While there is little doubt that the U.S. Justice system is not pure (we had a case recently involving "friendly fire" deaths in Afghanistan that was basically cleared with reprimands), it has shown itself in the past to take care of significant issues of the nature being discussed.
Things on that front appear to be different now too (along with the open bullying policy), what with the President now using his power to attach special designations to apprehended people, many such designations severely curtailing RIGHTS of the accused!

Now a Lt. Calley is a different case than a O.J. Simpson or a Ken Lay. We are talking about the former here, and I do believe that until this administration things that came to light (that could be an arduous process itself, but that is probably better than an 'easy' process) would have been dealt with reasonably. I do have my doubts now, and that is why I said that I used to have sympathy for the U.S. case.

Africa is a sad situation to be sure. It also seems to me that virtually all of Africa was once colonies of the British or French, with a little Portugese and German thrown in, and I would think that THOSE COUNTRIES held prior 'obligations' to take action ahead of the U.S. And it's not as if the U.S. has never intervened, on U.N. request, in Africa. It would be interesting to compare the Brit/French records to the U.S. record in Africa over the last 20 or so years.

In any case, the U.S. today is a very different place than it was even 5 years ago. My viewpoint is that it has become a danger to the planet and I hold far less regard for U.S. policy/actions today. And I also feel that, despite popularity polls, the majority of Americans feel along the same lines.

regards

>i would have to disagree with you on the US legal system, the US legal system is frought with political influence, especially in high profile cases and in cases involving friends of politicians. the american govt is indeed asked to interviene all the time but rarely does, we have been without an american ambassador in ireland for about 4 months, a role that usually influenced our own pease process, the person earmarked to take the role was fund raising for bush so was unavailable and we were left wanting. there are more people killed every day in africa by dictators and rebels that any where else on the planet but there is no intervention and will not be intervention as there is nothing to gain from it for the big countries.
>Cheers
>~M
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>Until the U.S. changed its policy to "war on any whiff of displeasure" I was very sympathetic to the U.S. position.
>At the time my reasoning was quite simple - the U.S. was "asked" to use its might across the whole planet for any number of reasons, the huge majority of those situations involving very little in the way of direct 'interests' save altruism. In such circumstances one cannot know what one will face nor what they will have on hand locally to deal with such threats. Situations could arise where excessive power was deemed applied when in fact it was the most readily available/practical tactic.
>War crimes can be charged to anyone from a Private to a General to a non-military leader. I've always had confidence that the U.S.'s own justice system would deal appropriately with such issues, while there is ALSO the constant possibility that political alignments (witness the makeup of the Security Council when the Iraq war was debated or a Libyan leading the Human Rights part of the U.N.) could result in spurious charges dragging on for years.
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>2 cents worth of opinion