Should Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes?

[Memphis]

• Indiscriminate methods of attack against civilian centres such as high level airs strikes and attacks on cities such as Baghdad and Basra.
• Indiscriminate weapons systems such as cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, multiple rocket launcher systems or weapons using depleted uranium.
• Attacks on Iraqi infrastructure
• Attacks on electricity supplies (so as to cause the death of thousands of innocent civilians because of failed water sanitation plants).
• Attacks on projects likely to release dangerous forces such as civil nuclear energy plants or dams.

Fuck me take all the fun out of war why dont you.

[Howlin Mad Missy]

• Indiscriminate methods of attack against civilian centres such as high level airs strikes and attacks on cities such as Baghdad and Basra.
• Indiscriminate weapons systems such as cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, multiple rocket launcher systems or weapons using depleted uranium.
• Attacks on Iraqi infrastructure
• Attacks on electricity supplies (so as to cause the death of thousands of innocent civilians because of failed water sanitation plants).
• Attacks on projects likely to release dangerous forces such as civil nuclear energy plants or dams.

Fuck me take all the fun out of war why dont you.

[Kirkland Laing]

Yes they should but no they won't be.

Bush started plotting to get his hands on Iraq's goodies before he got elected. The first item on the agenda of the first cabinet meeting he held after taking office was Iraq. A lot of people who got him elected were aftr a share of the trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil. This is an actual document, made public by somebody called Paul O'Neill who was Bush's Treasury Secretary and at the first cabinet meeting :

[Kirkland Laing]

It was the end of January 2003. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was five days away from giving a critical speech at the U.N. Security Council, laying out the case that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction and posed a danger to world peace.

But huddled with aides at the White House, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were not sure there was enough evidence to convince the Security Council. Without the council's explicit authorization, their plans for an invasion to depose Saddam Hussein could be difficult to defend under international law.


Bush proposed an alternative: paint a U.S. spy plane in United Nations colors and see if that didn't tempt Hussein's forces to shoot at it. In any case, he said, the war was "penciled in" for March 10 and the United States would go ahead with or without a second U.N. resolution.
Blair replied that he was "solidly with" the president.


That is the gist of an account of the Jan. 31, 2003, meeting contained in the new edition of "Lawless World," a book by British author Philippe Sands. He has not identified the writer of the memorandum on which the account is based, but British media reports say it was one of the aides in attendance: Sir David Manning, then security advisor to Blair and now the British ambassador in Washington.


L.A. Times
October 7th 2005




Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies and military planners received instructions to prepare up-to-date target lists for Syria and to increase their preparations for potential military operations against Damascus.

According to internal intelligence documents and discussions with military officers involved in the planning, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa was directed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prepare a "strategic concept" for Syria, the first step in creation of a full fledged war plan.

The planning process, according to the internal documents, includes courses of action for cross border operations to seal the Syrian-Iraqi border and destroy safe havens supporting the Iraqi insurgency, attacks on Syrian weapons of mass destruction infrastructure supporting the development of biological and chemical weapons, and attacks on the regime of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington Post
November 7, 2005




SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C [British intelligence chief] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Leaked British Cabinet Office memo
Published in the Sunday Times
May 1, 2005





LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

New York Times
March 27, 2006





And so by means of careful preparation in the diplomatic field, among others, the Nazi conspirators had woven a position for themselves, so that they could seriously consider plans for war and begin to outline time tables, not binding time tables and not specific ones in terms of months and days, but still general time tables, in terms of years, which were the necessary foundation for further aggressive planning, and a spur to more specific planning. And that time table was developed, as the Tribunal has already seen, in the conference of 5 November 1937, contained in our Document Number 386-PS, Exhibit USA-25, the Hossbach minutes of that conference, which I adverted to in detail on Monday last. In those minutes, we see the crystallization of the plan to wage aggressive war in Europe, and to seize both Austria and Czechoslovakia, and in that order.

U.S. Prosecutor Sidney Alderman
Nuremberg trials
November 29, 1945





The French and the Russians had at first objected to the whole concept of crimes against the peace . . . But those Allies gave ground when [U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert] Jackson made it clear that the criminalizing of, and the imposition of individual punishment for, aggressive wars, now and in the future, were so important to the U.S. that if the Charter failed to do so, the U.S. was prepared to abandon a joint trial.

Bernard D. Meltzer
The Nuremberg trials : a prosecutor's perspective
December 2002





The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

Crimes against peace: (i.) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii.) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

International Law Commission of the U.N.
Principles of the Nuremberg tribunal
1950





Certain binding legal principles, affirmed unanimously by the UN, emerged from the Nuremberg trials . . . It was made absolutely clear that law must apply equally to everyone. Putting the captive enemies on trial was seen by America's Chief Prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, as "the greatest tribute that power has ever paid to reason." His successor General Telford Taylor, my chief and later law partner, was more succinct: "Law is not a one-way street."

Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz
Remarks on the International Criminal Court
March 11, 2003

[HattonTheHammer]

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

[Kev]

Another good posting Kirklaind Laing.

I too believe they both have the blood of innocents on their hands and should be tried.

Of course this enquiry will absolutely exonerate them of any blame and brush all the awkward questions far under the rug.

The real people in power are also in control of any enquiries so nothing will happen at all.

[Youngblood]

I obv don't condone Iraq and many things Bush did cuz I'm a lefty liberal tree hugging wimp(except when it comes to fish, I murder those). But war as we knew it ended when those towers got crashed into, imo.

[CFH]

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.

[Howlin Mad Missy]

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

You have no idea....

If you keep on with this sillyness I'm going to smash you backdoor in.

[Howlin Mad Missy]

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.

They had no authority to invade a country that had not attacked them, made no attempt to attack them, didn't have the ability to attack them.

Well done George and Tony for making the West out to be the bullies - which in fact we are.

[Howlin Mad Missy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4CQ_1GWn4w

[Howlin Mad Missy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2JxhhqbAD0

[Master]

Yes they killed that innocent head of state Saddam.

[Kev]

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.

They had no authority to invade a country that had not attacked them, made no attempt to attack them, didn't have the ability to attack them.

Well done George and Tony for making the West out to be the bullies - which in fact we are.

Not often we agree Missy

[Nameless]

They should definitely!

1) Bush and his teams did falsify and wrote a false report about uranium transaction between Niger and Iraq, they got debunked:

CNN.com - Diplomat: U.S. knew uranium report was false - Jul. 7, 2003

2) Joseph Wilson went over there, he claimed it was false, he got pressured to change his speech, he didn't do, fucker lewis Libby/Rove did blast the cover up of Valerie Plarme, his wife to punish him, destroying so her CIA career and putting, for evident reasons, their life in danger.

Valerie Plame, the Spy Who Got Shoved Out Into the Cold - washingtonpost.com

3) Paul WOlfowitz ADMITTED by himself they all knew the nukes were not existent but used that excuse so everybody would use it as common excuse to attack Illegitimately Iraq: Wolfowitz Admits Iraq War Planned Two Days After 9-11

4) The embargo killed many millions of peoples in Iraq and they did jack and shit about it: Embargo brings death to 500,000 children in Iraq. - National Catholic Reporter | Encyclopedia.com

5) THey filled juicy contracts to Halliburton without calling for any offer and they did let them overcharge: Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East (Cheeney used to be chairman over there and has still loads of shares into the company)

6) Black fuckin' Water went on a killing rampage, not respecting the rules and corrupted major officials and never got sentenced because they are budy budy with Bush and CIE http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/wo...lackwater.html

IT's nothing against Republicans, it's all about Bush being sentenced for what he did allow and ordered, same for most of his staff chief department persons.