Is Pres. Obama's Statement About Leaving Iraq Because Parliament Rejected Immunity Sincere, True?

[bigtree]

August 9, 2014
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON IRAQ

excerpt:

Q Mr. President, do you have any second thoughts about pulling all ground troops out of Iraq? And does it give you pause as the U.S. -- is it doing the same thing in Afghanistan?

THE PRESIDENT: What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances. And on that basis, we left. We had offered to leave additional troops. So when you hear people say, do you regret, Mr. President, not leaving more troops, that presupposes that I would have overridden this sovereign government that we had turned the keys back over to and said, you know what, you’re democratic, you’re sovereign, except if I decide that it’s good for you to keep 10,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 Marines in your country, you don’t have a choice -- which would have kind of run contrary to the entire argument we were making about turning over the country back to Iraqis, an argument not just made by me, but made by the previous administration.

So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis were -- a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq.

. . . further, here's Bernadette Meehan, a former spokesperson for the President's National Security Council, June 23:

President Obama pulled U.S. forces out of Iraq in 2011 because he couldn’t get Iraq’s parliament to offer U.S. soldiers immunity from Iraqi prosecution. But now Obama is promising to send in hundreds of special operations forces based on a written promise that these soldiers will not be tried in Iraq’s famously compromised courts for actions they are taking in defense of Baghdad.

The U.S. military and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have opposed sending any special operations teams to Iraq until there is a written agreement from Iraq’s government that they will not be prosecuted under Iraqi law. On Monday, the White House spokesman said those promises were provided in an exchange of diplomatic notes. The delay in getting that agreement is one of many reasons why the Pentagon and the White House were reluctant to support air strikes inside Iraq—despite lobbying from Secretary of State John Kerry and his aides.

“We remain confident that the military advisers will have the protections they need,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council. “They are going to Iraq with the full support of the Iraqi government. We are working through the mechanism for assurances and we hope to have it resolved soon.”

Eli Lake and Josh Rogin yesterday:

In June, Colin Kahl, who served as a senior defense official in Obama’s first term, wrote in Politico that Maliki’s offer to sign a memorandum of understanding extending legal protections to U.S. troops was not good enough.

“For any agreement to be binding under the Iraqi constitution, it had to be approved by the Iraqi parliament,” Kahl wrote. “This was the judgment of every senior administration lawyer and Maliki’s own legal adviser, and no senior U.S. military commander made the case that we should leave forces behind without these protections.”

Ironically Obama in 2014 is relying on the same kind of written assurance of legal immunity for U.S. forces without a vote in parliament that he rejected when it was offered in 2011 by Maliki himself.

Has the issue of troop immunity from prosecution actually been 'resolved,' and is it more than just a 'handshake' offer from Maliki?

Has the Iraqi parliament signed off on the immunity?

Do "a majority of Iraqis" now want U.S. troops there, and politically, could they, would they, "pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq?"

If not, is the President's strong rejection of "that entire analysis" of his decision to withdraw from Iraq previously that he was responding to Saturday really "bogus and wrong?"


The President's ability to wage limited war appears almost unlimited. . . and then some

[TwilightGardener]

1. Here's what's going to happen if there's legal trouble with our troops--

we're going to quickly spirit them out of Iraq on the first flight out. That's what we do with CIA/special forces and diplomats. The troop immunity issue would have been a much bigger deal post-war had we had permanent basing and a large number of young enlisteds farting around getting into trouble.

[bigtree]

2. possibly. My question was more directed to his statement that the 'analysis' was "bogus and wrong"

. . . I can imagine an number of scenarios where he could ignore his earlier concerns or go back on his word, or, as you say, keep troops from facing prosecution.

I'm interested, in this post, in determining whether the President was being truthful and candid in his Saturday statement in response to questions about his earlier withdrawal from Iraq.

[PSPS]

3. Of course not.

The original Status of Forces Agreement from October 2008, ratified by Iraqi lawmakers in November 2008 when Bush was president, stated,

All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.