Should Bush And Blair Be Prosecuted For The Iraq War?

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu says ex-U.S. president George W. Bush and ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be put on trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague for their war crimes: specifically the Iraq War.

Archbishop Tutu stated, The ex-leaders "...fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand - with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.

"The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many people he massacred, the point is that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level." Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2197109/Desmond-Tutu-Archbishop-calls-lying-Blair-Bush-face-trial-Hague-Criminal-Court-Iraq-war.html#ixzz25QqSBPeW

The death toll estimates from the Iraq War, launched in 2003, range from 150,000 to over one million men, women and children, with vast numbers more severely injured and thousands of children orphaned. Today, Iraq is in ruins, barely a functional nation.

Electricity is scarce, meaning its people must endure temperatures as high as 120 degrees with no air conditioning or even fans. They live without lighting at night, and often no television, computers or other modern day necessities. Medical care is a luxury, for most medical (and other) professionals have fled the country. Even clean drinking water is scarce. And no-one outside the U.S. Green Zone is safe.

Who is accountable for all this death and destruction? Not Mr. Bush. When he was president, former House Speaker Pelosi said, "Impeachment is off the table," and no criminal charges have been filed against him since he left office. Where is the rule of law?

The U.S. wants to seize Wikileaks leader Julian Assange and lock him away for informing the world of some of the U.S.'s many illegal activities, including its actions in the Iraq War. The U.S. executed Osama bin Laden with no trial, as it holds political prisoners without trial in Guantanamo and elsewhere, hopefully no longer torturing them. And the U.S. is 11 years into a lost Afghan War it no longer makes any pretense to justify.

After World War ll, the U.S. led the effort to establish the United Nations, proudly locating its headquarters in New York and the U.S. led the Nuremberg Trials to prosecute war criminals. Now we Americans have become war criminals as we conduct war wherever and whenever and on whatever basis we choose, ignoring the sovereignty of other nations, the U. N. Charter, the Geneva Convention and even our own Constitution.

Rule of law is meaningless if those laws are not enforced and it should not have taken Archbishop Tutu to call for the well deserved prosecution of Messrs. Bush and Blair. The International Criminal Courts are not meant only for the prosecution of alleged Balkan and African war criminals but for the prosecution of alleged war criminals wherever they exist.

Dick