Blair at Glorious Leader Tips For Make Benefit Little Middle East People

Now that his much-vaunted efforts to exert a moderating influence on the Bush administration, in favour of engagement with Iran and withdrawal from Iraq, have proven the usual roaring success, the Vicar of Downing Street has been touring the Middle East, as he occasionally does, in the apparent hope that someone over there will mistake him for a statesman. As he occasionally does, too, his reverence called for an Axis of Moderate Muslimity - presumably composed of such paragons as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and his disarming new friends in Libya - to battle against the Islamic extremists who have done so much to set back the cause of private enterprise in Iraq. The Islamic extremists in question, of course, are none other than the new Great Satan, the government of Iran. The Iranian government, as everyone surely knows by now, are very bad men indeed. The whole sorry story of the past five years' interventions in the region, from the non-capture of Osama through the forty-five-minutes-to-doom claim to the Great Nigerian Yellowcake Chase and the fledgling civil war, would be transformed into an idyllic, edifying epic of pelting flowers and thriving humanitarianism, were it not for the Iranian government. Given time, no doubt, the Iranian government will be held responsible for 9/11 and the recent Ashes fiasco; for now, said his reverence, elements of the Iranian government are "openly supporting terrorism in Iraq", while his reverence helps the Bush administration flout the international community's desire for peace; "trying to turn out a democratic government in Lebanon" while his reverence supports terrorism in Lebanon; and "flouting the international community's desire for peace in Palestine" while his reverence and the Bush administration try to turn out the lawfully elected Hamas government. Yet, despite all these efforts to put the Middle East on the right track, "a large part of world opinion is frankly almost indifferent", possibly the same large part of world opinion which objected to the Iraq adventure from the start. "It would be bizarre if it weren't deadly serious," his reverence noted ruefully, almost as one who is not without honour.