Historians Gush Over Bush At No. 10 Send Off

On his final visit to the UK as POTUS, George W. Bush sat down for a dinner in No. 10 Downing Street with PM Gordon Brown and a gaggle of historians.

Bush, of course, is obsessed with how historians will view his presidency, usually pushing a point that it will take decades before his war-making White House can be accurately assessed by those who write the history.

Bizarrely, claims at least one historian, there was little or no talk of war in the 21st century. Bush's era of war. They instead focused on the past.

The dinner saw Bush being introduced to and debated past wars with the following historians :

Simon Schama A History of Britain
Alistair Horne A Savage War of Peace
Valmai Holt Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide
Max Arthur Forgotten Voices series
Piers Brendan The Decline and Fall of the British Empire
Linda Colley Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837
David Cannadine The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy
Martin Gilbert Official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill
Andrew Roberts A History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900

This London Times story claims Bush has read, or is reading, all of these books :

In one corner was Simon Schama, who labelled Mr Bush as an “absolute f***ing catastrophe” in 2006. In another was Andrew Roberts, who is close to Mr Bush and his inner circle and was displaying a pair of presidential cufflinks he was given the last time they met.

He told The Times that it was “a completely wonderful and fabulous occasion — I sat next to the President. We talked about the interaction between history, politics, and personalities. That is about as far as I can go because it was a private dinner.”

Alistair Horne, another of the guests, had also met Mr Bush before and has discussed with him in the White House the parallels between Iraq and the “savage war of peace” in Algeria half a century ago.

He said: “You think about prime ministers and presidents being surrounded by cabinet officials, aides and so forth but at the end of the day, they are alone. They’re lonely.”

Downing Street aides said that Mr Bush changed seats several times over the evening, as Mr Brown strove to introduce his guest to as many people as possible.

The evening allowed both President and Prime Minister to wallow in their favourite subject of British history, with many of the guests, including Alistair Horne, David Cannadine and Valmai Holt, experts in military history and the rise and fall of Empire.

The topic of conversation appeared to avoid any direct judgment on Mr Bush’s presidency.

According to Roberts, they talked about “the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, but not the 21st” — when Mr Bush took much of the world to war.

Mr Bush ended his dinner by posing for a group photograph underneath a portrait of Elizabeth I in the Downing Street drawing room.

As they lined up for the shot, he was heard to remark: “This is going to be my White House Christmas card” — his last before he leaves office in January and is himself consigned to history.

The Rupert Murdoch owned London Times didn't see any need to mention another guest at the dinner : Rupert Murdoch. The ex-Australian media mogul and war profiteer is believed to have had a private chat with Gordon Brown, with President Bush by his side.

Murdoch played historian himself in the days before the start of the Iraq War, when he said :

"He will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn."

Bush Warns UK, Australia Over Troop Withdrawals : Nobody Leaves Iraq Until I Say We've Won

Creates Own Reality-World To Counter Truth Of His Troop "Surge" Failure

President Bush is showing something close to aggression towards the United Kingdom and Australia as debate rages about withdrawing their troops from Iraq.

In the UK, prime minister Gordon Brown is actively defending the British withdrawal from Basra, and signs of clear tension are now rising between Bush and Brown over leaking plans for a total pullout of British troops.

In Australia, the 'Next Prime Minister' Kevin Rudd - heavily pegged to win the coming election over Bush's best friend in the Pacific, John Howard - is refusing to back down from his pledge to withdraw Australia's combat troops by mid-2008.

In the UK, Gordon Brown has the backing of the vast majority of the British people to pull the troops out of Iraq, and in Australia a large majority back Kevin Rudd's plans.

Here's Bush talking about the defiance of Gordon Brown :

"We need all our coalition partners. I understand that everybody's got their own internal politics. My only point is that whether it be Afghanistan or Iraq, we've got more work to do."

In a Sky News interview, he made clear his irritation with Mr Brown's approach on Iraq. He said Western troops should only think of pulling out once they had completed the "hard work" of defeating al-Qa'ida and Iranian-backed insurgents.

