24 09 10
Ms. Tranter,

The judgments meted at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials contest your academic views.

The names of the ones put to death in both trials indicate that those who gave orders were preeminent over those who executed orders.

I followed those Trials as they evolved and I find your views gratuitous

Dear Poirot,

My wife was in Iraq shortly before Gulf War 1. She wrote a book about her experiences, but no publisher at that time was interested in putting out a book showing Iraq as a secular state which was more advanced in some ways than the surrounding countries. One way in which Iraq was advanced was in the status of women. They could be university professors or anything else which they had capacity for.

In the years before Gulf War 1 and 2 Saddam Hussein turned more to religion for support. Invading troops with Bush 2's armies were accompanied by representatives of 50 Christian fundamentalist organisations according to Time magazine. That certainly stirred up Muslim opposition.

In addition to the entire country being worse off for the war women especially have suffered as religious sectarianism has eroded their status.

poirot - a poor choice of tactics by Iraq does not mean they did not have a powerful at their disposal, we only found the buried planes afterward, for instance. Do you think the Kurds found them "mostly harmless"? I get it though, you hate America and nothing will ever justify anything they do so I'll stop trying, I don't care if you're convinced or gnashing your teeth at anything American, why not boycott all things they produce as well? Get off that computer..?

Selective hatred, is easy and the Americans are a big target since they are so tolerant.

davidf wants everyone he hates to be tried as war criminals, the victors never are, davidf so your hatred is impotent, you probably are used to that though.

davidf do you include Bob Hawke, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Obama in your war criminal list?

If not, why not .. none of them instantly stopped activities in the middle east. Is it only conservative US leaders you don't like, plus of course John Howard, our Man of Steel.

I can imagine your justification for excusing all the left wingnuts ..

Dear rpg,

I think the United States is a great country. I am a citizen of that country. Nevertheless, both Bushes lied my country into war causing death and destruction. Those were criminal acts. They were betrayals of trust. I hate neither Bush. I call them criminals because of their criminal acts.

I think some conservative US leaders were great. President Eisenhower kept the US from getting more involved in Vietnam in spite of pressures at that time to push the US into war. It was Kennedy who exceeded the limit on advisors and Johnson who escalated the war with his Tonkin Gulf Resolution which was based on a lie. Conservatives were not to blame for that war.

You are right. Victors get away with murder. They are not tried.

I include Bob Hawke. He supported the PNG war on Bougainville, the blockade of Bougainville for which the UN condemned Australia and supported the violation of the Crimes Act in hiring mercenaries to operate the aircraft on Bougainville.

It is much easier to get into a war than to get out of it. Obama is getting out of Iraq, and I know of nothing that Rudd or Gillard have done to designate the term, criminal.

John Howard lied about the children overboard. He is an unscrupulous politician who lied to win an election. He also lied about the SAS troops being in Iraq two months before Dubya's war.

Your crude comment about left wingnuts shows where you are coming from. Rather than thinking through issues you apparently choose to call names.

davidf - I expected a weak excuse and got it "It is much easier to get into a war than to get out of it. Obama is getting out of Iraq, and I know of nothing that Rudd or Gillard have done to designate the term, criminal."

What rubbish, even Gough Whitlamm was a better ALP leader than either Rudd or Gillard, he said he was going to take Australia out of Vietnam, and did it on day 2 of his stewardship. Rudd and Gillard have stayed on in Afghanistan for years, Gillard was deputy PM so is just as guilty as Rudd.

They are weak and full of spin, after all the BS before the 07 election, Rudd did nothing, Gillard did nothing - that alone makes them criminal.

Obama is the same, a weak man full of rhetoric and excuses.

Obama, Rudd and Gillard, all play the blame game, as you seem to.

Howard will be remembered in time as the greatest leader we have ever had, a man not scared of what people think, he is a man of conviction - there are many opinions about the children overboard, yours is just one of them. I note you tend to all the extreme ends of available evidence when things are not clear cut.

"Your crude comment about left wingnuts shows where you are coming from." toughen up princess, this is the big wide world out here.

If the reason for the USA invading various countries is that those countries are run by "thugs", can someone please explain why the USA hasn't addressed the problem of the big thug in Zimbabwe, and all the other thugs bringing untold misery to their people all over the world?

Could it be that the motives for invasion are more to do with USA self-interest, rather than the altruistic desire to rid the world of "thugs?"

Could it possibly be that included in that self-interest are concerns such as having an arena in which to try out their weaponry? Or as a boost to the US economy, not only during these wars but in their aftermath when American companies get to reconstruct everything they just blasted to smithereens and make a tidy profit out of it?

Like I said before, there's this great big moral abyss between the young men and women who join the armed forces, and the masters of the universe who send them off to get killed, and you don't find many sons and daughters of the masters of the universe out there in the theatres of war.