Paying the Political Price

So another BBC executive resigned Thursday after the so-called “Hutton Inquiry” found that the British Broadcasting Corporation (search) had not lived up to its own standards in the way it allowed a reporter -- a guy named Andrew Gilligan -- to lie about what a source told him.

It became a huge stink because the report essentially said Tony Blair lied to the British people about why war in Iraq was justified.

The inquiry let Blair off the hook -- not held to blame -- but he's still in trouble with the British public and I submit there is one principal reason. Blair was just too pro-American for the British press and a sizeable part of the British public, especially the elites who write in newspapers and magazines and mouth off on television and radio.

How could Blair possibly lend his credibility and eloquence to that dolt, George W. Bush? How could he consort with those upstart, pushy, overweight and vulgar Americans? About a third of the British public feels that way and they shout down the other two thirds.

Blair is in trouble politically. Not really because he took his country to war on the basis of WMD and it later turned out there weren't any. But because he had decided Britain's place was beside America. That, in Blair's opinion, is how Britain maintains a position of importance in the world.

It's either be with America, or be with France. And we can all see that's an easy choice.

But for many in Britain that reality is just too painful. And since it hurts so much Tony Blair is to blame for the pain.

That's My Word.

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