Artful Dodger:

> The libearal mind in the US wants to pin the "War Criminal" charge on George Bush and
> when pressed for reasons, they cite a number of things Bush authorized that were
> criminal in the eyes of International Law or simply against US standards. And yet, when
> it's pointed out that Obama is doing EXACTY THE SAME THINGS, they look at you as if
> they don't understand the connection.

I think that ultimately the legal implications of the war in Iraq are a moot point. Was Iraq a threat, and if so, how? The Bush administration made two claims about Iraq. First, that it was a "terrorist state" that supported Al Qaida and presumably other terror networks. Second, Iraq possessed WMDs in quantities that were a direct threat not just to the US, but to the rest of the world.

On the first point, even before the war Bush was dismissed as being wrong because nobody could prove a link between the Baathist regime in Iraq and Al Qaida. The Baathist Party was a secular organization and Saddam Hussein had traditionally oppressed Shiite moslems because he saw them as a threat against his power. The link between Iraq and Al Qaida was never proven and to date it has not been proven conclusively.

On the second point, as is well known now, the intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities was for the most part manufactured and both before and after the war no WMD stockpiles were ever found in Iraq. In most cases what the military found were abandoned installations, run down laboratories and the like. The large stockpiles of WMDs claimed by the Bush administration were never found. That is an undeniable fact. No chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were found in Iraq before and after the invasion.

So we are left with a war in which the political motivations were never proven. At the same time between 400,000 and 1.5 million people have died, depending on whose statistical data one believes. The US military confirms about 380,000 killed, while other things like the Iraq Body Count project project deaths into the 1.5 million range.

The American government has never publicly admitted the number of casualties before the American public. Either they don't care, or are embarrassed by this.

Added to this, is the fact that the main economic beneficiaries of the war were closely linked to the president and the immediate cabinet:
- Haliburton (Dick Cheney)
- Chevron (Condoleeza Rice)
- Exxon (Lee Raymond, the largest contributor to both of George W. Bush's campaigns)
- G.D. Searle (the largest supplier of biotechnology to Iraq, at the time run by Donald Rumsfeld)
- The Carlisle Group (where the Bush family and the Bin Laden family invested their funda privately, this company benefitted greatly by investing in oil and defense during the war)
- Arbusto Energy (a drilling and oil service company belonging tot he Bush family)

There are also defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. They profitted greatly from the war and gave massive donations to both Bush campaigns.

So, weighing the things that went on, one has to wonder if the war was motivated by fear or greed. Regardless of that, a lot of politicians voted for the war because they did not want to seem unpatriotic. Not so with Barrack Obama:

"Barack Obama ... was not a senator at the time of the voting of the Iraq War Resolution, but has repeatedly voiced his disapproval of it both before and during his senatorship, saying at an anti war rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002: "I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars." He also spoke of the "undetermined length... undetermined cost, [and] undetermined consequences" which even a successful war would bring."

Now, is Barrack Obama a cause of the current problems or is he merely trying to deal with all the situations left behind by the previous administration? The Bush administration left behind a series of problems that will not be solved in the 8 years that Obama will be in office, and Iraq is one of those problems.

Are George W. Bush and his cabinet a bunch of war criminals? Each person must make up their own mind. Considering the evidence and the actions of the Bush administration, I would say that he is. The cabinet was neither blind nor dumb. They knew what they were doing, and they did it callously and without regard for the human cost of the war. Everything else seems to me nothing but excuses.