Blair's long argument with 'weird' Clinton

[emad]

Writing in the UK's Times today, Philip Webster, Political Editor says that:

"TONY BLAIR and Bill Clinton were not the close pals they appeared to be, a new book about Mr Blair’s relations with President Bush and his predecessor reveals today.

Mr Blair and Mr Clinton had several rows, one of them lasting 90 minutes. Mr Blair found the President “weird”, and his team was heavily uncomplimentary about the Clinton contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process......
.. He did not like playing the junior partner and told a senior civil servant that he found Mr Clinton “weird”."

Further, Webster says that:

"According to a senior minister, Mr Clinton’s role in Northern Ireland was “hugely exaggerated”. The two men fell out during the Kosovo conflict in 1999."

More: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-834699,00.html

Dubya spin to further bolster his 2004 strategy?

[Democat]

1. Blair needs to be ousted, just like Bush!

He has battered wife syndrome, and Bush is the abusive husband.

[Merlin]

2. Can't read the link without paying to register. n/t

.

[emad]

3. Sorry about that, try this for free:

Britain

September 29, 2003


Public smiles: but behind the scenes Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were not pals and the relationship had an 'edge'. Photo: Richard Pohle


Blair's long argument with 'weird' Clinton
By Philip Webster, Political Editor


TONY BLAIR and Bill Clinton were not the close pals they appeared to be, a new book about Mr Blair’s relations with President Bush and his predecessor reveals today.
Mr Blair and Mr Clinton had several rows, one of them lasting 90 minutes. Mr Blair found the President “weird”, and his team was heavily uncomplimentary about the Clinton contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process.

As for his successor, Mr Blair bombarded Mr Bush with a stream of confidential advice, particularly after the September 11 attacks on America, Peter Riddell, chief political commentator of The Times, discloses in his book Hug Them Close, serialised in T2.

The messages, comparable to those sent by Churchill to Roosevelt during the Second World War, have up to now remained a secret. British officials, anxious to avoid the image of the Prime Minister seeming too close to the President, have said little or nothing about them. The book reveals that Mr Blair wrote them frequently, in a familiar jerky style, highlighting areas for action. Many are thought to have been messages about Mr Blair’s world travels as he tried to keep the international coalition together for action against the Taleban.

Charting the Blair-Clinton relationship, Riddell says that in the early days Mr Blair seemed overawed by the elder man’s pyrotechnics.

The relationship always had an “edge”, according to an adviser who was present at all their meetings and saw it as “master and pupil.” But after Mr Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 he asserted himself and was never entirely at ease with Mr Clinton when they were in office. He did not like playing the junior partner and told a senior civil servant that he found Mr Clinton “weird”.

According to a senior minister, Mr Clinton’s role in Northern Ireland was “hugely exaggerated”. The two men fell out during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.

There were several clashes and what Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador in Washington, tells Riddell was a “very angry” 90-minute phone call between the two. There was a “huge, monumental explosion” from the President about a British briefing and an article in The New York Times that suggested British unhappiness at Mr Clinton’s reluctance to consider ground troops.

Riddell was told by a civil servant that Mr Blair would have liked to be a president, above struggles in Parliament.

[emad]

4. And here's a free review by Christopher Hitchens:

History can be written without irony, so can journalism. But neither can decently be written without objectivity, and this history doesn’t rise even to the journalistic level, says Christopher Hitchens

Great pretender



BILL CLINTON: AN AMERICAN JOURNEY
By Nigel Hamilton
Century, £25; 480pp
ISBN 1 844 13208 0
Buy the book

One should not hold it against anyone, even a modern historian, that he was not fortunate enough to have an Oxford education. But one is entitled to complain, of such a luckless person, that he affects knowledge of the old place. President Clinton’s former college, University College, is not situated “on the Broadway”, chiefly because there is no such street. (There is a street named Broad Street, but that college is not situated on it.) Then again, since Clinton was in so many ways such a child of the Sixties, it would be helpful to feel confident that the historian knew his bearings in this over-studied decade. I was not a contemporary of Tariq Ali’s at Oxford, nor was Tariq a contemporary of Clinton’s, and nor did either or indeed any of us “wear dark glasses in which everything looked either black or white” — which is not, in any case, the effect that dark glasses produce.

No, I did not look only myself up in the index. I have covered Clinton all the way from Arkansas to Washington and back, and I did, in fact, know some of his male and female circle a quarter of a century before that; but long before I reached Nigel Hamilton’s chapter on Oxford, I had worn out a ballpoint or two by marking things that were vaguely or wildly “off”.

Unease begins in the section devoted to “Acknowledgments”. Here I learnt of a chance meeting between subject and author at a dinner in Little Rock in the summer of 2002: “At first, having heard my name, the President appeared, as we shook hands and posed for a photograph, not to make any connection between my name and my impending biography. Instead, taking the beautifully embossed menu card from my hand, he began to autograph it for me, in the manner of a star — which, indeed, he has remained, out of office, wherever he goes.”

