http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=407456§ion=newsLONDON (Reuters) - Good friends George W. Bush and Tony Blair could be forgiven for heaving a sigh of relief at the end of a state visit hijacked by carnage in the Middle East.
Bush certainly won't like his holiday snaps from London, where baying protesters toppled his effigy in the hope he goes the same way as Saddam Hussein.
Blair will not relish coming away empty-handed from a visit he had hoped would demonstrate the extent of his influence in Washington.
And both were clearly shaken by the savagery of the Istanbul bombings, almost certainly timed to coincide with the visit.
"If Bush and Blair hoped to celebrate -- what was there to celebrate? Nothing. Despite the government in Afghanistan being got rid of and the Iraq regime being toppled, things are as bad as they ever were," said John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde University.
The American perspective was no rosier.
"It's a...serious time for them that the niceness of the state visit doesn't really mask," said Jeff McAllister, London bureau chief of Time Magazine. "I would have thought Bush would have done more for Blair on a visit like this."
But gifts were few and far between.
<snip>
Bush hasn't had a "win" in any of his overseas trips to date. He is certainly no John Kennedy.