"The US won't recognize the international courts who could actually bring war crimes charges against us, and certainly no one in the US government or military is up to the task. So I hear a lot of people here saying, essentially, so what if we are torturing Iraqis?"

War crimes? This might be a war crime if the military glossed over it or it was systematic. The whole concept of war crimes recognizes that individual troops may commit crimes and must be held accountable without rising to the level of war crimes. What happened here was against the Uniform Code of Military Conduct and the military is acting accordingly. When Japanese commanders in WWII not only condoned rapes but systematically encouraged them, that was a war crime. If they had discovered a rape and treated it according to military justice, it wouldn't have been.

It's the assertion that things like this could become "war crimes" that weaken the courts. No nation wants to participate if there's not a reasonable standard separating normal crimes from war crimes.