Blair is 'Using Our Troops to Boost Bush'

[rndmprsn]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1017-02.htm

the brits shouldn't stand for this...using the lives of their soldiers for political purposes...shrubs political purposes at that!

i used to admire tony blair, but he's gone the way of colin powell and john mcain in my eyes...he's become bush's bitch...so sad.


Tony Blair last night stood accused of conspiring to use British troops in Iraq as a "political gesture" to help George W Bush in the US presidential election.

The Prime Minister faced protests from all sides over plans to redeploy British forces to an area 25 miles south of Baghdad, freeing the US 24th Marine Expeditionary Force for an expected assault on the rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, is preparing to make a Commons statement tomorrow announcing that about 650 soldiers from the Black Watch will leave Basra and come under US command "for a few weeks".

The Sunday Telegraph understands, however, that the deployment is being resisted by Gen Sir Michael Walker, the Chief of the Defence Staff.

Nicholas Soames, the Conservative defence spokesman, also expressed concern yesterday and suggested that British troops were being moved for political reasons. "We need to watch the timing of all this," he said, "and to be careful that this isn't just being used as a kind of political gesture to reassure the Americans of Prime Minister Blair's support for the American efforts.

"What alarms and awes me is the timing of this operation, particularly during Ramadan."

Mr Bush is facing an increasingly strong challenge from John Kerry, his Democrat opponent, in the November 2 presidential election. Some recent polls have put them neck and neck.

Iraq is one of the key issues in the election and Mr Bush is under pressure to counter Mr Kerry's charge that it is only American soldiers who are suffering high casualty levels in Iraq and that other countries' armed forces should be sharing more of the burden.

In one of their recent televised debates, Mr Kerry told Mr Bush: "We are 90 per cent of the casualties and 90 per cent of the costs," effectively claiming that the President's frequent assertions that he had built a broad coalition were diplomatic fiction, not military reality.

Greater involvement around Baghdad by Britain, which has 9,000 troops in Iraq, compared with America's 130,000, would go some way to defusing Mr Kerry's charge.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said that any decision to assist Mr Bush would be highly contentious.

"Will Mr Blair decide to help Bush in the run-up to the election? If he does he will have to placate a House of Commons which is increasingly fractious about the absence of a clear exit strategy in Iraq.

[Deja Q]

1. This timing is way too suspicious...

They must have kept their eyes closed when * was in the UK, trampling all over the flowers in the garden...

(edit: Spelling)