“US Lacks Votes for Immunity from War Crimes Court”

[erik_kosberg]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ourt_usa_dc_12

Secretary-General Kofi Annan and key U.N. Security Council members intensified their opposition to a U.S. draft resolution that would renew the exemption of American soldiers from international prosecution.

Consequently, the Bush administration on Friday still lacked the required nine votes to renew the measure that would give U.S. troops immunity from the new International Criminal Court. The previous resolution expires on June 30.

[Stokes Pennwalt]

The resolution was first approved in 2002 after the United States vetoed a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, and threatened to oppose others, one by one.

If it worked once, it can work again. They will just veto stuff until they agree to pass it, its one of the perks of being on the security council, and one of the things I find most hilariously worthless about the entire UN.

But it's probably a better idea for the UN to just grant us immunity. If they don't, and they then try to put an American on trial there, having American forces break them loose is going to cause a lot more damage to the court than American immunity ever could.

[frazzledspice]

I hate to be cynical, but would the US really care if higher-ups in the Department of Defense and other government agencies hadn't been implicated in various memos?

I just don't see them going to bat in the Security Council for a few isolated reservists who were violating rules in their treatment of prisoners.

[hymie[$]]

The feeling is that the international court will be used as a forum to deliberately harass the United States regardless of any actual cases of guilt, just the way soemone tried to bring charges against Ariel Sharon in Belgium. Given that actual cases of guilt exist, complete with pictures, that argument doesn't really fly. It's the whole sex-in-a-cage thing on a national level. If you hold yourself up as a becaon of decency, you ought not to get caught with your pants down.