"As W. told The Observer: "It's convenient to say, you know, 'warmonger,' 'religious zealot,' 'poodle' — I mean, these are just words that people love to toss around foolishly."

Poppy Bush was often compared to Bertie Wooster, and W. seems to have found his own stiff-backed Jeeves. Mr. Brown agreed to send more troops to Afghanistan, put more sanctions on Iran and decide on Iraq troop withdrawals based on conditions on the ground.

Quentin Letts pointed out in The Daily Mail that when W. touched Gordon, the prime minister would "recoil like a novice nun at first and later smile in terror," and when W. said he had no problem with Brownie on Iraq, "You could almost see Mr. Brown thinking: 'Oh, Gawd! There go another few thousand votes.' "

Asked by The Observer reporter about W.M.D. in Iraq, W. replied: "Still looking for them," sparking a strange moment of levity. Mr. Bush continued: "We didn't realize, nor did anybody else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was just a bluff."

Yeah, who could have ever guessed that a wily, deceitful and debilitated Arab dictator might huff and puff, not wanting rivals in the neighborhood to know the weapons cupboard was bare? Maybe some of those psychologists specializing in boastful, malignant narcissists and Middle East cultural experts working in our $40 billion-a-year intelligence units should have been able to figure it out?"


(MAureen Dowd, NYT)