These talks, however, broke down over the prickly issue of legal immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq, a senior U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the discussions told CNN this month. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top brass have repeatedly said any deal to keep U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the withdrawal deadline would require a guarantee of legal protection for American soldiers. But the Iraqis refused to agree to that, opening up the prospect of Americans being tried in Iraqi courts and subjected to Iraqi punishment. The negotiations were strained following WikiLeaks' release of a diplomatic cable that alleged Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed in a 2006 raid by American troops rather than in an airstrike as the U.S. military initially reported.

You may remember this incident outlined by Wikileaks. From Greenwald this morning:

That description from CNN of the cable’s contents is, unsurprisingly, diluted to the point of obfuscation. That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.” The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike.

As Glennzilla points out, whoever leaked this to Wikileaks is, in large part, responsible for finally getting out asses out of this mess that cost us some $3 freakin' trillion dollars. And yet, this Administration is prosecuting whistleblowers like Bradley Manning who helped with these noble causes of getting the truth out and, consequently, finally getting us out of a war.

So before we continue to pat this Administration on the back for their terrific foreign policy, perhaps we should consider the noble causes of others who've directly contributed and altered our foreign policy for the better (and getting tortured and prosecuted for it by this Administration).