A marine Privatehugs a seemingly unarmed civilian in a raid on a Mosque in Karbala, Iraq. Lt. Vukovic goes to Iraq in order to defend the marine - a hard task as the whole incident was filmed by a ZNN reporter. Meanwhile, Cresswell asks Mac to talk his daughter out of her plans to abandon a military career, and Harm maintains his vigil at Mattie's bedside.
After being diagnosed with night blindness, Lt. Cmdr. Harmon Rabb, an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot, is forced to change careers. Cmdr. Rabb chooses to join the Navy's Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. There he both defends and sometimes prosecutes Navy and Marine Corps defendants. He is sometimes assisted by fellow lawyer, Lt. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie, and his other fellow JAG staff.
Many of Rabb's cases require him to both keep up his F-14 qualifications and travel the world, in order to bring justice to the cases he is trying.
Rabb must also deal with the fact that his father, also a former Navy pilot, never returned home after being held prisoner after he was shot down in North Vietnam. Rabb believing his father is still alive continues the search he has pursued to find his father, since his teens.