The following edited excerpt from Bob Ellis' essay in SMH asks why our leaders' criminal behaviour is exempt from scrutiny. i think they should be brought to account.
Excerpt.
[Those who watched] may ask: if a head of state can hang by the neck until he is dead for having ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or not punished, or failed to countermand the torture and killing of 148 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime, what will happen to the generals, bureaucrats, prime ministers and heads of state who ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or did not punish, or did not countermand, the killing of 150,000 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime (the Iraqi Government's estimate of the dead) and the torture of ten thousand more? And how many Americans - Bremmer, Abizaid, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bush - should on this precedent be charged and hanged?
They may also ask… what was fair about a trial in which three of the defence lawyers were shot and those who survived forbidden to see the prosecution's testimony before it was unveiled in court, … And why this trial wasn't aborted, and another trial begun in The Hague… And why Saddam died so soon. Something to do, perhaps, with his coming genocide trials and the complicity of Germany, France, the US and Britain in the manufacture of his nerve gas, anthrax, cluster bombs and helicopter gunships, and his amiable business relationships with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush snr, once head of the CIA, in past decades, and how his genocidal methods back then did not greatly annoy them, not so long as he paid his bills.
And these are the freedoms we fought for… The freedom to ask, and not be told … what really happened,… Such were the freedoms Nixon encouraged in Chile when he helped Pinochet to censor, torture and kill those inconvenient to the many, many secrets America wanted to keep.
These are the freedoms we fought for, and will now defend in Iraq for decades if Bush and Howard, brothers-in-arms for "freedom", get their way.

Only the losers are war criminals. You continue to pose some of the most disingenous questions possible.

As for Ellis. He is a crackpot, even for the left. Just another red stooge who is happy to enjoy the protection of governments who allow him to suggest that they are war criminals.

A bit like you, really

I don't know how much fighting you, or Bob Ellis have done for us.
I know I have, & would again, fight to be rid of twits like you & Ellis. I never have been fond of those who want to bite the hand that feeds them.

Excellent point Leigh, how lucky we are to have the priviledge of free speech, and not to have to worry about being dragged off in the middle of the night for having contrary views.

Yes, Rojo. It is good to live in a country where we can say pretty much what we wish to say. But it has nothing to do with luck, as you suggest.

People have fought for what we have in Australia and, while I am not suggesting that people should be prevented from voicing stupid opinions, I take umbrage when idiots like Ellis abuse the privilege. Anyone who claims that Blair, Howard and Bush are in any way war criminals is a total idiot who would be no loss if they had the courage of their convictions and went to live among people they prefer to their own kind.

I sometimes think that Australia has much more to fear from Australians of a certain kind than it does from our enemies. There is a definite vicous, nasty fifth column in Australia, and Ellis is one of the seditous bunch. They wouldn't have the guts to rave on the way they do anywhere outside Australia or the West where they prefer to reside in the safety of a society they hate.

Hi ybgirp,

""Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."

It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/

Ferencz is a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials