Tony Blair, Balls Reunited

Another sign of the shifting tide-

Scotsman.com: Blair refuses to back Iran strike

TONY Blair has told George Bush that Britain cannot offer military support to any strike on Iran, regardless of whether the move wins the backing of the international community, government sources claimed yesterday...

Ouch, George. That's gotta hurt.

Berlusconi's out of power, Blair's putting his foot down... is the Bush/Cheney/Rummy cabal ready to really go it alone?

Elsewhere, the pushback against the idea of another disastrous, preemptive war continues to spread. In a new NY Times op-ed piece, former National Security Council counterterrorism gurus Richard Clarke and Steven Simon warn against the dangers of what the Bush administration is planning- noting in detail the ripple effects our actions could have. A recommended read. The money quote from their conclusion:

The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.

More of this, please. It's what we didn't get in 2002 and what we sorely need now.

[PS- Democrats, feel free to step in on this anytime now. Thanks.]