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Joined: 24 Jan 2003
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Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:16 pm Post subject: Ex-British Envoy's Book Criticizes Blair |
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LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair repeatedly failed to exert his influence with President Bush and to slow down the rush to war in Iraq, a former British ambassador to the United States claims.
In excerpts from his book, serialized in the British newspaper The Guardian on Monday, Sir Christopher Meyer said Blair appeared to be "seduced" by the glamor of U.S. power and was reluctant to negotiate conditions with Bush for Britain's support for the war.
"We may have been the junior partner in the enterprise, but the ace up our sleeve was that America did not want to go it alone," Meyer wrote in his book "DC Confidential."
"Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise."
The claim is embarrassing for the prime minister, who committed British troops to the U.S.-led invasion in the face of widespread opposition and has been pilloried by the British press, and some of his own lawmakers, as Bush's poodle. |
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