Stardate 20040513.2039

(On Screen): Scare-quotes and skepticism-quotes seem to be all the rage these days. The BBC reports that Zarqawi 'beheaded' US man in Iraq. Reuters informs us that 'Terrorism' Deaths Fell Sharply in 2003, U.S. Says.

Well, who am I to ignore the latest fad? I can skeptic-quote with the best of them, and where better than to talk about International 'Justice'? As represented by the International Criminal Court? I took a close look at the ICC two years ago in three articles, and nothing which has happened since has changed my conclusion that it is deeply flawed and that the US has been well-served by its non-membership in that treaty. A news item today only reinforces that opinion.

A lawsuit accusing Britain of war crimes in Iraq will be filed Thursday at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, veteran French lawyer Jacques Verges told AFP.

Verges, who is one of several attorneys asked to act for former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, said he had drawn up the suit on behalf of "the families of prisoners of the coalition in which Britain participates."

"The reality of torture and systematic abuses of the dignity of Iraqi prisoners, sometimes followed by murders, both by US and British troops is no longer in question," the text of the complaint reads.

"There are strong presumptions that the facts that form the basis of our complaint were committed with the participation of nationals of the United Kingdom, which unlike the US ... is a party to the (court's) statute," the text goes on.

At the time that the allegations of prisoner abuse by American MP's hit the news big-time, there was nearly simultaneous 'fortuitous' appearance of photographs which claimed to show equivalent abuse by British soldiers. However, those photographs were frauds, and were spotted as such almost immediately based on some serious inconsistencies, such as the fact that they included equipment not actually being used by the British in Iraq. I have seen nothing to suggest that the British are actually implicated in any of this.

That breaks one link in the 'logic' chain behind this action, but the logic is difficult to fathom in any case. I think that the idea is that if an international tribunal can somehow be gotten to make an adverse ruling against the US because of evidence of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, then it would be possible to argue that the US is just as evil as Saddam and therefore has no moral right to put him on trial.

The only international tribunal which might be willing to hear such a case is the ICC. (The "International Court of Justice" doesn't deal with this kind of thing. It is sort of the international equivalent of civil court and hears the international equivalent of civil suits.) But the US cannot be brought before the ICC; the US did not ratify the treaty and denies that the ICC has jurisdiction over its people. Moreover, Congress passed a law which gives the President standing authorization to use any means up to and including military force, to prevent the ICC from trying American servicemen and government officials. No fan of the ICC wants to see a Marine Expeditionary Unit occupying The Hague.

However, the UK is a signatory and can be brought before the court. So it will be the target of this suit, even though it isn't actually implicated in the case in question. Hopefully the ICC will ignore that little detail and accept the UK as a surrogate for the US, and bring in a "guilty" verdict anyway. Then, Verges will use that verdict to... do what? How would such a verdict help him in defending Saddam?

That's the point where the 'logic' peters out into total incomprehensibility, if indeed there's actually any logical reason at all why this ICC complaint would somehow help Saddam, which is the job for which Verges has been hired.

I guess the only way this might conceivably help Saddam would be by tarring the US and withholding 'international legitimacy' from Saddam's trial. Likewise, it would withhold 'legitimacy' from his conviction, and withhold 'legitimacy' from his eventual hanging. I'm sure that will give great comfort to Saddam in his final moments as he stands on the scaffold waiting for the trapdoor to open. (Except that the ICC process probably won't have been completed by then, if the swiftness and efficiency of other recent "international tribunals" such as the Milosevic trial are any indication.)

This attempt to put Britain in the ICC dock because of allegations against American soldiers yet again makes clear that American misgivings about the ICC were amply justified, and that the ICC was never really about 'justice'. Can there be any doubt