl. Magincalda, was disappointed and shocked by the charges.

“He didn’t understand how they could come up with the charges they did with what happened out there,” Low said.

He and the other attorneys said they couldn’t discuss what their clients told them about the incident on April 26 in Hamdania.

Magincalda’s father, Marshall Magincalda Sr., said his wife is physically ill with the news of charges being filed against her son.

“Our son has been to Iraq three times and won two Purple Hearts,” Magincalda said in a telephone interview Thursday. “He has always done the best job he could.”

He said it’s unfair that people are only hearing Marine Corps officials’ and Iraqis’ version of what happened that day in Hamdania.

“They are treating these guys worse than in Gitmo,” Magincalda said in reference to the U.S. military prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “They didn’t even have pillows in their bunks.”

Magincalda told the Lathrop-Manteca Sun Post in November while home on leave for Thanksgiving, that he believed wholeheartedly in the U.S. mission in Iraq, even after being wounded in battle by flying shrapnel and being shot in the stomach at close range with a .45-caliber handgun.

Ilario Pantano once again stands up to those who would rush to judgment against another accused American troop:

One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand.

That’s it. That’s how much time U.S. Army Spec. Mario Lozano, a Bronx native, had to decide on Baghdad’s notoriously dangerous Airport Road in March 2005: Shoot or don’t shoot. He chose to shoot a car speeding toward his roadblock late at night with its lights off. Now, if Italian prosecutors have their way, he will face murder charges. Never mind that the American military has cleared him of all wrongdoing. Four lawyers in Rome have signed an extradition request to charge Lozano with the murder of an Italian intelligence officer, alleging the shooting was a “political crime” against their country’s interests.

The real political crime is happening now in Italy, not last year in Iraq. And the true victims are our troops.

There’s a reason I’m particularly sensitive about accusations leveled at those in the cauldron of combat such as the charges being hurled at Lozano and those regarding the Marines involved in the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha.
You see, like Lozano, I’m a New Yorker. I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. I served in the first Gulf war and then worked at Goldman Sachs.

And in 2004, while leading a platoon of U.S. Marines during fierce fighting in Iraq’s “triangle of death,” I killed two men in combat — only to be charged with premeditated murder for my actions. Threats were made against me and my family. Pictures simulating my decapitation circulated on the Internet.

In the end, following a very public five days in American military court, I was completely exonerated — but only after enduring months of headlines decrying my slaughter of “innocent” Iraqis. Should I have been surprised that there wasn’t nearly as much attention paid to the fact that I was cleared?

Should I have been disappointed that the men I killed were continuously mischaracterized as innocent civilians, even though they tried to attack me after they were caught fleeing a weapons cache containing cash, IDs and Al Qaeda material in a car with hidden compartments for transporting bombs?

Read the whole thing.

Contrary to the moonbat Left, “innocent until proven guilty” applies to our troops, too.

Related: W. Thomas Smith, Jr., on “Spinning Haditha.”

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