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Cause Bush going to trial anywhere but in the US, AIN'T NEVER going to happen!!!
Nor for that matter will Tony Blair. No matter how unpopular he is at the moment, I doubt the British People would go along with it. And if they did, then shame on them!!!
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The whole purpose behind the ICC was to instigate a trial
where a country was unable or unwilling to do so itself.
If the ICC decides that there is enough evidence to put Blair on trial, it will first offer all of the evidence over to the UK government and ask it to instigate open and fair trial proceedings against the accused.
Only in the event that the UK government refuses will the ICC proceed with its own trial.
So had the US signed up to the ICC, Bush would have been given the option to be tried in the US anyway.
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As for the death toll due to sanctions, I declare bollocks (spelling??). In order to make the argument, you must assume monies that were withheld from the nation would have gone to the people. It only takes one brief look at one of Saddams dozens of palaces juxtaposed against a typical Iraqi family home to make one bust a gut laughing at that notion.
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That's the common myth about the sanctions. May I clarify what actually happened? As you know, Saddam was allowed to sell oil in order to buy food.
However, Saddam did not himself do the buying and the selling - the entire process was performed by the UN Oil for Food programme. This body took the money from the oil sales, put the money into UN bank accounts and purchased the food and supplies for the Iraqi people. Once it had the supplies, they went to UN controlled warehouses and were distributed under the watchful eye of UN monitors. At every step of the process, the UN made meticulous records of the transactions. As a result, death by starvation was *very low* and only occured under extreme circumstances (drought for example).
What killed people (and this explains why children died in such vast numbers) was sickeness and accident and an inability to get treatment.
Sanctions forbade a wide range of goods used for neccessary and inncocent purposes - for example, it forbade water pumps, machinery and chemicals used in water treatment. So cases of waterborne diseases like cholera were common. And if you notice that your child is ill, you'd want to call an ambulance, right? Well, if you can find a working phone (telecommunications equipment was sanctioned) you wouldn't find an ambulance (most of the ambulance's equipment including the radio is sanctioned) and so you'd have to bring the child to the hospital yourself. When you arrive you will find the place less than hygenic (soap was sanctioned) and the doctor will inform you that he has a bed but medicine is sanctioned and unavailable...
Other effects of the sanctions meant that the economy no longer generated money - this in turn meant that public service workers could not be paid. Is there a fire? Call your neighbours because the fireman quit through lack of pay a long time ago - what garbage man? Throw it in the street because there's no-one to take it away? Sewage worker - who would work in such 'dangerous' (since you can't get treated if you are sick) conditions...
Saddams palaces came from illegal sales of oil outside the Oil for Food programme and illegal imports of materials to build them. True enough that, had he been a benevolent ruler, he would have used his black market network to import drugs, hospital equipment etc and not build palaces - but that doesn't excuse the UN for the effects of the sanctions which should have been limited to military supplies.
I mean, for heaven's sake, why did we forbid the import of soap, leather and raw cloth material???
Were we afraid that Saddam would fire Cloth Scuds from a leather launchpad?
Were we afraid that the Cloth Scuds would carry 'Soap' bomblets that might caused a coalition trooper to slip up on and break his neck? Or was it out of pure vindictiveness?
I'm glad that Saddam has been removed from power, he killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - but I'm even more glad that the sanctions have ended - because they killed even more.