Friday, October 21, 2011

Immunity for Troops, 1776

On October 21, 2011, US President Barack H. Obama announced that US service personnel should withdraw from Iraq before the end of the calendar year. As Stephen Collinson reports for Agence France-Presse (AFP), the President pledged the withdrawal after Iraq refused to grant immunity in Iraqi courts to American service personnel.

In the Declaration of Independence, Americans condemned Britain's King George III for "giving his Assent to their [Parliament's] Acts of pretended Legislation:--For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:--For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States...."

Thankfully, Americans guilty of crimes in Iraq have faced prosecution in US courts. An American jury, for instance, sentenced Pfc. Steven Dale Green to prison for assaulting a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her and several members of her family.

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