If there is any moral authority left in Western governments, Bush, Blair and Howard must be brought to justice charged with crimes against humanity.

They should be hanged if found guilty.

Philip Tang

The hanging bit is going too far. There was enough doubt long before the event for the peoples of America, Britain and Australia to say no. Bush, Blair and Howard where all put into their positions of authority by the peoples of their respective countries. Those who did not say 'No' must accept their portion of the blame.
It is the people who the put leaders in and it is time the people demanded truth rather than rhetoric.
Now that the 'Howard gang' is trying for a comeback I hope the People of Australia have learnt something and reject a return to the politics of fear.
As far as 'normalizing' an epic crime. I fear John Pilger is right. It happens everytime it becomes impossible to keep the lid on unsavioury events

Pilger is a rabid left wing loon. For years he's taken delight in dumping on the society that continues to flatter him.

It constantly amazes me that the intellectual left in the West has somehow found itself the voice of defending dictators, mass murderers and the Islamic fascist right.

The only real dyed in the wool offender of human rights was hanged. By his own people.

I guess if there is no answer to an argument get into the name calling. 'Pilger the rabid left wing loon' versus 'Islamic fascist right.' Sounds like a bad horror movie.

How easily you forget that Hussein was America's 'Man in the Middle East' until he decided to go his own way. It was America that installed him as dictator and supported his murderous ways. And that Iran is what it is today because the CIA overthrow a moderate democratic government to re-install the Shah as supreme dictator. When the Shah was kicked out again we got the Ayatollahs.

Also that Iraq did not exist until it was cobbled together after the Great War so that Britain could have all its little oil interests in one neat package. Whether or not the various peoples in the area ever wanted to be in one package never came into it.
But of course we can always avoid uncomfortable facts by name calling and blind dogma

Street,

The Pilgers of this world are the ones who see through the camouflage draped so splendidly over the warmongering intinentions of powerful nations with vested interests.

The capture and subsequent dispatch of Saddam Hussein was merely a necessary sideshow. Did it ever occur to you to ask why it was perfectly feasible for western powers to turf the dictator out of Iraq, yet no power is at all interested in removing an equally despotic dictator like Robert Mugabe - Zimbabwe is simply not worth the trouble. Iraq and Afghanistan, on the other hand, possess respectively both a plentiful access to oil and a strategic geographical foothold in an all important region.

Why do you think advanced western countries with their inherent requirement to accessible oil reserves have been instrumental in formulating governments and drawing up borders in the region since the inception of the modern industrial state?

Poirot,
on one hand you describe the west as a manipulator yet on the other you describe it as advanced. What is so "advanced" in being a manipulator ?
I think with the benefit of hindsight we can safely describe today's western mentality as backward rather than advanced.