Bush and Blair earlier in the day, prior to Blair's request for political asylum in the United States


Washington, DC (APE) - Scarcely minutes after a nationally televised meeting at the White House between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush was completed, White House sources stated that Mr. Blair asked for and was granted political asylum in America by President Bush. This comes on the heels of the revelation in Britain that Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith has been ordered to turn over controversial papers dealing with legal advice given to Mr. Blair prior to the run-up to the war in Iraq. The papers apparently demonstrate Blair's complicity in deceiving the British government over the illegality of a war in Iraq, at the behest of the Bush administration.

Here's George W. Bush giving a non-answer to Helen Thomas' question about why he took the nation to war in Iraq.

QUESTION: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President -- your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth -- but what's your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil, the quest for oil. It hasn't been Israel or anything else. What was it?

BUSH: I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- that I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect.

QUESTION: And...

BUSH: Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me. Excuse me. No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.

No president ever wants war, Helen.  Bush was forced into it.  Forced by how Saddam kept trying to find new ways to say he no longer had any banned weapons.  Forced by the inspectors and how they were directing the destruction of Iraqi missiles.  

You can't let that kind of cooperation go unpunished.  Besides, Bush's "not wanting to go to war," turns out to look very like wanting to go to war.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

Unless they are stopped, George Bush and Tony Blair will continue their ghoulish dance of death until a mushroom cloud covers Planet Earth like an umbrella...

Elwood Bush: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses!

Jake Blair: Hit it!

Elwood Bush: They're not gonna catch us! We're on a mission from God!

It was bizarre at first; even amusing in a hideous little way. When George "Elwood" Bush and Tony "Jake" Blair scrambled up on the international stage shortly after 9-11 and broke into their frenzied Blues Brothers routine, I fully expected the US Congress, the UK Parliament and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic to snort in derision and get up and walk out of the theater. I mean, c'mon...