The veneer of fraternity (Bush/Blair)

[IChing]

Tony Blair is not the first British prime minister to embrace a US president's mendacity, but he could well be the last

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair's near-fatal political strategy inadvertently but inevitably exposed him to the dilemma of his special relationship with George Bush. Blair had attempted to wage a campaign that skirted Iraq - which voters cited as the overriding issue for their disillusionment, with about only one-third willing to admit that they trusted the prime minister. But his invitation to the voters to vent their frustration at the beginning of the campaign - the so-called masochism strategy - naturally brought their anger over Iraq to the surface. Once he had raised the level of political toxicity, Blair simply froze.




Blair had achieved the extraordinary feat of persuading the Labour party to transform itself into a party that wins power. But this time his ability to persuade was exhausted. When confronted with the criticism that he had summoned, he offered no argument. Instead, he pushed voters away with a defiant exasperation that provoked their resistance as he challenged them to judge him. Why wouldn't Blair persuade? Was it just weariness, or ambivalence?

Blair knew that arguing Iraq would blot out his effort to discuss his programme for a third term. But his tongue was tied for other reasons as well. As the head of government, he could not speak of his disagreements with Bush. Out of loyalty to an ally, the national interest and protocol, he couldn't acknowledge that he had urged alternative policies on Bush. Blair never mentioned how he had wrung a commitment (honoured or not) out of Bush to restart the Middle East peace process. He did not discuss how the Bush administration had systematically ignored the British representative in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock. He did not note that Downing Street was spitting blood over the depredations visited on it by the bullying John Bolton and the rest of the neoconservative cabal. He did not allude to his national security team's consternation over Condoleezza Rice's incompetence. He did not reveal the many ways he had supported Colin Powell in his struggles with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Blair's stalwart refusal to be transparent about his own good faith and positive actions contributed to his image as dishonest and furtive.>>>>snip

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1481795,00.html

[Benhurst]

1. Bottom line: Blair is a war criminal. Send him to the Hague.

[NorCalDem]

3. Let's get Bush there first,

then we can worry about Blair. Personally, I'm not so sure he really deserves as much blame as Bush does. Bush/Rove/Repugs were the masterminds, Blair was just the willing lackey. He deserves to go down for that, but only after real justice

[snippy]

2. More republican man on dog sex?

[pretzel4gore]

4. we forget

without britain, bush would not have been able to pull off his iraq scam......and blair is a war criminal just for that!

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IChing]

6. Am I smelling MEMO?

"There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action,"

according to a memo from Richard Dearlove,
the head of MI6, to the prime minister on July 23 2002. After that, Powell presented the state department's 17-volume Future of Iraq prospectus, but was ruthlessly shoved aside; Blair, cornered, felt compelled to go to war without a plan."

Conyers is going to England and that will stir up the press' hornet's nest of accusations and
denial until it will start get some press here.