Most respected academic and former Department of Justice lawyers agree that the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes. The disagreement amongst them stems from either points of law in the viability of war crimes trials or the reasons for conducting them in the first place. Should they be held in order to finally understand the administration's thinking behind their war policies, or are there other methods for discovering and uncovering the massive amount of secrets buried deep within the bowels of various agencies, such as the Dept. of Justice, the CIA, the NSA and most of all within the Pentagon?

Scott Horton, the well known human rights lawyer, believes that democracy itself is at stake.

• "Pursuing the Bush Administration for crimes long known to the public may amount to a kind of hypocrisy, but it is a necessary hypocrisy. The alternative, simply doing nothing, not only ratifies torture; it ratifies the failure of the people to control the actions of their government."

Jack Balkin, the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School, believes a Truth Commission should be sought in place of war crime trials. He believes this not because he thinks the administration is not guilty of war crimes, but because he thinks the trials themselves face enormous obstacles in light of the twisting of the law done by the Department of Justice. However bad the advice was that came out of Justice, the administration's right to rely on it provides them with a strong defense.

As Professor Balkin noted, the best chances for trials will come from the international community, much like what happened to Pinochet from the Spanish courts.

The answer to your question is yes, the Bush administration should be tried for war crimes. The reality is not that simple and very unlikely to happen in a manner that satisfies everyone.

If the United States was ever going to have someone that leads it tried for war crimes, it should have been done during WW II when we dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of innocent men, women, and children in retaliation to having a naval base blown up. Sure, it was a sneak attack, and it caught us off-guard, but it was a military installation. The idea of trying George W. Bush for war crimes of any sort just sort of pales in comparison. We practiced eugenics at the same time Hitler did, but we didn't do it as openly or on such a massive scale - what then determines the level of the atrocity? Why does the US recognize the Holocaust and the genocide in Darfur, when it chose to willfully ignore the Armenian genocide for the longest time? There's a lot of bad-tasting racial isolation factors going into the process our government uses to decide who's done what, and why it's bad.

Bill Clinton didn't commit war crimes - he received fellatio in the Oval Office, and that's about it. George W. Bush didn't commit war crimes - he made some terrible decisions that put lives in danger, but nothing remotely comparable to what a war crime really is. He never came out and said "we are going to torture our POWs, and we are going to commit crimes against humanity." Rebuilding a nation, even though you were the one to destroy it, isn't a crime against humanity. Therefore, no - and I'm not biased; in fact, I disliked Bush as a leader.

Pertaining to your link, Bush didn't do the "torturing" therefore no. If any of the leaders that are considered "bad" by the rest of the world didn't commit the crime themselves they wouldn't be tried. The people who did the actions would. HOWEVER, I think that we willingly has put innocent lives at risk with many of his direct commands... I think that there should be punishment there, but there have been countless Presidents on both sides of the line that have committed similar acts and did not have files charged against them...

Hell, even ol' Bill Clinton got away with plenty just because ol' Slick Willy had the smile of a serpent.