US Lacks Votes for Immunity from War Crimes Court

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) 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.

. . .

No council member is expected to veto the resolution but a significant number of abstentions would kill the measure. China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya told Reuters on Friday he decided to abstain, adding his voice to Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Benin and Romania.

The only sure "yes" votes at the moment come from Britain, Russia, Angola, the Philippines as well as the United States. Pakistan and Algeria were undecided, council sources said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&e=3&u=/nm/20040619/wl_nm/un_court_usa_dc_12

Say the US doesn't get its immunity. What will it destroy in return?

...did get immunity. Look at it that way.

...Clinton.

Bush blew this one and will find someone to blame. After all, Geo. makes no mistakes EVER.

that pointed this out, maybe one with a picture of Cheney whispering into Bush's ear that says "don't worry, dubya, just blame everything on the Clenis" or something.

I wonder if someone made him some shirts like this and sent them to him, if he would be photographed in them, acknowledging the repuke blame game and making fun of it, maybe one that said "I know, I know, everything is my fault" or "I take full responsibility for everthing that is happening, has happened, or will happen in the future" or something like that, it's a shame that the dem congress people don't get shirts like this and wear them all on the same day.

If the law is to mean anything, no one should be exempt. Not even a real sitting President, much less a fraud.

We have seen what happens when the Bush is given immunity. He treats it impunity. He is no better than the thuggish dictators international law is designed to keep in line. He deserves to be brought before an international court for the invasion of Iraq and the violations of POW rights, including torture, at semi-secret US detention facilities around the world, including Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

thinks the United Nations is only useful if it gets what it wants. This will be interesting. The world is saying no to the US. I think we need to get use to it as long as the present people are in power here.

Most likely if we have the immunity removed, it will not be a retroactive action to hold anyone accountable for the Iraq mess, but will instead be applicable in future wars and acts of aggression by the US.

n/t

I think this is shortsighted.

If the U.S. doesn't have immunity for its troops, it simply won't send troops to assist in overseas peacekeeping operations. That may also be something many here would like. I also think we should greatly scale back our overseas military operations, but when another situation like Rwanda comes up, I'd like to think we could step in and respond. That won't happen if U.S. troops don't have immunity. And yet again hundreds of thousands may die.

Ideology and pragmatism in conflict.

ShrubCo dosen't want to work with anyone unless he has complete control. This may be the only way the other nations can keep him on a short leash until the US elects a leader willing to work with the rest of the world.

The problem should resolve itself under new leadership.

commit war crimes do not need immunity.

It's not like the US intervened in Rwanda anyway. And after Somalia what determines whether the US will intervene in such conflicts that are "non-profitable" is whether US soldiers will die. This has nothing to do with their immunity.
Please point me to any kind of documentation that supports your deduction on this subject.

And that's to our discredit. 800,000 people died in 100 days and we did nothing to stop it. Why?

If something like that starts brewing again, I want us to do what we can, and if our soldiers don't have immunity, they won't be sent.

at least every country that's willing to send troops to a conflict situation, even if this is under UN flag.
Why should the US be treated any different in matters of international law than other nations? Because it has a military superiority? That's a poor excuse.
What does it say about America and its military when they are not willing to send troops without an absolute exemption from international law? Nothing good, IMHO.
I agree there should be safe nets against unjust accusations, but total exemption seems a bit over the edge.

What the hell do you mean by documentation? Is it not clear that what I wrote is my own analysis? I base that on my knowledge and understanding of military policy, history, and diplomacy.

Why would the soldiers not be sent to a place like Rwanda if they had no immunity? Do you mean that they wouldn't be sent as a punishment to the UN? Or for some other reason? By documentation I mean specific examples of policies or historical documents that have led you to this conclusion. I mean, your analysis comes from putting some pieces together, right? I am curious as to what those pieces are. To the best of my knowledge the non-intervention in Rwanda had nothing to do with the immunity (which US had at the time and still didn't go) so I don't see how having or not having immunity would influence policy when it came to deployment of forces for actual humanitarian missions, like they should have done in Liberia, I don't mean like "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
I guess I just don't understand your argument. The US did not send forces to Rwanda, and they had immunity at the time. You are saying that we have to make sure immunity is preserved so that the next time something like Rwanda happens, US soldiers can be deployed, even though immunity did not seem to factor at all in the Rwanda scenario, or the Liberia scenario last year. So unless you mean that now the US won't send soldiers out of spite to the UN (not unlikely with this administration), rather than not sending them for other reasons, like "no profit" and "bad PR" I don't follow.
But I'm interested in understanding it, so if you can explain how you came to this conclusion, I'd like to hear.

we have demostrated what happens WITH immunity, and it's not pretty.
The ICC is fair in it's definition of "war crimes" and commonly accepted "rules of warfare". We may have had immunity in Iraq, but it is vital that history proves that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith and dumya would all be on trial at the Hague without it.

require immunization from war crimes. Don't commit them, simple as that. The US has signed on to the Geneva Conventions and therefore should not be immune to the war crimes that are inherent within the Conventions. The threat to pull out troops from overseas operations is, simply put, blackmail. After the proof we all have seen of torture being practiced, why in hell should they get immunity???

The US would NEVER get involved in something like Rwanda unless there was something in it for the US. If there was something in it for the US, it would get involved regardless of the lack of immunity.

Besides, even though US troops wouldn't have immunity from prosecution, who exactly is going to FORCE the US to give up soldiers charged in the ICC?

at the Hague?

:toast:

"Pakistan and Algeria were undecided, council sources said."

Something tells me this is going to cost us big time--anyone know how much of a payoff they're holding out for?

Especially considering all the war crimes they have committed?

It's called "taking responsibility."

such bullshit

The United States faces an embarrassing international debate over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - and possibly a diplomatic defeat - at the United Nations as American officials try to shield U.S. troops abroad from prosecution in the new International Criminal Court.

The Bush administration, a fierce opponent of the court, wants the U.N. Security Council to renew a resolution, first adopted two years ago, that exempts U.S. troops in U.N.-mandated missions from investigation or prosecution by the court.

U.S. diplomats won the blanket exemption in 2002 by threatening to veto U.N. peacekeeping missions. Now, in the wake of the prisoner-abuse scandal, the chances of renewing it are much slimmer, say diplomats and human-rights groups.

"It's transformed the landscape," said Richard Dicker, an international justice specialist at Human Rights Watch. Anger at the United States, his and other rights groups say, has been compounded by disclosure of internal Bush administration legal memos offering narrow definitions of torture and suggesting that U.S. forces could operate outside the international laws of war.
<snip>

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=1127172

The exemption expires at the end of June, which coincidentally is the date when U.S. occupation authorities hand over political power in Iraq to a new interim government.

Interesting, isn't it? It also reveals that old Republican magic logic here:

Although former President Clinton signed the treaty establishing the court, the Senate hasn't ratified it and the Bush administration maintains that the United States does not fall under the court's jurisdiction.

Having seized the Senate majority through odd campaign wins, like Saxby Chamblis, etc., allowed _Bush to control our Senate, too. What a damnable shame he was able to count on every one of them to back him up as he violated Bill Clinton's signing the treaty, and flaunt it, taunt it before the whole world.