The first evildoers to be tried by the new International Criminal Court will be the Ugandan rebels who have kidnapped an estimated 26,000 children, some as young as 8, to exploit as soldiers and sex slaves.

According to Human Rights Watch, "The children undergo a brutal initiation into rebel life: They are forced to participate in acts of extreme violence, often being compelled to help beat or hack to death fellow child captives who have attempted to escape."

Just last Saturday these rebels torched a refugee camp in northern Uganda, killing 206 people.

African atrocities also figure in the second case the court likely will try in The Hague. The International Rescue Committee estimates more than 3.3 million people have died in the 5-year-old war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the largest toll of any conflict since World War II.

Guerrilla fighters there have engaged in looting, killing and rape as "premeditated tools of war," the United Nations reported, saying last year, "Practices such as forcing family members to eat parts of slain loved ones could also be considered part of a policy of psychological torture."

You would think the Bush administration would be doing the happy dance after hearing such evildoers are being brought to account. You would be wrong.

The United States is the only Western democracy to rebuff the International Criminal Court, or ICC. The Bush administration un-signed the Rome Statute that formed the ICC and is making immunity from the court's proceedings a condition for participation in peacekeeping missions.

The American Servicemen's Protection Act, signed in August 2002, denies military aid to nations that refuse to provide impunity to U.S. citizens and gives the United States the option of using force to "rescue" any citizen charged by the court.

The rest of the world is confused. After all, we pioneered the use of international tribunals to punish heinous war crimes. Nuremberg. Tokyo.

So what are we afraid of?

The ICC has a narrow jurisdiction. It is designed to try citizens of ratifying nations for only three things: crimes against humanity, serious war crimes and genocide that happened after July 2002.

The Bush administration has two major objections to the court. First, it claims that it infringes on our sovereignty.

Second, it fears the court lacks adequate checks and balances to prevent it from becoming politicized and used to persecute the United States.

Both concerns are misplaced.

Rather than usurp sovereignty, the ICC kicks in only when nations cannot or will not clean up their messes. It encourages countries to hold trials for their own citizens and steps in only if a country declines to do so or conducts a sham trial, as happened with Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Pol Pot in Cambodia.

Before the court's first case was even selected, the Bush administration painted a picture of American soldiers being snatched from the battlefield and subjected to quick and dirty trials.

The United States played a significant role in drafting the ICC rules, which offer similar protections to the U.S. Constitution, from habeas corpus to Miranda-like warnings and court-appointed attorneys.

There is layer upon layer of safeguards to ensure that the unjustified fears of the administration never happen.

Furthermore, the ICC is designed to try only the policy makers who direct the use of unspeakable atrocities as a policy to gain and maintain power.

According to John Washburn, convener of the American nongovernmental organizations for the International Criminal Court, who spoke at Trinity University, the court would not prosecute isolated incidents, such as the 1968 My Lai massacre, that happened in the "fog and confusion of war."

After the Holocaust, the entire world stood up and said, "Never again." Since then, more than 100 million people have died as a result of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ICC is a way to stop atrocities, punish evildoers and send a strong signal that the world will never again tolerate such behavior.

Instead of poisoning the well by anticipating problems that may never surface, the United States should cooperate with the court and ratify the treaty as soon as possible.

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.