Tony Blair

In a campaign speech on July 14, 2007, Senator Barack Obama railed against the Iraq war and President Bush’s obstinate refusal to end it. “We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we’re on the wrong battlefield,” Obama said. In another speech a few weeks later, he said, “The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war.

Old wounds shall be worried anew; stale arguments shall be leavened once more.

Tony Blair’s record-shattering memoir, A Journey, which has been marketed for its salacity of disclosures about Gordon Brown (emotionally unintelligent, blackmailing), the Queen (lunch-maker and dish-washer), and Princess Diana (dangerously emotional, manipulative) was published on a day when its author wasn’t even in England but the Labour party was in the midst of deciding its next leader.

Bournemouth, England

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William Kristol is a smart guy, but he appears to be making a silly mistake in Gephardt's 16 Words. Like other conservatives he is missing important nuances in the speech of a sophisticated thinker.

A LOT OF PERFORMERS disagree with me on this, but I hate it when audiences whoop to show their pleasure. Before the taping of an HBO special years ago, the producer walked out to whip the audience into a frenzy, which he thought was a good thing for a comedy show. "Are you going to get crazy tonight?!" he screamed. Each time they responded, he said it wasn't crazy enough, and that they had to get wilder and wilder, and actually had them practice howling. I watched from the wings, and when he walked off, he winked at me and said, "Ready?" And I told him not to start just yet.

IT WAS JULY 7, the Monday after the Fourth of July weekend, and chaos reigned at the White House. President Bush and his senior staff were frantically preparing to leave later in the day for a five-day trip to Africa. Ari Fleischer, beginning his final week as White House press secretary, answered reporters' questions in the morning in the West Wing briefing room. He was pressed about a 16-word sentence in Bush's State of the Union speech on January 28 that had cited efforts by Saddam Hussein to buy uranium in Africa for his nuclear weapons program. Fleischer botched the response.

AS TONY BLAIR heads for America to collect his Congressional Gold Medal this week, he must be thinking, "With America for a friend, I surely don't need any enemies." He gambled that his new friend, George W. Bush, would see loyalty as a two-way street. So far, he is losing his bet.

Britain's prime minister knew that he was taking an enormous political risk when he decided to join Washington in attacking Iraq. The left of his own Labour party was opposed to the war: Many in that faction did not see Saddam Hussein as a threat, others felt that action without U.N.

OPPONENTS of the war in Iraq must be chagrined to see pretty much all of their arguments discredited by events. The invasion did not cause greater regional unrest; instead it led to a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. There have been no massive refugee flows or other humanitarian disasters. U.S. troops did not encounter a Stalingrad on the Euphrates. And so on.

Not able to forgive George W. Bush and Tony Blair for being right, the naysayers are now emphasizing what looks to be their strongest argument: the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction.

THE UNITED NATIONS is a temptation that's easy to resist. It won't enforce its own resolutions. Libya, a police state, chairs its human rights commission. It provides an arena where France, with its unearned Security Council veto, has enough leverage to pursue a campaign to restrain the power--and good works--of the United States. So when British prime minister Tony Blair, at the Belfast summit last week, pressed for a major role for the U.N.

I WISH MICHAEL KELLY were alive to see this day. He would have known how to savor it. I wish Ronald Reagan could be aware of the scenes being played out in Baghdad. He would know that the liberationist sentiment he rekindled in the American heart didn't die out with the liberation of eastern and central Europe.

With his optimism, Reagan revived the progressive spirit that courses through our founding Declaration, that all human beings are created equal and all are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

AFTER IRAQ INVADED Kuwait in 1991, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met with the first President Bush and urged him not to "go wobbly." Bush didn't. Now, when the current President Bush confers with Prime Minister Tony Blair in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Monday, he'll return the favor by offering similar advice. This time, however, the prospect of wobbliness is not on the war, but on who controls Iraq after the war and guides it toward democracy. Bush believes it should be the United States and Great Britain.

IN THE DAYS before the British Parliament voted on a resolution endorsing war with Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair was a nervous wreck. He feared losing so many Labor members that the opposition Conservatives would be in a pivotal position to save or embarrass him. The Bush administration rushed to his rescue. A campaign was mobilized to induce Conservatives to vote with Blair. A barrage of phone calls was made from Washington by administration officials, key Republicans, and anyone else Bush advisers could find who was close to Conservative members of Parliament.