Monday, Dec 15th
Last update10:21:52 AM GMT
War Glance
Maliki is among tens of thousands of Iraqis for whom justice is a delusory buzz-word of a departing occupation. As the US prepares to withdraw its combat troops from most towns and villages by the middle of next year, the rule of law remains unenforceable throughout all layers of the nascent state it will leave behind.Private security contractors operating in Iraq could face Iraqi prosecution for acts committed when they supposedly had immunity from Iraqi law, U.S. officials said Thursday.
A new U.S.-Iraq security agreement doesn't specifically prevent Iraqi officials from bringing criminal charges retroactively in cases such as the September 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians by contractors protecting a State Department convoy, officials told security company officials during meetings in Washington Thursday.
Although the Pentagon officially has welcomed the new accord on a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, senior military officials are privately criticizing President Bush for giving Iraq more control over U.S. military operations for the next three years than the U.S. had ever contemplated.
This official, and others, all who spoke anonymously to be candid, offered a first glimpse into the dynamics of the secret negotiations, which gave Iraq almost unprecedented control over U.S. troops in the period between Jan. 1 and a final U.S. withdrawal from Iraq on Dec. 31, 2011.
Passage of the US-Iraq security pact under the terms both countries' leaders have advocated could violate the constitutions of both countries, specialists told a congressional subcommittee yesterday.
American constitutional law scholar Oona Hathaway said she believes the Constitution requires Congress to also approve the agreement. The Bush administration has labeled the pact a "status of forces agreement," which can be implemented without congressional approval.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.
The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, came as estimates of official Iraqi corruption soared.
The U.S. military has barred Iraqi interpreters working with American troops in Baghdad from wearing ski masks to disguise themselves, prompting some to resign and others to bare their faces even though they fear it could get them killed.
President George W. Bush appears to have had to back down from his long-held opposition to an unconditional troop withdrawal from Iraq, with a timetable which Barack Obama will likely speed up.
As the Iraqi parliament Monday began debating a US-Iraq military deal approved Sunday by the Iraqi cabinet, the White House sought to put a positive spin on the pact and the pace of a US withdrawal.
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