British Prime Minister Tony Blair's speech last week to a joint session of the U.S. Congress was witty, erudite and nauseating.

In fact, the only thing more stomach-churning than the image of the man the British press refers to as "Bush's poodle" doing tricks to entertain America's elected representatives was the image of those representatives applauding the lies they wanted to hear.

Blair should have apologized to Congress for peddling doctored "intelligence" data that was used to promote war with Iraq. Instead he sacrificed the last tattered shred of his credibility as an international leader in order to tell Congress the worst of all lies.

To cheers from his audience of senators and representatives, Blair said there was no need to try to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the excuses he and George W. Bush gave for launching a war.

"Let us say one thing. If we are wrong we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering," Blair declared. "That is something I am confident history will forgive us."

Translation: Even if the "case" that was made for this war was made by stretching the truth to the breaking point, all's well that ends well because we got some great pictures of a statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down.

The British press referred to Blair's speech as "claptrap," and rightly so. On a mission to prop up the Bush administration in the face of growing skepticism about the president's fast-with-the-facts State of the Union address, Blair tried to argue that any excuse for a war that produced desired results would do.

That may have been a satisfactory rationale for most members of Congress - who proved in the run-up to the Iraq war that they are incapable of reasoning for themselves - but it has not flown in Britain.

"Mr. Blair does not like telling powerful leaders or admiring audiences what they do not want to hear. That can be a strength; last night it was a weakness," explained London's liberal Guardian newspaper in an editorial published the morning after Blair's Thursday speech. "In his missed opportunity, we can measure the shortcomings of our prime minister."

The conservative Daily Mail newspaper reacted to Blair's cheerful assessment of the Iraqi invasion as a success by observing: "This was Mr. Blair the brilliant contortionist trying to have it both ways. Remember how utterly convinced he was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Remember how he changed his tune when Saddam's arsenal wasn't found and started talking of weapons programs instead?... Where will it end? (Saddam's) supporters are so organized that they were able to fire a missile this week at an American plane. And the prospect of a properly elected government in Baghdad is at least a year away. An exit strategy? It doesn't exist. Reconstruction? Painfully slow. Weapons of mass destruction? Vanished into the ether. The explosion of Iraqi joy that was supposed to greet allied troops? We have bomb explosions instead. If this is Mr. Blair's idea of getting it right, heaven help us when he gets it wrong."

But the most telling reflection on Blair's speech to Congress came from London's Daily Mirror, traditionally the newspaper that has been friendliest to Blair's Labor Party.

"Forgive us if we don't share the ecstatic joy of our American friends. The truth is that Mr. Blair got his astonishing victory parade because he backed George Bush in his illegal, unethical war on Iraq when hardly anyone else would. He committed thousands of British troops, many of whom have now been killed - and with serious risk that many more will perish as postwar Iraq erupts in lawless chaos," wrote the Mirror's editors. "In short, he stuck his neck out against the will of the British people and the U.N. and backed America in what many now view as a war based on lies. That's why America feels such a debt of gratitude. And that's why there was something quite nauseating about (Thursday) night's spectacle."

Within hours after Blair's speech came the first reports of the suicide of a top British scientist who had been attacked by Blair's government for helping to expose the deceptive manipulation of intelligence information by the prime minister's aides. Before the weekend was done, leaders of Blair's own party, including a former member of his Cabinet, were calling for his resignation.

Tony Blair is getting no applause in Britain. But the U.S. Congress is still cheering. So here's the question: If Blair is Bush's poodle, how come our senators and representatives are the ones doing stupid pet tricks?

Copyright 2003 The Capital Times

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