by James Glaser
July 11, 2006

If you think about it for just a minute or so, you will realize that there is a very good chance that our troops did rape a child and kill her family. I say this, because so many times in the past it has been reported that our troops did this or that misdeed, and that is the last we hear about it. This time the Army has been pretty swift in bringing charges against the troops involved. The Pentagon will bend over backwards to protect the troops, and so I would have to believe in this case the facts are overwhelming. We now know that we have some very sick people defending our country. Even the Army wants to get this behind them as soon as they can.

Nobody likes to think that our troops are raping children, but you have to wonder what the Pentagon and White House knew going into this war. One of the first acts of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the quasi- government we set up in Iraq, was to pass "Order 17" giving our troops total immunity from any Iraqi laws.

Last week as charges were being brought against American soldiers for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family, the Army was adamant that the girl was over twenty years old. This week, Reuters New Agency has produced documents that show the girl was a child of only fourteen. So far five soldiers have been charged in the rape and multiple murders, while a sixth was charged with dereliction of duty for not reporting the crime.

There have been reports for a couple of years now that the US Army has had to lower their standards in order to keep up with recruitment demands. You no longer have to be a high school graduate to serve, and some mentally handicapped men have been signed up. (This was exposed before these recruits were inducted) Right now there are about a half dozen investigations into the multiple murders by American troops of innocent Iraqi civilian families in locations all over Iraq.

It is hard to understand why American troops have immunity for any crime they might commit in Iraq, even after Iraq has formed its own independent government - a government that has been lauded by our own President as a model for the rest of the Middle East.

A few good questions: Why would Washington demand immunity for our troops in the first place? What did Washington know about our troops' past conduct that would require an immunity law? Will we pull our troops if Order 17 and the immunity it gives our troops is revoked?

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