Benjamin Ferenccz, an 87-year-old prosecutor, was responsible for convicting 22 Nazi officers for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Hating to see young people killed due to a war that could be settled by other means, Ferenccz has worked for over 60 years on an alternate solution to the use of warfare for settling disputes.

After World War II, the U.N. charter stated that no nation could start wars without the U.N. Security Council's permission.

In 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ratified by over 100 countries, made it possible to adjudicate cases of conflicts. Ferenccz says that such an international justice system could have been used to put Saddam on trial for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Even though the Bush administration originally signed the ICC treaty, the president withdrew the United States' signature less than a year later. Three months later, he signed a new law to prevent the U.S. from cooperating with the ICC.

This law authorizes the president to order our military to invade the Netherlands to free U.S. personnel imprisoned by the ICC.

Ferenccz says that the ICC should try both Saddam and G.W. Bush for starting aggressive wars -- Saddam for attacking Kuwait in 1990 and Bush for invading Iraq in 2003.

Was Bush thinking ahead when he withdrew the U.S. from participating in the ICC treaty? Yes.

If he were convicted and imprisoned by the ICC for war crimes in Iraq, the new law authorizes Bush to order invasion of the Netherlands to rescue himself.

If there was such a course as CYA-01 at Yale, I'll bet Bush made an A+, but he has earned an F as president of the United States.

Hilda Mitchell

Pinebluff