Blair accused of using British troops to shore up Bush’s election campaign

TONY BLAIR has agreed this week to move British forces closer to trouble spots near Baghdad so that George W Bush would not have to commit more US troops to Iraq in the closing days of his re-election campaign.

The British prime minister of course denies that he has agreed to the move to satisfy American political motives. However, trust in Blair in Britain is so low at the moment that few are prepared to believe him.

The redeployment of the British forces is just one more cameo in the peculiar story which has been the British involvement in this Iraq war. History will look back with increasing incredulity at the war. There will be hundreds of history books and TV programmes trying to explain how the United States, within two years of the attack on the World Trade Center, came to divert its considerable international prestige and military resources to fight a war there.