(findlaw) how U.S. opposition to international court

jeopardizes U.S. troops

(FindLaw) -- Even after the recent, tragic attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the United States was not willing to unreservedly support a U.N. Security Council resolution to help protect U.N. and other humanitarian workers. Instead, the U.S. greenlighted the resolution only when its reference to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was deleted.

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The ICC's provisions are long-established and unobjectionable
Why is the United States so upset about the ICC statute? The answer is this: Under the statute, the ICC can take jurisdiction over a national of even a non-party country if he or she commits a crime in a party country's territory.

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The Bush administration may fear prosecutions for the crime of aggression
In the end, though, it's not the rogue Lieutenant Calleys the Bush administration is worried about -- it's military personnel conducting what the administration views as business is usual. For there is an argument that high-level military personnel who were in charge of the Iraq war committed the "crime of aggression" -- which is punishable by the ICC.

So far, the crime of aggression, in this context, remains undefined. When the U.S. participated in the ICC Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) meetings, it consistently resisted broad definitions and broad jurisdiction. And the drafters of the ICC statute, unable to agree on a definition and process for prosecuting aggression, left that struggle to a later day.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/09/10/findlaw.analysis.cohn.peacekeepers/