An occupying army. A local government under the thumb of an imperial government. Occupying forces being granted immunity from local prosecution. The local government and population up-in-arms. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
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As CNN Reports
All other crimes -- including murders committed inside U.S. facilities or by on-duty forces -- would fall under American jurisdiction...
The issue of whether U.S. troops would remain immune from Iraqi prosecution has been a sticky one for negotiators ...
The United States had preferred its troops and contractors retain immunity.
The above block quote is, of course, a reference to the proposed Status of Forces Agreement between the US & Iraq. But I was thinking of something else in my intro....
An act for the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of persons questioned for any act done by them in the execution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of the Massachusetts-bay, in New England
The "proper" name of one of the Coercive Acts passed by the British Parliament in 1774, which read in part:
the trial shall be appointed to be had in any other colony, before the governor, or lieutenant-governor, or commander in chief of such colony; and if the trial shall be appointed to be had in Great Britain, then before his Majesty's court of King's Bench
I find it, hmmm, let’s see, remarkable maybe (?) that the US would be balking over a issue of immunity for Americans in Iraq because when the shoe was on the other foot, our founding fathers wouldn’t stand for it. In fact, they called it Intolerable That's right, it was part of the infamous Intolerable Acts.
It's not surprising that an administration and a party that has proven to be anti-intellectual would be ignorant of or blind to our history and foolishly repeat it. It seems to me that just about every act of the Bush administration is INTOLERABLE