Foreign Affairs - Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq - Paul R. Pillar
Today's first link, above, leads to a newly published and well-informed article that suggests Amerika's intelligence community are less than happy about their use by Bush for political ends. Parallels with Britain where the security services have also objected to manipulation by Blair. Curiously too, following yesterday's proclamation by Bush about a foiled terrorist attack on Los Angeles, counter-terrorism experts are jumping up to rubbish the suggestion. See here.
Back here in the UK, there has been an astonishing bi-election victory for what many had perceived as a troubled Liberal Democrat party. Without even a current leader (voting is still underway on that), Britain's 3rd principal political party has ousted Blair's labour and snubbed fledgling Conservative leader Cameron to boot. Blair's weakened house majority is now cut by one more MP and the Lib Dems have gained a seat. If this can happen despite the calamities befalling both their previous leader, an ex-new-leader candidate and one of the current leadership candidates, maybe we have cause to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Our current Prime Preacher is also backing down rapidly on proposed policy changes - most significantly the education reforms. Obviously anxious to suffer no more defeats before his time runs out he is increasingly seem as hanging on until the 10th anniversary of his election to office. That will be Spring next year and rumour has it he has agreed to hand over to Chancellor Gordon Brown at that time. The problem is that this new Lib Dem victory is even more of a snub to Brown as it is the Blair. Brown lives in the constituency and spent an awful lot of time up there recently campaigning for the loser.
Later.
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