Blair and Butt-head Hold a Press Conference

The Bush administration always breaks nasty news on Friday evening. And it was for good reason that Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush held their press conference last night at 7:30. It ran in Great Britain at Midnight-30. The Brit news mag The Economist put Bush and Blair on its cover under the headline "Axis of Feeble." Blair is a little less popular in Great Britain than Bush is in the US. Blair is at 26% in approval ratings. Given the Brit way of doing things, Blair absolutely will have to stand down and will be out of office by next June if not before. But we have another year and a half to put up with Butt-head. Bush and Blair should apologize for hundreds of their errors, including the fact that 2463 American soldiers have been killed in the Bush/Blair war in Iraq. But when asked last night what he most regretted, Bush remarked that he shouldn’t have said, “Bring it on” and “Wanted dead or alive”. Those remarks may have “sent the wrong signal”, the Prez said. However, he assured his viewers that, "I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner.” Given his “I’m the Decider” statement, Bush’s lessons in expressing himself have failed. Apparently the Prez was cued through his earpiece that regretting how he expressed himself was a little insensitive given the totality of his wrongdoing during the last six-and-a-half years. He immediately added that Abu Ghraib was also a big mistake. But he fell back into his usual arrogant posturing and said, “Despite setbacks and missteps, I strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing.” And how did the shifty-eyed little Prime Minister acquit himself in this unfortunate press conference? Oh there was laughter and banter and Blair tried to turn on the Blair charm. But in the end Blair said the attack on Iraq was the right thing to do. And now that Great Britain and the US have brought blessed democracy to the Iraqis, we should stay in Iraq and support the people. And as an after thought, he said ditto Afghanistan. Both Bush and Blair skated around all of the important queries by journalists. The war in Iraq has now turned around and everything is going well they both said. And they are trying to come up with a way to deal with Iran and its nuclear plans. Which sounds odd, since Bush just botched a perfect diplomatic opportunity with Iran by refusing to respond to a letter from Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bush and Blair are a matched set. Both have fouled their own nests so badly that they will go down in history as the worst leaders their respective countries have ever had. And neither one can tell the truth for ten minutes. The New York Times summed up the Blair-Bush act this way: “The overwhelming sense from the news conference was of two battered leaders who, once confident in their judgments on Iraq, now understood that misjudgments had not only affected their approval ratings, but perhaps their legacies.” And that’s being kind. Actually, the Bush and Blair news conference looked like two men holding hands while sinking into a marsh of quicksand.