Together they rode off into the sunset... (Bush, Blair, and delusions)

[muriel_volestrangler]

Once, they bestrode the world like a colossus and his glove puppet, albeit Mr Blair's memorable parting instruction, via his chief of staff Jonathan Powell, to Christopher Meyer as he headed off to the Washington embassy - "We want you to get up the White House's arse, and stay there" - suggested some fundamental confusion about the mechanics of ventriloquism.

Today the duo are known even to that anti-punning paragon of journalistic sobriety The Economist as "the Axis of Feeble", and one can only guess at the wretchedly muted quality to yesterday's Oval Office welcome. Perhaps even at this late stage they dredged up some gallows humour, with a heavily knowing "Yo" from Mr Bush and a wearisomely ironic "yo" in response from Mr Blair. But if so, even an endlessly stubborn President and a supremely self-deluding Prime Minister must finally have come to accept that theirs is a yo-yo relationship on a one-way descent towards political damnation, without a hope in hell of ever bouncing back up.
...
Look up "Delusional Disorders" on Wikipedia, and you come across a sub-section of this branch of mental illness called "Grandiose Type", defined as follows: "Delusion of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity or special relationship to a deity or famous person." That may not have been exactly what Churchill had in mind when he first coined the phrase, but it would seem to cover recent Anglo-American relations uncannily well.
...
What genuine purpose there can have been to the meeting and the news conference is beyond imagining, with Mr Bush requiring several weeks for those who understand such things to tell him what he thinks about the Baker Report. Even so, it was clear from the response of the President, who really ought to be on Ritalin, when reminded of the second part to one question - "Oh, Iran and Syria," he said, and from the tone it might as well have been "Oh, and pick up the dry cleaning," - that involving those two countries in Iraq is not in the forefront of his thinking.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/matthew_norman/article2055546.ece

[Demeter]

1. "This Is Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Us Into!"

Bush said to Blair...

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Doo --ooh!

[Demeter]

4. Priceless Cartoon!

[indie_voter]

3. Fantastic editorial!! Nailed our sociopath in chief. n/t