>Further down the article it is interesting that the US has not signed up to allow its citizins be tried under these new international laws governing war crimes, if leading countries who pursue others under these laws will not abide by them themselves, what is the point of the laws in the first place?

Until the U.S. changed its policy to "war on any whiff of displeasure" I was very sympathetic to the U.S. position.
At the time my reasoning was quite simple - the U.S. was "asked" to use its might across the whole planet for any number of reasons, the huge majority of those situations involving very little in the way of direct 'interests' save altruism. In such circumstances one cannot know what one will face nor what they will have on hand locally to deal with such threats. Situations could arise where excessive power was deemed applied when in fact it was the most readily available/practical tactic.
War crimes can be charged to anyone from a Private to a General to a non-military leader. I've always had confidence that the U.S.'s own justice system would deal appropriately with such issues, while there is ALSO the constant possibility that political alignments (witness the makeup of the Security Council when the Iraq war was debated or a Libyan leading the Human Rights part of the U.N.) could result in spurious charges dragging on for years.

2 cents worth of opinion

>Cheers
>~M
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>Harder doesn't mean impossible.
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>>http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/08/16/amin.tyrants.reut/index.html
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>>"Times are changing...exile is becoming harder to find"