Thursday, February 22, 2007

Iraq War Spin Machine, take 367million

When Tony Blair announced that British troops were being pulled out of Iraq, on the surface it would seem like this would be a bad thing for the Bush administration. You would think...

Clearly not the case, however. According to some of your finer White House PR folks, this is apparently a good thing because it means that the security situation is good enough around Basra that the British forces had completed their mission and could return home. Perhaps if we let the British commanders, rather than Tony Snow, address the actual security situation around Basra, we might find a more realistic assessment... It might be quieter than Baghdad, but that's like saying a Rolling Stones show is quieter than The Who's. And we won't get fooled again, oh no.

Digressions aside, there's one aspect of the story that doesn't click in this spin machine, one significant question that remains unanswered:

If Tony Blair is bringing his forces home because the mission is complete, and not because he is trying to avoid a legacy as the lapdog PM who lead his country into its worst foreign policy 'misstep' since Suez (deep breath), then why can't the US ask Blair to redeploy some of his forces to Baghdad and al Anbar where, ahem, they could probably pitch in and help keep things quiet?

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