Should Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes?

[Gandalf]

In war all parties engage in actions which could be described as "war crimes" (depending on your personal definition I guess). However, only the losers get tried. To paraphrase Robert McNamera, if the U.S. had lost the Second War War those responsible for the firebombings of Japan would considered war criminals...

For my answer: No, they should not be tried. It would be absurd and who has the political authority to prosecute them? Surely not the U.N. Any kind of "trial" would just be a useless exercise of political showmanship.

The International Criminal Court in the Hague, Holland, has the authority to try them, like it tried Slobodan Milosevic for ethnic cleansing. Every country in the world is a signatory to the ICC treaty and accepts its authority in these matters apart from the failed state Somalia and the rogue states North Korea and, uh, America.

There's a HUGE difference between trying Slobidan "Genocide" Milosevic and George "Cocaine" Bush and Tony "Pseudo-labor" Blair. I loathe Bush, and to a lesser extend Blair, and almost everything they stand for, but to think that they could be tried for war crimes, or that their respective nations would allow that to happen is absurd.

On your final point, there is no doubt that the political elite would fight tooth and nail not to allow it to happen as it would set a scary precedent for them. But I'm sure that if you were to conduct polls amongst the general population of both the U.S and U.K you would see a lot of people indicating that these men should be held accountable for the acts they have commited. As far as I recall most polls showed that support for the war was wavering prior to the invasion and world wide there was little support for the actions the U.S. and Britain were about to embark upon. In the eyes of the world, these people probably are war criminals.