yawg

Yeah, jurisdiction is a big mess for int'l law. There are a whole lot of things that are plausibly 'illegal' (esp. war crimes), but there's no one really with the authority to do anything about them. The ICC was supposed to be a move in the direction of a stable jurisdiction for war crimes, but the U.S. has hamstrung it from the beginning, and many other countries (e.g. France) are claiming exceptions and reservations. One possibility I'd forgotten was that they may set up a hybrid Iraq/international ad hoc tribunal, like they've done in Sierra Leone. My money is still that the U.S. will push for an entirely Iraqi tribunal, though.

And re: sham. I'm very worried about this. On the one hand, getting a robust system together takes time. On the other hand, it'll look just as bad to keep Hussein in custody for a long time as to have a questionable trial.

Remember: if you open more than one can, it's cooking.

I stole the line from a friend, so you can steal it from me, sure.

Given the jurisdictional issues with the ICC, yeah, I think an ad hoc tribunal would probably be the best that could be hoped for - it could be set up faster than a fair Iraqi trial could be (though, if I could wave a magic wand, I'd rather see that... there's a long story in there about jurisdictional priority, but I'll spare you). But given this administration's hostility to international fora, my money's against it (they're not even very happy about Clark testifying against Milosovic at the ICTY). Who knows, though - maybe they'll do it as a way of throwing the UN a bone.