Cambridge historians were less deferential in my young day. Be that as it may, having suddenly recognised the name of his Boswell-to-be, Clinton “pulled back at least a yard. He stared at me. His blue eyes narrowed. The blood drained from his face. He looked, at that moment, as if he might strike me.” But so entrancing was the subsequent monologue he delivered that Hamilton now thinks that Thomas Mann, “the great German ironist of the 20th century, would have been profoundly intrigued” by the encounter. Not just “intrigued”, you notice, but profoundly so.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[papau]

5. Even the rarely seen sober Hitchens lies about Clinton, or spins so much

that he effectively lies (such as the regret that this book did not mention a GOP charge of violent taking of reluctant women - a never proved - indeed in many ways disproved - charge despite $71 million spent by Star - and by expresing his "regret" Hitchens thereby keeps the smear alive)

[Brucey]

6. HItchens is like George Will,

they both use the pretense of logic and rational thinking to disguise the fact that they have made up their minds first and fit the facts to their biases later; Big words and complicated sentences that when untangled leave fallacies and nonsense. Hitchens, for example, uses the old ad hominem argument against Clinton. The other day on C-SPAN he argued that Chimp and friends made the WMD argument because the UN made them. Get that? THE UN MADE ME DO IT!!! So, Bush* was not able to talk about his real humanitarian reasons for invading Iraq because the UN wouldn't let him? These guys really are too much. Funny stuff.

[glarius]

7. Hitchens wrote a book demonizing Mother Teresa...enough said!

He is a creature filled with hate....


:puke:

[The Zanti Regent]

8. Who cares what that right-wing drunk thinks?

Hitchens lies any lie about Clinton, yet covers up for Bush, just like any other Media Whore.

[OneBlueSky]

9. Blair thinks Clinton is weird? . . .

now there's a classic case of pot/kettle if I ever saw one . . .

[KoKo]

10. Yeah....Clinton was so "weird" that he was loved the world over! And, now

that we see Blair as Bush's Poodle.....it make one wonder who really is the weird one here!

[Emillereid]

11. Makes me feel better about Clinton --

this past year as Blair grew closer to Bushit, I couldn't figure how he could also be close to Clinton.

[tabasco]

12. My opinion of Clinton is even more favorable now.

Now that I know the Poodle thought he was weird. I think being a lapdog for an ignoramus is weird myself. Being a "junior partner" to Clinton is certainly better than being the errand boy for the worst president ever. What a terrible legacy Blair has made for himself. An enabler of an unjust and bloody war.

[CHIMO]

13. Wonder

What his party says about this? What does New Labour mean?
Liberal Democrat? Seems all that is left.

[Flying_Pig]

14. If true, this makes me feel better about Clinton, and confirms my

feelings about Blair (ego driven, power freak). I always thought it strange that Blair climbed so easily into bed with Bush and the PNAC'ers, after what they did to his supposed "friend", Bill Clinton.

May Poodleboy burn in hell....

:grr:

[Art_from_Ark]

15. So Poodleboy was dissatisfied being a "junior partner" for peace,

but he's perfectly OK with being a junior partner for war?

:crazy:

[Sheila Samples]

16. Stinky Won't Go If He Can't Have the "O"...

I remember about a year ago, Clinton spoke before the European Parliament. His remarks were interrupted many times by standing ovations. Then, earlier this year, Stinky W. was invited to also speak before the same body.

According to a BBC news release on March 8, Stinky wouldn't speak unless they guaranteed him a standing ovation. See Item 7 at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2830585.stm

7. The White House asked if President Bush could address the European Parliament, Baroness Williams revealed on BBC One's This Week show on Thursday. But, she said, Euro-MPs were told there was a condition attached to him making the speech: a standing ovation should be guaranteed. The speech has never taken place.

LOL...

[kalashnikov]

17. here is an interesting take on blair and bush' relationship

The Ballad of Tonyita Blair, as sung by "Slow Hands" Blix and the Mass Distractions

The Texan rode in on a dimpled chad:
"One of my men, well, he's gone bad.
He's got some rifles and stuff that goes bang
We gotta take him out, well dang."
The townsfolk laughed and walked away
But Tonyita, she decided to stay.

Now Tonyita, she sure was fair,
And folks they loved her everywhere
She did good and she talked nice
But the Texan he turned her to vice
He told her things she thought were true
And she did some things she shouldn't do.

When the fighting was done,
And the dead were cold
There weren't no guns,
There was only gold,
Black as the lies that had been told.

Now Tonyita roams this fair land
sighing and wailing and wringing her hands.
And she sings a song to the moon's harsh glow
Saying "Hey look, guys, you know."
She sings it loud, and she sings it long,
How that Texan has done her wrong.
He done her wrong.
He done her wrong.
That Texan done her wrong.

(from scotsman.com)