Tony Blair and John Howard are increasingly lonely voices when they plead that Britain or Australia and America must remain each other's indispensable allies. The defining characteristic of both leaders has has been to get as close as he could to the American President--they became George W Bush's best friend and helped lie their countries into war in Iraq. What they or their country have got in return is not clear.

Peter Brook

So far there is no accountability for these leaders to lie us into a war of their choosing. The federal ALP is not talking about accountibility if it wins government this year. Yet Parliament can win any battle with the executive as long as it has an informed public opinion behind it.

Presumably, when both Blair and Howard leave office their successors will have to fashion a new foreign policy for Britain and Australia which recasts their relationship with America and reorient their approach to the rest of the world. Such a foreign policy will no doubt be structured around to adeclaration of greater independence from the US.

The tombstone of that special relationship is Iraq, and as the Brooking 's Institute's recent Things Fall Apart study states, Iraq now exhibits the six patterns from other civil wars: large refugee flows, the breeding ground of new terrorist groups, radicalisation of neighbouring populations, the spread of secessionism, regional economic losses, and intervention by neighbours. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey are said to be "scrambling to catch up" with rival Iran.

This is the Bush administration path toward "the gates of hell." They bought us Iraq (a jungle world of a failed state), now they are are preparing to do the same for Iran.

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