Bush's Man Rejects Blair Weapon Claim (embarrassing for the Poodle)

[kskiska]

Tony Blair was at the centre of an embarrassing row last night after the most senior US official in Baghdad bluntly rejected the Prime Minister's assertion that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq.

In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was 'massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories'. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to 'conceal weapons', the Prime Minister said. But in an interview yesterday, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue - without realising its source was Blair.

It was, he suggested, a 'red herring', probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition.

'I don't know where those words come from but that is not what David Kay has said,' he told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme. 'It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me.'

more…
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1113182,00.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. My, my I wonder if this

is going to make our relationships even more frosty

[young_at_heart]

2. What is the REAL story behind Tony's obsession?

I can't help but wonder how all this would have played out if Tony had gone along with the rest of Europe. His insistence in backing Bush remains unexplained and somewhat bizarre.

[kskiska]

3. Sidney Blumenthal gave an explanation

in William Pitt's interview:

(snip)

WRP: You went into a great amount of detail about Tony Blair in your book. He was a great partner of Clinton in the Third Way movement. Why do you think Blair has attached himself so profoundly to George W. Bush, given that Bush is about as far from a Third Way politician as one can get?

SB: In the beginning, Blair acted on the idea that the enduring interests of Britain and the United States had to be upheld, regardless of who was President. He was very intent of establishing a relationship with Bush. It is necessary for a British Prime Minister to do that, and the role of Britain has always been to be a transatlantic partner, and to play a role between Europe and the United States. Blair felt he had to do that.

The problem was that Bush had his own strategies. When 9/11 happened, Blair stepped into the void initially left by Bush, and articulated the meaning of what had happened. He was widely appreciated for this by the American people. Then, Bush pushed for war in Iraq. At every turn, Blair, acting in conjunction with Colin Powell, sought to channel where Bush was going. He pushed Bush into the UN, and then sought a second UN resolution. Bush‘s disastrous diplomacy undermined, ultimately, Blair’s efforts. In the end, Blair wrung from Bush a concession whereby Bush rhetorically called for a renewal of the peace process between Israel and Palestine. Bush may believe he is pursuing it, but Eliot Abrams on his National Security Council, who is in charge of the Middle East, has been undermining that action.

Blair, now, I think, has an almost mystical understanding of the so-called “special relationship.” I wrote a column for the Guardian in which I quoted Harold McMillan, who defined early that special relationship in which, after World War II, Britain would play the Greeks to the American Romans. I pointed out that he neglected to mention that the Greeks were often slaves.

Blair recently played the host, along with the Queen, to Bush on his visit to London. Blair raised a number of very important matters with Bush. He raised tariffs, including steel tariffs. He raised British prisoners in Guantanamo. He raised the Middle East. On every single one of these issues, he was denied by Bush. I believe that Blair’s influence is diminished, because Bush does not need him as he needed him in the run-up to the Iraq war, and yet symbolically Blair stands by Bush. All that remains, though, is the husk of a relationship. How special is it? Blair, essentially, has very little influence with Bush, and yet has provided Bush with the photo-ops Bush wanted. Those photo-ops are all that remains of the special relationship.

http://truthout.org/docs_03/120803A.shtml

[young_at_heart]

7. Thanks for posting this...I hadn't read it

Do you think Tony's is ever going to realize how badly he's been used? I also wonder if Colin Powell will ever catch on to the sad reality of his position.

[Voltaire99]

10. Blumenthal leaves out quite a bit

I don't find Sidney very persuasive in this context. He's an exquisite establishment player -- a keen observer of minutiae but far too uncritical of the game being played.

In addition to the niceties of the special relationship, the key to Blair's obsequiousness with Bush is located in the deep similarities between the two men and the parties which they head: Blair is every bit the warrior and corporate henchman that his Washington master is (and New Labour a sad digestive result of old Labour dining out on Republican-lite politics, some of which Blumenthal helped to foster).

Blair was content to follow Clinton's lead during the years of extermination by sanctions, and it is not a terribly great leap from planned starvation and weekly bombing to Shock and Awe: one simply gets the job done quicker. September 11 seems to have cemented the Poodle's mind that he would follow Bush into deeper violence, as indeed it has beclouded so many on both shores.

A lot is made of the surface differences between the brutish Bush and the learned Poodle, but underneath stand revealed two banal men for whom truth is as foreign as the dollar to the pound and "moral clarity" the color of the blood on their hands.

[T_i_B]

11. Blumenthal writes for the UK Guardian

He tends to be very supportive of Howard Dean, and in articles like this do not exactly support Blair's poodling.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1094052,00.html

Blair has grown to see Bush as something of a soulmate. Blair's rhetoric during the visit sounded trumpet notes as though it was still the call to the war in Iraq and the postwar realities had not intruded. Riddell reports that Blair in retrospect regards Bush's predecessor as "weird". That fact or factoid, true or not, may be interpreted as perhaps another gesture of ingratiation - demeaning Clinton is always deeply appreciated by Bush.

I recall being present at meetings between Blair and Clinton where, in 10 minutes, apparently difficult problems, including trade, were resolved to Britain's advantage. How weird was that? Now Blair has equated the long-term interests aligning the US and the UK with adamantine support for the short-term strategies of the Bush administration. Yet the tighter the embrace, the weaker the influence.

[MissMarple]

5. Excellent point. What is really going on? Hmm...

What if there is evidence? Perhaps it implicates ...maybe us. Or, alternatively, what if they lied to Tony so convincively that he really thinks it is so? Or, perhaps he knows something we don't. It almost sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Oh, what a tangled web...

[Holly]

6. I'm still wondering, why Tony

My best guess is that he never really believed that he'd be in this alone with Bush*. Tony must have counted on old Europe caving in to Bush* at the end, and he would have been the great uniter. I think that he clings to his WMD claims for political cover, the Brits aren't letting this go. Bush* doesn't bother anymore, since most of the US sheeple either don't care about WMD or think that they'll be found. Tony's a fool who has served Bush's* purpose and they have no use for him anymore. Any liberal who would betray his party, his politcal ideology and the people that elected him to office, gets no sympathy from me.

[starroute]

9. Someone's telling Blair that old Europe is doomed

I posted something on this a year ago -- no hope of getting it back at this point, of course. But the gist of it was that one of Blair's closest advisors was telling him that the Old Europe was doomed to irrelevancy, that the shape of the future was American, and that Britain's only hope was to tie its fortunes to America.

It reminds me oddly of Saruman looking obsessively into the Palantir -- thinking that it was responsive to his will when in fact it was being controlled to show him only what Sauron wanted him to see -- and concluding that the shape of the future was Mordor and his only hope was to tie his fortunes to Sauron.

Poor Tony. It must be horrible to have all your choices ruled by despair.

[daleo]

8. Blair may eventually have to plea insanity

in a war crimes trial (for waging aggressive war), so he has to publicly repeat obviously deluded beliefs. Bush doesn't have to bother with the charade, as the U.S. hasn't signed on to any international war crimes agreements.

Makes as much sense as anything else.

[xxqqqzme]

4. I am surprised there

is no bullsh*t co-ordinator. If the lies & BS R coming from both sides of the Atlantic, shouldn't someone B keeping a list and put a UK or US after the story so they can all lie off the same page?