... and it's going to be a monster.

Poor old Bush and Blair, eh? They skip out hand in hand before the assembled world press, proclaiming their humble apologies before pleading that the time for blame-laying is now over, when something embarrassing like this happens.

You should dig down for the first person account by a nine year old witness who watched her entire family being murdered one by one (Guardian, I think it is) for a sense of just how jolly unfortunate the whole sorry business is.

That is disgusting, it's also the unproffesional military for you. I'll bet this isn't a one off either, it's just the only incident that's come to light through false reports.

Bush and Blair are fucking clowns.

Much as it pains me to be fair to that twattish twosome, that would have happened anywhere, in any war, just or unjust, legal or illegal, because some squaddies are just vicious, brutal cunts.

Aye, I agree with that. I don't think you can have war without this stuff. It's war that's wrong, this is just a symptom of that wrongess. Doesn't excuse it, of course, and they should be prosecuted as far as possible and that. But ... no surprise.

 

Aren't USians still exempt from war crimes charges?

Aye, you and Woggy are pretty much saying the same thing, with which I do not disagree. My reference to B&B was that this was unfortunate timing, rather than another individual sin to lay at their doors.

Their responsibility is executive; what they have to answer is whether the decision to go to war, with all its concomitant and inevitable human tragedy, was either legal, or strategically and morally justifiable.

Some Iraqis I know still seem to think things are better now than before the war.

I think they are, but sadly for the fuckheads responsible for this little gem, the war in Iraq ended three years ago. At least, it did according to their Commander in Chief.

Impossibly, they still appear to be claiming that the war itself was fundmentalistically justified and morally right.

I hope to fuck it is. My suspicion is that the same or better could have been delivered through policies of engagement, political pressure and investment rather than by blanket bombing and letting the dogs (both four- and two-legged) off the leash.

Are they the ones who were actually in dungeons being tortured by Saddam's cousins?

something that has crossed my mind a few times now :

 

why is it ok for Bush and Blair to make decisions and orders that result in the deaths of many innocents but when Saddam says (in court) "as leader of my country I have to make difficult decisions and sometimes people get hurt" they vilefy him ?

 

note: I am not in any way condoning any of Saddam's behaviour, I am merly pointing out that Bush and Blair seem to be going down the same road, just not as far (yet).

Not really. For every girl Saddam's sons raped before, there seems to be villages being raped at the moment.

 

And I'm not really exaggerating - one village saw something like 100-200 teenage (and single) girls give birth at similar times.

 

Not to mention the threats and beatings.

No, they're the ones who've spent decades outside of Iraq preaching about how their mad Mullahs need to rule.

Do they send you the mines, though?

Jolly times in Iraq. And with the prospect of all-out civil war, collapse into three rival states, regressive government for the foreseeable future and annexation of oil rights by the West to look forward to. Ambassador, you spoil us.

Yeah, now that an unbelievable amount of evidence against them is mounting day by day, they have nowhere else to go by whine about being sorry.

 

Fuckers.

They're both in the happy position of being immensely wealthy, which must make feeling sorry a whole lot easier.

 

Wealth or not, what they crave more than anything is that posterity will judge them heroes. So I curse them both with long enough retirements that they come to recognise in their declining years that history will regard them as evil, murdering and imcompetent shits.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what the Neo Cons proposed just after the invasion of Kuwait.