'London's bridge is falling down'
In a devastating verdict on Tony Blair’s decision to back war in Iraq and his “totally one-sided” relationship with President Bush, a US State Department official has said that Britain’s role as a bridge between America and Europe is now “disappearing before our eyes”.
Kendall Myers, a senior State Department analyst, disclosed that for all Britain’s attempts to influence US policy in recent years, “we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business”
Meanwhile, the man Alexander Litvinenko accused of his murder on his deathbed, Mario Scaramella, is now the subject of various revelations in the Italian press. Several serious papers like La Stampa, Corriere della Sera and La Reppublica are now writing (as linked to and explained in English by de Gondi here and here over at the European Tribune) that Scaramella was under investigation by Italian magistrates for arms trafficking, and used Litvinenko to try to discredit Romano Prodi before last June's election (where he beat Silvio Berlusconi).
As Putin's spokesman has noted, the murder of Anna Politovskaya was just before the G8 summit, and the murder of Litvinenko was just before the EU-Russia summit. With 4 British Airways now grounded after traces of Polonium were found in them and elsewhere, and former Russian Prime Minister Gaydar mysteriously poisoned yesterday, there are a number of strange things happening to people that are or have been critical of Putin, but it's hard to know who to blame - and yet that has not prevented pundits all around from blaming Putin for all of it, with little justification.
And it is now revealed that Scaramella is linked to Berlusconi (via Senator Guzzanti) and to Bob Lady, the Milan CIA agent wanted for the Abu Omar kidnapping. So the people involved in the rendition flights and the shady destabilization attempts to maintain Bush ally Berlusconi in power are also deeply involved in what increasingly appears to be a campaign to paint Putin as an evil dictator.
The connections are troubling, to say the least.
Meanwhile, those friends that tried to warn you about the Iraq war, up to taking the unprecedented step of threatening to veto the UN resolution that would have allowed the war, were insulted, disparaged - and they still are today (like in this WSJ article: NATO and the Taliban - The Anglo-Saxons fight; the French and Germans don't. - behind sub link).
back to first article
Speaking at an academic forum in Washington on Tuesday night, he answered a question from The Times, saying: “It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a onesided relationship that was entered into with open eyes . . . there was nothing. There was no payback, no sense of reciprocity.”
(...)
Dr Myers had hard words for his own Administration’s record in the Iraq war: “It’s a bad time, let’s face it. We have not only failed to do what we wanted to do in Iraq but we have greatly strained our relationship with [Britain].”
Dr Myers, a specialist in British politics, predicted that the tight bond between Mr Bush and Mr Blair would not be replicated in the future. “What I think and fear is that Britain will draw back from the US without moving closer to Europe. In that sense London’s bridge is falling down.”
Friends are not sycophants, they are not afraid of telling you unpleasant things at the worst moment, and they stick around. Bush has chosen his friends: people he can shit on and that are happy to take it ('Yo Blair'), or cynical criminals willing to do the dirty deeds (Berlusconi and his goons and their strange acquaintances). Who will be yours?