"What matters is success, and I believe we can be successful. This hard work will achieve what we all want, which is, over time, fewer troops and peace. The main thing we want is to make sure that we deal these radicals and extremists a major blow, which is success in Iraq."

Expect a new definition of "success in Iraq" to fall from Bush's lips shortly.

Here's Bush on Kevin Rudd's plans to get Australia out of Iraq :

"I'm going to remind him that, one, the stakes in Iraq are very high for peace..."

"Iraqi-style democracy in the heart of the Middle East is part of winning this ideological struggle. And I'll remind him that, as far as I'm concerned, that leaving Iraq before the job is done will cause an enemy that attacked us before to become emboldened."

He said he wanted to tell Mr Rudd "the best way to conduct policy is based upon conditions on the ground". "That conditions ought to be driving troop deployments. And that's how I would hope all our coalition partners would view the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Bush will be visiting Sydney for the APEC summit this week, and will fly home before the second day of the key meetings with Asia-Pacific leaders to face the music over the reality of the so-called progress in his troop "surge" strategy.

The spinning of the coming report on the "surge" has well and truly begun, but the facts on the ground are impossible to deny.

The killings of Iraqis in Baghdad has dropped slightly over the past two months, but still ratchets up to an appalling 1700 - 1800 dead per month. But while the increases of murder and execution rates have tapered off minutely in Baghdad, where the "surge" of troops is concentrated, across the rest of Iraq the death toll is rising, and rapidly.


A few days ago, Bush began fighting back against negative reports on the impact of his troop "surge" and the fact that the Iraqi government has barely met 20% of the stated Bush goals that they needed to meet to gain the continuing support of the United States. Including getting electricity and water supplies out of Third World delivery rate levels.

Naturally, President Bush has his own version of reality when it comes to the success of the so-called Benchmarks Of Progress :

President Bush, appearing confident about sustaining support for his Iraq strategy, met at the Pentagon on Friday with the uniformed leaders of the nation’s armed services and then pointedly accused the war’s opponents of politicizing the debate over what to do next.

“The stakes in Iraq are too high and the consequences too grave for our security here at home to allow politics to harm the mission of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. Bush said in a statement after his meeting with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in a briefing room known as the Tank.

The meeting, which lasted an hour and a half, was among the president’s last Iraq strategy sessions before he leaves for Australia to meet with leaders of Asian and Pacific nations. It came on the eve of a string of reports and hearings that, starting next week, could determine the course of the remaining 16 months of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Beginning on Tuesday, when Congress returns from its August recess, lawmakers are prepared to debate what to do in Iraq in daily hearings that will culminate on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11 with appearances by the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the military commander there, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Congress has mandated a progress report from the White House before Sept. 15, and Mr. Bush chided lawmakers for calling for a change in policy before hearing the views of the two men who are, as administration officials repeatedly point out, “on the ground in Iraq.”

“Congress asked for this assessment,” Mr. Bush said in the statement, “and members of Congress should withhold judgment until they have heard it.”

Pentagon officials have said publicly that the goal of Mr. Bush’s meetings on Iraq strategy was not necessarily to produce a consensus among Mr. Bush’s military advisers, an unusual depiction of a process in which disagreements are normally shielded from public view.

Rather, the officials said, the goal was to ensure that Mr. Bush was hearing a diversity of views. It may become difficult, however, for the White House to avoid acknowledging that there are growing differences between officers in Washington and in Iraq.

The wonderfully wussy term 'Diversity Of Views' should be translated as "Bush Creates His Own Reality World".

The Iraq War is won when Bush says it is, the troop "surge" is working because Bush says it is, Congress should keep okaying $50 billion and $80 billion 'supplementals' to keep US troops in Iraq because Bush says they need to be there, and the Iraqi government needs continued support of the US because Bush says it does. Until he says it doesn't.

Which could be sooner than even the Iraqis think.


Iraq Far From US 'Benchmark' Levels For Delivery Of Electricity, Essential Services

Bush Gets The Bad News From The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, But Prepares To Declare His Troop "Surge" Strategy Is Working