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To: thames_sider who wrote (21158)	1/16/2003 6:48:11 AM
From: Clappy	Respond to of 104155

I just want to say thanks for all the well wishes and thoughts from you folks. You are a great bunch of people to spend time with on this internet thing. I love yooz. -Clapper

To: thames_sider who wrote (21158)	1/17/2003 2:51:57 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 104155

Friendship with Bush is risky for Blair at home By Tim Luckhurst The Boston Globe 1/16/2003 It has always been a peculiar affair. Britain's Labor prime minister and America's Republican president were not expected to get along. Tony Blair was Bill Clinton's best friend. Through Northern Ireland, Kosovo, even Monica, they were there for each other. The match seemed natural, almost heaven-sent. They both studied at Oxford, and both married intellectual lawyers who are possibly even brighter than the guys themselves. Bill played sax, and Tony played guitar. Together they made sweet music for the new centrist consensus. Is Bill feeling bruised? He might be. Last time he popped over to visit Chelsea amid the dreaming spires, Tony was too busy for a get-together. Britain's prime minister has a new friend, George. That is a big problem, because if the former president understands the still current prime minister's weakness for a powerful chum, Blair's own Labor Party is much less sympathetic. Just liking President Bush was bad enough for Blair's reputation. Backing him in a war many of his own Labor members of Parliament oppose looks close to foolishness. A poll for Britain's Independent Television News found that while 53 percent of the public said they would back a UN-endorsed attack, 32 percent opposed British involvement under any circumstances, and only 13 percent supported action by the United States and Britain alone. Blair's support for Bush's Iraq strategy represents a huge gamble. If Britain participates in an attack on Iraq without a clear UN mandate, Blair's premiership may be threatened. That is not an exaggeration. The unswervingly objective BBC believes that ''such a course of action could even see a challenge to the prime minister's leadership.'' Serious newspapers, like the market-leading Sunday Times, have compared the potential crisis to the Suez affair of 1956 when Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden was deposed after ignoring his own party's warnings not to launch a war against Egypt. Blair is walking a tightrope. His secretary of state for international development, Clare Short, has hinted that she will resign if British forces participate in war against Saddam before UN inspectors have found hard evidence that he possesses weapons of mass destruction. Short believes Britain has a duty to stop the United States acting without UN authority. Short alone might be manageable. She is not alone. A substantial number of Labor MPs and Cabinet members - possibly the majority - are opposed to unilateral action by the United States and Britain. Last week Foreign Secretary Jack Straw raised eyebrows by saying the chance of war had receded to 60/40 against. Everyone from Colin Powell rightward knew that was wishful thinking, not analysis. Blair silenced his colleague. A more threatening character needs no encouragement to keep his lips sealed. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is saying nothing about Iraq. Brown is the most likely beneficiary of a party rebellion, which, under Britain's parliamentary system, could depose the prime minister without any need to consult the electorate. That is what toppled Margaret Thatcher. With the aircraft carrier Ark Royal en route to the Gulf at the head of the largest Royal Navy task force assembled since the 1982 Falklands War and British troops already in Kuwait, Blair is reduced to the insistence that the UN inspectors will find evidence, and war will be justified. That formula allows him to denounce his critics' questions about how Britain will respond to a preemptive US assault as hypothetical. His real position is more sophisticated, but it does not make him any more secure. Close allies of Blair believe he will support a US attack on Iraq whether it is UN-mandated or not. They explain that he will do so because he thinks Bush is right and because he believes that Britain's influence in Washington depends upon its status as the most loyal ally of the United States. Blair has tried this argument on his own party, insisting that Bush will be more sympathetic to future foreign policy objectives if Britain proves a true friend in the president's hour of need. His problem is that many Labor Party activists and politicians alike revile Republicans in general and Bush in particular. To them, Blair's stance is incomprehensible, a betrayal of everything the Labor Party stands for. Few of them believe that British influence is advanced by Blair's support for Bush. They say the prime minister has delusions about the extent of British power and is too easily flattered by the friendship of the US president. British participation in a war that seems imminent may lead to regime change in London as well as Baghdad. If that happens, Blair may regret transferring his affections from Bill to George. Clinton still wins standing ovations at Labor Party conferences. When the name Bush is mentioned, Blair's party reacts with naked hostility. The prime minister is old enough to choose his own friends, but he is increasingly reminded that his party, not the British electorate, has the power to determine his future. As President Bush contemplates attack options, he might consider the sacrifice his British ally is making to support him. No other leader of the British Labor Party would put his own career on the line to support a Republican in the White House. _________________________________________________ Tim Luckhurst is a former editor of The Scotsman and a former adviser to the Labor Party. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com