It's time to go after Bush/Cheney: British deputy prime minister admits Iraq war was illegal

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/pers-j24.shtml

The statement by British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg that the Iraq war was “illegal” leads to only one conclusion—that former Prime Minister Tony Blair and many others must immediately be arraigned on war crimes charges.

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That was far from Clegg’s intent. Almost immediately he retreated from his remarks, issuing a statement that they had been made in a “personal capacity”. A spokesman said, “The coalition government has not expressed a view on the legality or otherwise of the Iraq conflict. But that does not mean that individual members of the government should not express their individual views. These are long-held views of the deputy prime minister.

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More fundamentally, the legality of the Iraq war is not a matter of “personal” opinion or individual historical interpretations. Under the precedent laid down by the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, the leaders of the United States and Britain are guilty under international law of the same criminal charge that was brought against the Nazis: the waging of aggressive war.

As the Nuremberg verdict stated, “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

There is no question that the United States and the UK launched a war of aggression against Iraq so as to advance their own strategic geo-political interests in the Middle East.

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You will sooner see civil war than see this ever, ever happen. They are a protected class that wield a tremendous amount of power. This power extends more so than anyone in the US or UK wants to admit, believe in, or own up to. There will never be any trial, any arraignment. Any investigations will be sponsored to exonerate those who are currently in power by publicly condemning their predecessors. It's like sending your own brother to prison over stealing a candy bar to them. They are the rich, privileged few, and if they earned their way in, they won't risk turning their backs on those who helped them get there.

and of course they are war criminals.

It will do no good to dredge it all up.

Of course, Obama should know by doing so, he becomes complicit in those crimes. A crime itself.

Pelosi should have never taken impeachment off the table, and as long as the American people stand by and not DEMAND our elected representatives DO THEIR JOBS, this kind of crap will continue.

Had enough, America? What is it going to take?

The war criminals need not scurry off to Argentina. Or Paraguay.

Do you really want to be like Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski - pulling out your .45 just because your friend Smokey slipped a toe over the line?

What's at stake in this instance that is soooo important that you have to insist on punctiliously applying the law? Did someone's new fucking car just get smashed up with a tire iron, or somebody's duffel bag full of hunskies go missing, or something? I mean - what was the harm, really, and what's an illegal war here or there between two old allies?