Juan Cole - June 12, 2005

The International Criminal Court and Blair/Bush: Amy Ross

Guest Comments by Amy Ross

"The International Criminal Court and Blair/Bush"

"Regarding accountability and the ICC: It does seem that the Blair administration was much more cognizant of the potential conflict with the ICC. Indeed the prominent British human rights lawyer Cherie Booth (aka Mrs. Blair) wrote in an essay on the ICC in 2003 that "...it is of singular importance to note that no one-- not even a serving head of state --will be able to claim immunity from the jurisdiction of the Court." (in "from Nuremberg to The Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice," Philippe Sands editor.)

Bush and Blair Committed to War in April, 2002
Leaked Cabinet Briefing Shows British Knew War was Illegal

The London Times has dropped another bombshell document concerning the planning of the Iraq war in Washington and London.

The leaked Cabinet office briefing paper for the July 23, 2002, meeting of principals in London, the minutes of which have become notorious as the Downing Street Memo, contains key context for that memo. The briefing paper warns the British cabinet in essence that they are facing jail time because Blair promised Bush at Crawford in April, 2002, that he would go to war against Iraq with the Americans.

More than 35 Killed by Iraqi Guerrillas
US Kills 40 Fighters with Missile Strike

CBC/AP reports:


The new wave of violence began Friday evening when a suicide bomber targeted patrons of a falafel restaurant in the Shiite Shula quarter of Baghdad, killing 10 persons, some of them children waiting for ice cream.

Cole on Iraq, 2002-2003

By the way, it has been alleged by some of my detractors that I supported the Iraq War. My position on the war was in fact very complex. I thought it was a terrible idea, but declined to come out against it because I believed that if Saddam's genocidal regime could be removed by the international community in a legal way, that some good would have been accomplished. But the bottom line is that I thought a war would be legal only if the United Nations Security Council authorized it. I can produce witnesses to my having said that if the UNSC did not authorize the war, I would protest it. When Bush threw aside the UNSC, I became a critic. I still resist the notion that US and UK troops have died in vain, but my conviction that they wouldn't did not actually suggest support for the war on a political plane, as some have alleged.