The first court ruling to declare the Air Self-Defense Force mission in Iraq unconstitutional has left Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda further embattled as the government and politicians scrambled to make sense of the disjointed decision.
The Nagoya High Court rejected the legality of a mission that successive governments have backed since 2004. But it also rejected the demands of the more than 1,000 plaintiffs, who wanted Self-Defense Forces missions suspended and the government to pay damages for violating the Constitution.
The Fukuda government tried to downplay the ruling by saying that, on the whole, it backs the government and does not require a change in the ASDF deployment to Kuwait or its airlift operations to Baghdad.