Why has no one been held to account for the Iraq war?

[Esceptico]

To coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11 Netflix has released a series on 9/11, the background and aftermath. Although it mostly focuses on Afghanistan there is some time spent on the invasion of Iraq. It became clear after the invasion that the justification for the war ie that Saddam had WMDs and links with Al-Qaeda (which no one other than the US and British government believed before the war - not even their own intelligence services) was a complete fabrication (according to the Netflix documentary some of the “evidence” came from torturing a key 9/11 suspect - who years later said he made it up to stop them torturing him as that is what he thought they wanted to hear!)

Given that the Iraq war cost the US over $2 trillion and thousands of Americans were killed or maimed (and around 200,000 Iraqis killed), why hasn’t anyone been held to account for starting the war?

It sounds a bit emotive to call Blair and Bush war criminals but being objective surely there is a legal case that they are just that.

Blair isn’t liked in the UK but I think Bush is now more popular than when he was President despite the Iraq war and all the other messed up things he did after 9/11, the consequences of which we are still feeling today.

[glazbagun]

I think it's because the current establishment will always be afraid of punishing previous ones in case it sets a precedent and we end up with some kind of Roman/Classical Greek nightmare where losing power means being jailed/killed and is thus something to be avoided at all cost.

If Blair was tried for his poor judgement, would Boris be heading for one over his handling of the nations finances or Brexit if it turns out disasterous? Would we face purges and Chinese/Stalinesque corruption trials?

By ensuring that politicians can get away with failure, we leave them an escape route. It sucks, but the alternative would be like Trump / Cuomo clinging to power forever to prevent their own prosecution.

[rodericb]

Esceptico said:

Given that the Iraq war cost the US over $2 trillion and thousands of Americans were killed or maimed (and around 200,000 Iraqis killed), why hasn’t anyone been held to account for starting the war?

Do you really think that anyone in power would go after the Military Industrial Complex? Do you think any citizen group would be able to do it? Trump blustered about it and look at what happened to him. Although it might have "cost" whatever trillions, there's plenty of people who gained a lot of money, influence and power because of it.