Should Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes?

[Gandalf]

You had a go at me not 24 hours back for inciting trouble on here and yet it appears the logic of posting this thread is to put another capitalist-socialist divide on the lets get it on

Of course they shouldnt, both made a tough, life changing call but chose to back their instincts for the sake of eventual peace one day within the middle east.

100s of brave heroes have been lost. But in the long run iraq and afghanistan will be free of tyrany and men and women can finally live in a free democratic society

In what way am I trying to incite trouble?

At no point in this thread have I tried to push a socialist agenda, so I don't know where you are coming from when you say that. And stop trying to paint it into such a black and white capitalist/socialist divide. At the end of the day I like the freemarket, but I would like a freemarket that operates with responsibility and provides benefits to society. It's hardly the stuff of a raving communist. Surely, you don't think the system is working too well right now either?

In this case I simply started a thread looking for views on whether Bush and Blair lied to their respective countries, invaded a country illegally and have the blood of thousands of service men and hundreds of thousands of civilians on their hands or not. I have contributed a little myself and have my own views, but most of all I am interested to see what other people have to say about it. I included the poll too, because quite frankly I like to know where my views stand in terms of where others are at in their thinking too. If only I vote yes and a hundred others are voting no for something, then I can see that perhaps my thoughts have become somewhat skewed.

So, you think telling porkies to your own people in an effort to incite fear and to then go ahead and invade without U.N. support is the correct procedure for going to war? Now, if it was solely about regime change and wanting greater influence in the middle east and open access to oil supplies....do you think that would have worked so well? Would we have bought into that so easily. It wasn't just our respective populations that were lied to, it was our armed forces too. Hundreds have died, in this war alone and for what? WMD? There were none! Saddam was a toothless tiger, handicapped for years by sanctions! Yes, he was a bit of a bastard, but even he never wreaked the kind of havoc upon Iraq that we did. And on what pretext was that again? Lies, misinformation, and more lies.

It's all too easy to sit there and with the benefit of hindsight say "at least the evil dictator is gone, we have brought freedom to the people of Iraq". This is called backtracking. What about the democracy in Afghanistan? The government is inneffective, corrupt and women have no rights. Is that what we are fighting for out there?

All in all it makes our nations look like the imperialist aggressors that they are. North Korea has armed itself just in case, and all other nations would be sensible to do the same. Our nations can no longer claim the high ground in anything they do, we have been shown up as lacking in credibility and principles. It will have hurt us in the long run.