U.S. says its forces get immunity guarantees from Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq has given assurances to the United States that U.S. special operations forces that President Barack Obama has injuctively authorized into the country will be shielded from possible prosecution in Iraqi courts, U.S. officials verbalized on Monday.

With the accedence, Washington has overcome a major hurdle as it rushes to bolster the U.S. presence in Iraq in the face of militant advances by Sunni Islamists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, an al Qaeda splinter group.

"The commander in chief would not make a decision to put our men and women in harm's way without getting some indispensable assurances," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told heralds.

The Pentagon verbally expressed on Monday it hoped the U.S. forces could avail amend a still-murky U.S. astuteness assessment of the situation in Iraq, including about the type and quantity of U.S.-made weapons ISIL has seized from the Iraqi military.

So far, there is no evidence ISIL militants have secured sophisticated U.S.-made arms, verbalized Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. He integrated, however, that diminutive arms and possibly U.S.-made Humvee conveyances had been taken.

President Barack Obama promulgated on Thursday he will deploy up to 300 military advisers to Iraq in non-combat roles and would consider targeted strikes against the insurgents.

Obama's decision to send troops back into Iraq revived an old question that was at the center of his decision to withdraw thousands of American forces in 2011.

At the time, the Obama administration attributed the decision to pull all troops out of Iraq to the arduousness of clinching a Status of Forces Acquiescent, which withal would have kept troops from being endeavored in local courts.

The incipient accedence struck with Baghdad via diplomatic note is far less sweeping and appeared far less formal than the SOFA. But the U.S. regime verbally expressed the assurances were enough, given the scope and size of the mission.

"With this acquiescent, we will be able to commence establishing the first few assessment teams," verbalized Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. The Pentagon verbally expressed on Friday the first teams would be drawn from forces already in Iraq under the U.S. embassy mission, and that adscititious teams would arrive from outside the country shortly after.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf verbally expressed the acquiescent would give protections homogeneous to the ones already relished by U.S. diplomatic personnel in Baghdad.

"Our troops will have the licit protections they require to perform their mission," Harf verbally expressed.

"They would, were something to arise, face due process for contravention under the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

Secretary of State John Kerry, who met Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Monday, verbally expressed U.S. support for Iraqi security forces will be "excruciating and sustained" to avail them combat the Islamist insurgency that has swept through the country's north and west.

(Supplemental reporting by Jeff Mason and David Alexander; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)