Since when does a vice president apologize for the US justice system on foreign soil -- particularly on foreign soil where minority rights and the rule of law are regularly trampled and American interests are not backed up?
More American bowing and scraping to the umma, as reported on by Reuters:
The [US] government will appeal a court decision to dismiss charges against Blackwater security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, Vice President Joe Biden said on Saturday.
The U.S. federal court found last month that the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated, angering many Iraqis. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government has hired U.S. lawyers to prepare a law suit against Blackwater, a security contractor now called Xe Services.
With Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at his side at a Baghdad news conference, Biden expressed "personal regret" for the violence in a Baghdad traffic circle when Blackwater guards were accused of opening fire on innocent civilians.
The guards said they shot in self-defense in the incident, which occurred during some of the worst sectarian violence in Iraq.
"The United States is determined, determined to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against the Iraqi people," Biden said.
We know.
In fact, the nature of the prosecutorial misconduct that led to the case's dismissal indicates the extent to which this was a politicial prosecution designed to curry favor with Iraq (and other Islamic "allies") as this Washington Times editorial ("The Blackwater Lynching") notes. Jim Hanson, also writing in the Washington Times in "The End of the Warrior Witch Hunt," details the series of events that led to the loss of civilian life in the Blackwater incident, which should finally be recognized as a battleground tragedy of the "fog of war," not murder.
But that would upset our Iraqi "allies" -- who recently, of course, set scot free Qais Khazali, the protege of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Shiite militia leader and former spokesman for Moqtada al Sadr who masterminded the killings of five US troops in 2007, among other things. He is now expected to have a big political future in US-liberated Iraq.
Biden cares not, if he even knows. His priority is demonstrating America's committment to present Iraw with the "right" outcome.
"While we fully respect the independence and integrity of the U.S. judicial system, we were disappointed by the judge's decision to dismiss the indictment, which was based on the way in which some evidence had been acquired," Biden said.
The U.S. Justice Department would file the appeal next week, he said. ...