Tony Blair feels let down by George W. Bush. He can join the club of pretty much anyone that ever placed any trust in Bush.
The alliance between George Bush and Tony Blair is in danger after it was revealed that the Prime Minister believes the President has ‘let him down badly’ over the Middle East crisis.
A senior Downing Street source said that, privately, Mr Blair broadly agrees with John Prescott, who said Mr Bush’s record on the issue was ‘crap’.
The source said: “We all feel badly let down by Bush. We thought we had persuaded him to take the Israel-Palestine situation seriously, but we were wrong. How can anyone have faith in a man of such low intellect?”
I don’t know why so many Americans voted for him. I have no adequate explanation for that. I also can’t understand why Tony Blair hasn’t been given a vote of no confidence.
Heh – Blair should have taken this as his first clue back in ’04.
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John Prescott’s use of the C-word about the Bush administration will remind Tony Blair that before he headed for the beach, he faced a cabinet revolt over his support for George Bush on the Middle East.
Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, led the doubters in the Cabinet but his concerns were echoed by loyalists such as David Miliband and later by Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary.
Minister after minister is said to have urged Mr Blair to break with the Bush administration at his summit with President Bush in the White House and publicly criticise the scale of the Israeli bombing. Mr Blair felt it imperative to use his close relationship with the President to push for the revival of the Middle East road map.
«« click for article≈ Cross-posted from my diary —
‘Bush Is Crap’ says UK’s Deputy PM John Prescott ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
jeeze louiz, i”m happy that Blair is finally making the right polticial signals but how dumb did HE have to be to be led by tweedle dee for so many years before finally ‘getting it?’
Could it be that it was his gutless groveling at the G8–miked up and on display for everyone to hear?
Perhaps his staff made a tape of all the bowing and scraping he’s done to shrub all these years so he can finally see for himself what an ass he’s made of himself.
Just a forlorn wish that the World Leader with gray matter in his noggin had come to this conclusion, oh what’s the word I’m looking for…..just a bit EARLIER than he has. That may have very well prevented this whole mess in the first place. I’m glad, I guess, that he has begun to see the error in his ways.
Blair’s feelings are hurt? God, that almost makes me want to cry. I have to go get a box of tissues now.
Not.
If you want to understand Blair and Iraq, you have to understand the role of Rupert Murdoch.
I understand why so many Americans voted for Bush: Republican operatives created an image that people identified with, even though it had no basis in reality. What I don’t understand is why Blair, who has talked with Bush personally hundreds of times and has to have realized long ago what an idiot our President is, would continue tying his own foreign policy fortunes to Bush for so long. I just can’t comprehend what he got out of the relationship that made it worth seeing his career implode.
Shall we say Carlyle Group. That would be a very nice reward for sticking it out with jr.
I’ve been thinking about this overnight and I still don’t see it. Is the Carlyle Group really the be-all and end-all of corporate success? It seems to me like a rather large and successful company which despite that wouldn’t even rank among the 100 largest corporations worldwide.
I assume that an extremely popular British PM (as Blair was pre-Bush) could find better ways to fill his time in retirement than a board position with such a mid-range company. Am I missing something about the Carlyle Group as a power-center?
http://www.carlyle.com/eng/news/l5-news716.html
That is an idictment on our electorate. That he was also a war mongering, torture loving moron compounds this indictment.
ring hollow when they come from people of supposedly high intellect who assiduously obeyed his commands.
Bush’s lack of intellect was as well (and internationally) advertised as McDonald’s hamburgers, and for a long time. It was only in 2004 that he actually made it one of his selling points.
Now, these very intelligent British politicians who adamantly supported Georgie’s Idiotic Iraqi Adventure say, “Gosh, NOW we see he’s stupid.”
Who’s stupid?
I think Bush’s “low intellect” is a deliberate facade. I do not think Bush is stupid, not at all. What I do think is true about Bush, is that he is incurious, narcissistic, and not intellectual. That’s not the same as being dumb or of low intellect.
He has cultivated an accent and a manner of speaking that appeals to some portions of the electorate – but notice that his younger brothers who were exposed to more of that accent in their lives don’t talk that way. This illustrates, I think, his choice of self-presentation that we underestimate, to our regret. The Dems certainly did in putting up John Kerry against him. In contrast, Bush appeared straightforward, clear, and clear-thinking to a lot of people (wrong, of course).
I think Bush is largely bored by the knowledge base of governing, but not of politics. What he has, is ability, but no desire to use it broadly. I’m not saying that he deliberately speaks badly at news conferences, like the last one where he hardly sounded like he spoke English, until he showed he was peeved. Rather, I think this showed his boredom and disinterest with governing, until he had to address a question about something that irritated him. So you got a reaction where he had to pinch back what he really wanted to say – which was likely to personally attack the judge.
He is not in good control of his emotions. He angers easily, he’s absolutely convinced he is right (self-centered), and none of that has much to do with intelligence.
I’ve taught some college students who are much like him: bright, but not interested in learning beyond what they absolutely must learn to get their “ticket punched”. Into sports or their fraternity or their social life, or the getting of money and influence, but not much beyond that. (I’m not intending to condemn those things as interests, merely those things as sole or a limited range of interests.)
This is, in my view, a brilliant comment, but it only goes half-way.
What would it be, in your view, for somebody to be “stupid” or “dumb” or “of low intellect”?
That would mean the person really doesn’t have brain power enough (in this case) to be President. Can’t handle the variety of topics. Has trouble concentrating. Can’t learn the info he/she needs to do the job. Lacking the ability or capacity
From the way I see Bush, he has it, but doesn’t care to use it except in areas he considers personally important/interesting. By the other definition, he just doesn’t have it, period. He couldn’t handle the intellectual load, even if he tried to. Obviously, I think this second view is wrong – even though it is fun to consider.
In my opinion, he’s following a type of CEO-sort of method, though not well-executed as he does it – where the CEO isn’t concerned with a lot of details, because other people who are specialists can do this better and more efficiently & effectively than the CEO. Trouble is, Bush doesn’t think those details are very important, nor does he worry whether the persons who are assigned to do them are particularly capable. The chief qualification is being a crony rather than being competent. And his minions understand this, and tell him what he wants to hear rather than what he needs to know.
“I don’t know why so many Americans voted for him. I have no adequate explanation for that.”
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Hmmmm, could it be because most Americans are as stupid as a sack of hammers? What percentage of the population do you think has read a non-fiction book cover to cover in the last year? 2%? 5%? If you had to pass a basic civics exam to vote the polls would be barren on election day. Sizable numbers of citizens think Saddam personally ordered the 9/11 assault. They can’t name ANYONE in their city, county or state government. People that can’t balance a check book, compute simple loan interest or pay their bills on time want a say so in which prospective legislators will craft the federal budget. Democracy and the vote are fine concepts and I’m not sure I’d do away with them but there has to be a better way. If you’re sick and dying in a hospital bed does it serve you the entire staff is polled before the attending physician decides on a course of treatment? No, because the goddamned janitors, security guards, maintenance crew and typing clerks have no business giving their input. This is a sick country and we have idiots voting on how to fix it.