Leaders face growing pressure for answers over Iraq (Bush*/Blair)

[kskiska]

Only three months ago, they were the smiling masters of the universe, liberators who had watched their armies roll up a supposedly formidable Middle Eastern foe as easily as a child swats away a fly. How different it will be when George Bush and Tony Blair meet in Washington today.

Reports of the end of a political love affair are premature. On Iraq, the President and the Prime Minister are locked together, and they know it. But was there ever a meeting more unhappily timed? The last person, surely, that Mr Blair would want to be seen with is the ally he is accused of following meekly into the increasingly costly and unhappy Iraq adventure. For his part, Mr Bush must share the podium with the leader of the country whose intelligence services, which are quoted as the authors of the uranium-from-Africa fantasy, have indirectly led him into the hottest water of his presidency.

(snip)

Barely a day passes without a clip of Mr Blair on the news, defending himself before a raucous array of critics, giving at least as good as he gets. How much easier for Mr Bush, protected by Americans' innate respect for his office, and with a phalanx of proxies to defend him - the polished, oh-so- reasonable Secretary of State Colin Powell, the tenacious Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, and George Tenet, CIA chief and (thus far) willing fall-guy for the Niger fiasco. And just as well. This week a limp and stumbling Mr Bush managed to make the ludicrous claim that he only decided on war after he "gave Saddam Hussein a chance to allow the inspectors in and he wouldn't let them" (when of course it was Mr Bush who ordered the UN team out so he could launch his war).

(snip)

To his discomfort, Mr Bush is learning that there is more to international affairs than brute force. Daily it grows clearer that if overstretched US troops are to get serious help in Iraq, Washington will have to cede more authority to the United Nations. Mr Bush is not a man who readily admits he was wrong. But, with no WMD and, manifestly, no threat from Saddam, reality is ever harder to avoid. As Groucho Marx asked: "Who are you going to believe - me, or your own two eyes?"

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=425058

[Frances]

1. Good article

Too bad it was not in a U.S. paper

[Boom_cha]

2. I read the first sentence,

without seeing the link at the bottom, and I said to myself, that's from a British newspaper. What a difference in tone.

[Demobrat]

3. The pResident of the United States is delusional.

Oh joy.