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Blair Failed In Dealing With Bush, Book Says
President Bush walked with Blair during a visit to Northern Ireland in April 2003. Former British ambassador Christopher Meyer says Blair should have taken a harder line with Bush before the war.
(By Eric Draper -- Associated Press)
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Meyer, a high-profile figure in Washington, was a veteran foreign service officer who also served as press secretary in the 1990s to Prime Minister John Major, a Conservative. Meyer is now chairman of Britain's Press Complaints Commission, an independent agency that handles complaints from members of the public about the media.
In some of the most colorful passages of the book, excerpted in the Guardian and the Daily Mail on Monday, Meyer described the first meeting between Bush and Blair, which took place at Camp David in February 2001, shortly after Bush's inauguration.
He recalled accompanying Blair and his wife, Cherie, on a U.S. military helicopter as it approached Camp David. Cherie Blair looked out the window at Bush and first lady Laura Bush waiting by the helipad. "I don't expect that they are looking forward to this any more than we are," Meyer quoted Cherie Blair as saying, referring to feeling uncomfortable about their first meeting.
Blair's close relationship with President Bill Clinton was well known, and Meyer said many insiders at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's office, were distraught that Vice President Al Gore had not defeated Bush.
But Meyer wrote that Blair and Bush seemed to hit if off immediately. He said Bush welcomed Blair to Camp David by saying, "Tony -- may I call you Tony? It's great to have you here."
"I heard the rapid cracking of ice," Meyer wrote. "Both were smiling, pretty laid back. I heaved a sigh of relief. You know immediately if the chemistry is going to work. This was going to work."
That night, the Blairs watched the film "Meet the Parents" with the Bushes. Meyer wrote that Bush "split his sides" laughing when he heard that the character played by actor Ben Stiller was named "Gay Focker."
He said Blair and his aides had less friendly dealings with the "sometimes intimidating" Vice President Cheney, which gave discussions a "certain Soviet woodenness."
Meyer recounted a conversation with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then Cheney's chief of staff, who told him Britain was "the only ally that mattered. That was a powerful lever."
Because Blair failed to use his influence, Meyer said, the Iraq war began without proper planning or international support, and "history's verdict looks likely to be that it was terminally flawed both in conception and execution."
