Undesired Walrus
1st September 2009, 08:04 AM
This article makes the case:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article6816407.ece
After Gordon Brown met Colonel Muammar Gaddafi at the G8 summit in Italy earlier this year he joked that he had discovered Michael Jackson alive and well. There is indeed an uncanny resemblance between the Libyan leader and the King of Pop. But it was not, of course, the singer who asked the Prime Minister to release the Lockerbie bomber. Michael Jackson is dead — and so now is the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States.
The row over the decision to allow Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi to return to Libya is the final nail in the coffin for the transatlantic bond first identified by Winston Churchill after the Second World War. Even Barack Obama abandoned his normal diplomatic tone to criticise the “highly objectionable” arrival of the bomber in Tripoli. Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, said that the release of the man convicted of murdering 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 made a “mockery of justice” and would give “comfort to terrorists around the world”. There was a widespread assumption in Washington all along that the decision was linked to a trade deal.
If this article is right, and our almost-certain-to-be next Prime Minister David Cameron is, as was alleged, regarded by Obama as a 'lightweight', is the special relationship heading towards its grave?
Any thoughts on what Obama's opinion on Brown is? If suspect Obama would more likely get on with Miliband, if he were PM. Their intellect seems similar.
It's been said Obama highly respects Blair. It was demonstrated by his tribute to him at the White House earlier this year ("he (Blair) did it first and perhaps did it better than I will do"). It was a shame they were never in office at the same time. Miliband may be the closest that comes to him in the near future.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article6816407.ece
After Gordon Brown met Colonel Muammar Gaddafi at the G8 summit in Italy earlier this year he joked that he had discovered Michael Jackson alive and well. There is indeed an uncanny resemblance between the Libyan leader and the King of Pop. But it was not, of course, the singer who asked the Prime Minister to release the Lockerbie bomber. Michael Jackson is dead — and so now is the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States.
The row over the decision to allow Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi to return to Libya is the final nail in the coffin for the transatlantic bond first identified by Winston Churchill after the Second World War. Even Barack Obama abandoned his normal diplomatic tone to criticise the “highly objectionable” arrival of the bomber in Tripoli. Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, said that the release of the man convicted of murdering 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 made a “mockery of justice” and would give “comfort to terrorists around the world”. There was a widespread assumption in Washington all along that the decision was linked to a trade deal.
If this article is right, and our almost-certain-to-be next Prime Minister David Cameron is, as was alleged, regarded by Obama as a 'lightweight', is the special relationship heading towards its grave?
Any thoughts on what Obama's opinion on Brown is? If suspect Obama would more likely get on with Miliband, if he were PM. Their intellect seems similar.
It's been said Obama highly respects Blair. It was demonstrated by his tribute to him at the White House earlier this year ("he (Blair) did it first and perhaps did it better than I will do"). It was a shame they were never in office at the same time. Miliband may be the closest that comes to him in the near future.