Sal wrote: PACEDOG#1 wrote:wouldn’t it have been smarter to try to preserve the residual force in relatively stable (by Obama’s own admission) Iraq, which had the bonus of being a Congressionally authorized endeavor, instead of wasting that tiny bit of good will on airstrikes in Libya, which was both unauthorized and basically useless? We could have preserved the hard-fought and very real victories we had established in Iraq, earned at the cost of friends’ life and limb. We didn’t. It was forseeable. And, now it’s utterly gut-wrenching to watch it all fall apart
Via nadalfan .....On the day of the shoe toss that rocked the world, Bush signed the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which established that American troops would be out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. The pact involved another element that later proved quite contentious—immunity for Americans. Contractors for the State Department and other U.S. agencies could not be prosecuted under Iraqi law, and neither could American troops, with the possible—possible—exception of soldiers who committed major, premeditated felonies while off duty.
Many Iraqis reacted with outrage—not because the American military was planning to leave but because it was being allowed to stay. Muslim religious leaders condemned the agreement, and citizens staged protests at Parliament, in Sadr City and throughout Baghdad. Even thousands of Iraqi refugees in Syria protested what was widely perceived as America’s continued occupation of their country.
Fast-forward three years. The deadline for America’s withdrawal from Iraq was quickly approaching. The Obama administration had spent months negotiating a new agreement with the Iraqi government in hopes of extending the deadline. Washington wanted several thousand troops to remain to continue training Iraqi forces; the administration wanted to be sure that whatever meager gains had been won since the war began would not be lost.
But it was not to be. Too many Americans—particularly politicians—refuse to acknowledge the indisputable fact that Iraq is a sovereign nation. It is not America-lite. Its leaders and its people are in charge of its destiny. The U.S. doesn’t get to tell the Iraqis what to do. And what they told us was to get the hell out of their country.
There was one final attempt to keep U.S. troops there, but those negotiations came down to the issue of immunity. In what should strike no thinking person as surprising, Iraqis didn’t like it that foreigners who had come into their country by force could not be prosecuted under their laws. It was considered by some to be the ultimate insult—what kind of hubris did it take, they argued, for the United States to set up a government and then declare that it couldn’t be trusted to enforce its own laws when it came to Americans?
The Iraqis steadfastly refused to continue granting immunity to American troops (it didn’t help that memories still lingered of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the Haditha incident, in which 24 Iraqi civilians were killed by American Marines). Part of the problem was that pesky democracy America brought to Iraq: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the Obama administration that there were not enough votes in parliament to continue the immunity provision. That was a deal-breaker for senior American military officers: They weren’t willing to run the risk that their troops could end up in an Iraqi court facing charges.
So the deadline arrived, and, under the terms of the agreement reached by the Bush administration, America withdrew from Iraq.
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/22/whos-blame-islamic-state-crisis-iraq-263923.html
Not to mention Blackwater/Xe mercenaries. Here's an overview of articles pertaining to abuses by contractors:
http://www.comw.org/warreport/iraqarchivecont.html
*****
Here's an excerpt from an article that explains why the SOFA wasn't acceptable to Iraqis:
http://rempost.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-happens-to-private-contractors-who.html
What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothingBlackwater USA employees are accused of killing several civilians, but there might not be anyone with the authority to prosecute them.
By Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin
Salon.com, 18 September 2007
"An incident this past weekend in which employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm that has become controversial for its extensive role in the war in Iraq, allegedly opened fire on and killed several Iraqis seems to be the last straw for Iraqi tolerance of the company. Iraqi government officials have promised action, including but not limited to the suspension or outright revocation of the company's license to operate in Iraq.
(which happened)But pulling Blackwater's license may be all the Iraqis can do. Should any Iraqis ever seek redress for the deaths of the civilians in a criminal court, they will be out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct American occupation government, there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq. CPA Order 17 says private contractors working for the U.S. or coalition governments in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law. Should any attempt be made to prosecute Blackwater in the United States, meanwhile, it's not clear what law, if any, applies.
"Blackwater and all these other contractors are beyond the reach of the justice process in Iraq. They can not be held to account," says Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. "There is nothing [the Iraqi government] can do that gives them the right to punish someone for misbehaving or doing anything else."
L. Paul Bremer, then the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the initial occupation government of Iraq, issued CPA Order 17 in June 2004, the day before the CPA ceased to exist. "Contractors," it says, "shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts."
The Iraqi government has contested the continued application of this order, but because of restraints that inhibit the Iraqi government from changing or revoking CPA orders, Order 17 technically still has legal force in Iraq. Furthermore, as Peter W. Singer, an expert on private security contractors who is a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institute, points out, in order for the Iraqi government to prosecute those contractors, the U.S. government would have to accede to it. And that, Singer says, poses a whole new set of thorny questions.
"The question for the U.S. is whether it will hand over its citizens or contractors to an Iraqi court, particularly an Iraqi court that's going to try and make a political point out of this," Singer says. If the United States is not willing to do so because of concerns that the trial will be politically motivated, he adds, there's a new question at hand. "If we really say that openly, doesn't that defeat everything we heard in the Kabuki play last week with [General David] Petraeus and [U.S. Ambassador Ryan] Crocker, that everything was going great? What happens if we say, 'No, we don't think you can deal with this fairly in your justice system?'"
That leaves international and U.S. law. But international law is probably out. Even before the Bush administration, the United States had established a precedent of rejecting the jurisdiction of international courts. The United States is not, for example, a member of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. (In 2005, the government of Iraq announced its decision to join the court; it reversed that decision two weeks later.)
U.S. law, meanwhile, is hopelessly murky. More so than in any of America's previous conflicts, contractors are an integral part of the U.S. effort in Iraq, providing logistical support and performing essential functions that were once the province of the official military. There are currently at least 180,000 in Iraq, more than the total number of U.S. troops. But the introduction of private contractors into Iraq was not accompanied by a definitive legal construct specifying potential consequences for alleged criminal acts. Various members of Congress are now attempting to clarify the laws that might apply to contractors. In the meantime, experts who spoke with Salon say there's little clarity on what law applies to contractors like the ones involved in Sunday's incident, and the Bush administration has shown little desire to take action against contractor malfeasance..."
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