Gates: "'Dramatic consequences' if Washington and Baghdad do not agree a security deal"

In Korea, where the SOFA (status of forces agreement) allows soldiers to rape, insult, rip off, and even murder people with impunity, the US have gotten what they want to have now in Iraq.
"Failure to finalize the Sofa or renew a UN mandate would mean US operations would have to be suspended. The UN mandate for US-led coalition forces expires at the end of the year." Good! Maybe then they'll have to face the people of the world and bald-facedly tell them they're doing this unilaterally and with no real backup from anyone. (The UN mandate thing is of course a joke, pressure-grouped into existence by the American money-bag-swingers, who've beaten the UN and everyone else into submission with their sacks of oil streaked coin.) "The pact is said to grant Iraqi judicial authorities limited ability to try US troops and contractors for major crimes committed off-duty or off-base - and only then if a joint US-Iraqi committee agrees."

If local "justice" systems can't do anything about US soldiers hassling the locals because their jurisdiction is stolen from them by a SOFA deal, it's just another aspect of the theft of space by American military bases in foreign lands; theft of jurisdictional space. So much land -- so little (prosecutable) crime.
Apparently Gates doesn't want our boys to be held responsible for a little mischief now and then. An ex-soldier I spoke with recently bragged to me about his 43 confirmed kills, and complained that in the military too many laws and regulations kept him and his platoon from 'getting the job done;' now he's in Blackwater, where he doesn't have to worry about pesky 'laws' and 'regulations' getting in the way. I realized about half-way through the conversation that I was talking to a mass murderer. Listening to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, we ought to be clear on the fact that we're listening to one, one who'd like to don judge's robes on top of his blood-stained uniform.