Bloody hell, anyone that insists that Blair is a war criminal needs to slap themselves a few times.

Agreed (with Tom)

How many people are you allowed to kill in the name of being right before someone says stop?

“anyone that insists that Blair is a war criminal needs to slap themselves a few times”

Try this news item from 2004:

“The International Criminal Court in the Hague is being asked to probe allegations of war crimes by Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon.

“The claims surround the UK’s role in invading Iraq and have been raised by the group Legal Action Against War.

“They say a ‘principal charge’ is ‘intentionally launching an attack knowing it will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians’.

“Michael Mansfield QC said the group wanted to re-establish the rule of law.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3524133.stm

Why was it that Elizabeth Wilmhurst resigned her job as the deputy chief legal adviser in the Foreign Office?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4377605.stm

“Bloody hell, anyone that insists that Blair is a war criminal needs to slap themselves a few times.”

Obviously.

It’s simply stupid to say that somebody who lies to take a country into a pointless and (probably) illegal war, resulting in (estimated) 100,000+ deaths, in order for…well we’re not entirely sure, certainly doesn’t deserve the label “war criminal”.

That would just be stupid, wouldn’t it?

So stupid it deserves nothing more than a glib, sarcastic comment.

Thanks for your contribution.

Thomas – perhaps you can offer us an objective criteria/measure so we can judge who should be called a war criminal or not… otherwise we get into a situation where the ‘evil bad guys on the other side’ are constantly referred to a criminals whereas ‘us good guys’ are ok just because.

So yeah, some objective measure please? I’m sure you mean well but it comes across as incredibly naive.

Entering a war can be legal and the deaths of civilians resulting from attack can also be legal. As the ICC http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/04D143C8-19FB-466C-AB77-4CDB2FDEBEF7/143682/OTP_letter_to_senders_re_Iraq_9_February_2006.pdf said “Under international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute, the death of civilians during an armed conflict, no matter how grave and regrettable, does not in itself constitute a war crime.”

Civilians die in warfare, but that doesn’t make Blair, nor Bush ‘War Criminals’.

Just to add, I’m sceptical of the Iraq war, it doesn’t mean I have to believe in bullshit likethat.

Well yes, wars can be legal.

Dead civilians doesn’t nullify that fact. Thanks for making that clear.

Can you now do what Sunny asked?

Why are you sceptical of the Iraq War? I promise you, it definitely happened.

As for the “bullshit like that” you refer to, could you please clarify and define said bullshit. By providing an objective criteria by which we are sure that Bush and Blair fall on the nice side of war criminal*.

* and of course Straw, Hoon, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and all the rest yada yada

Long story short: international law does not function.

Thomas, you may want to pay attention to the rest of the document, not just the bit you like:

“In other words, the International Criminal Court has a mandate to examine the conduct during the conflict, but not whether the decision to engage in armed conflict was legal. As the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, I do not have the mandate to address the arguments on the legality of the use of force or the crime of aggression.”

Not within the Prosecutor’s mandate doesn’t mean that the war wasn’t illegal. It means that, for reference, “unlike a national prosecutor, who may initiate an investigation on the basis of very limited information, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is governed by the relevant regime under the Rome Statute” and that the Prosecutor can “seek to initiate an investigation only if the relevant criteria of the Statute are satisfied.”

So let’s get this right: the Rome Statute, as yet unsigned by the US, gives very limited powers of prosecution, and is very prescriptive in its makeup. It’s skewed toward the signatories, and it dictates that a crime can only take place if the State in which it takes place is a signatory. Oh, and for the icing on the cake, Iraq is not a signatory.

@11: “Long story short: international law does not function.”

Pity about that.

Least you missed it, try this article in The Times on Monday by Sir Kenneth Macdonald QC, previously Director of Public Prosecutions 2003-2008 and currently visiting prof at the LSE:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article6955241.ece

“The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.”

In his law practice, Sir Kenneth Macdonald QC works out of Matrix Chambers, as does Cherie (Booth) Blair QC and Professor Philippe Sands QC, author of: Lawless World – Making and Breaking Global Rules (Penguin, 2006)

Professor Sands QC was among the signatories of this letter to the Guardian, with other eminent teachers of international law, about the legality of the Iraq war, sent to The Guardian on 7 March 2003, shortly before the debate in Parliament on 18/19 March:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,909275,00.html

As for the United Nations, Blair said in a keynote speech in Chicago on the Blair Doctrine in April 1999:

“If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html

Curiously, Nazi Germany claimed the justification of “liberal interventionism” when it was invading Poland in September 1939 to protect the civil rights of ethnic Germans in Danzig. By 1945, 40 to 50 million people had been killed in the ensuing conflict.

@Chris C

This does show failing in that particular piece of law, nothing that incriminates Blair.

The Rome Statute is a failing of international law for many reasons. The ICC is, as was said, limited in its scope to apply to non-members. An interesting case arose in February where ‘Palestine’ tried to take Israel to the ICC – this couldn’t happen because Israel is not a signatory (because the Rome Statute definitively would make settlements illegal) and ‘Palestine’ isn’t a sovereign nation. That will not arise in the court.

It doesn’t incriminate Blair at all. The fact the scope is blurred and a failure of international law doesn’t do that.

“It doesn’t incriminate Blair at all. The fact the scope is blurred and a failure of international law doesn’t do that.”

Tony Blair decided that Saddam was a criminal despot – which he was – and took the personal decision that he should be toppled:

- regardless of the legality of any war, contrary to his own doctrine set out in that keynote speech in Chicago in 1999
- regardless of the loss of human life in Iraq – an estimated 100,000 civilians have been killed there
- regardless of what else might be inflicted on the people of Iraq in consequence
- regardless of any planning for the post-invasion situation
- regardless of sending out British troops significantly under-equipped, not least for protection against use of WMD, the supposed justification for the invasion
- regardless of whether the cost of invading Iraq would aedversely impact on the prior commitment to resourcing military operations in Afghanistan

At the very least, Blair’s personal decisions, implemented through Crown prerogatives prior to endorsement by Parliament just before the invasion, was thoroughly confused.

Who else should we blame for implicating Britain?

Of course Blair is a war criminal along with Bush & many others, there is no doubt about that.

Pity that Anglo imperialism is still alive & well because if Iraqis had the military might then both Blair & Bush would have been hung for war crimes just like the Nazis were.

As for quislings like Byrne who enable war criminals, they are in the same class as those who helped high ranking Nazis escape justice.

Byrne is obviously a mental midget, he claims to be “skeptical” of the Iraq war.

About bloody time you senile git.

It has been known for years now that the war was launched based on lies, thanks for joining the rest of the sane humans a few years late.

I bet you along with Bush & Blair wank off every time an Iraqi child dies you sad excuse for a human being.

sadly, BLiar took us into the whole Iraq debacle simply because of his sychophantic attitude to the idiot Bush. BLiar, failed rock star revelled on the stage of American power. He promised Bush he would invade, and hadn’t the guts to pull out.