Iraq is a caldron of broken laws.

Recent noise surrounding the indictment of Blackwater guards for war crimes they allegedly committed in Iraq during September 2007 serves as a reminder that the Bush administration's entire misadventure in that country has involved lawbreaking on a scale that may be unparalleled by any other U.S. presidency in recent memory, perhaps even exceeding that of Richard Nixon's reign.

The decision by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq during March 2003 no matter how much the United Nations or most other countries around the world opposed his actions opened up a cesspool of lawbreaking that has expanded continuously.

Bush's invasion of Iraq violated provisions in Security Council Resolution 1441 placing the Iraqi government on notice "that the resolutions of the (Security) Council (as an authoritative body) constitute the governing standard of Iraqi compliance" with U.N. efforts to find out more about its weapons systems.

In the face of Iraq's continued lack of compliance with those efforts at the time, Bush wasn't content with leaving enforcement of 1441 up to the combined members of the U.N. Security Council, and when the council wouldn't authorize a military invasion of that country, he violated the resolution by taking it upon himself to begin an attack unilaterally and without U.N. concurrence.

The violation of 1441's enforcement provisions amounted to a breach of international law by the Bush administration, because it was legally obligated to follow those provisions as a member of the United Nations as specified by the U.N. Charter (see Chapter I, Article 2, Section 2). At this point the administration was on the hook for committing infractions against two binding international agreements. But wait, there's more.

Unlawful breaking of international agreements also put the Bush folks in position to violate several provisions of the U.S. Constitution which state that duly ratified international treaties become "the supreme law of the land" (Article VI, Paragraph 2) right along with the Constitution itself and that a president is bound to uphold them in his role to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" (Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 8). And there's still so much more.

Articles 6 and 7 of Section II of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter, which is binding international law for all member nations of the United Nations, contain principles making "leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices" of armed forces who commit crimes "responsible for all acts performed by any persons (as members of those forces) in execution of (their) plans."

This means Bush and other members of his administration can be held culpable for the crimes committed in Iraq by more than 50 U.S. troops who, as my own research reveals, have already been found guilty of such by military tribunals as well as for any illegal acts committed by the Blackwater guards currently under indictment. There's more, of course, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that significant lawlessness has been and still is afoot in Iraq.

What to do then? Well, we can start the process of overcoming this morass of lawbreaking by reinvigorating fidelity to the rule of law in American society.

This will in turn require greater efforts to arrive at equal treatment under law, and equal treatment will require that a number of Bush administration officials, including Bush himself, be indicted along with U.S. troops and Blackwater guards for their alleged misdeeds. That's a beginning, anyway.

Chuck Tripp is professor of political science at Westminster College.