Blair cast as hard man by Bush

[T_i_B]

Blair also cast as a cowardly neo-con poodle by Thankfully_in_Britain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1193807,00.html

Tony Blair, who once struggled to shake off his image as the Bambi of British politics, found himself cast as the hardest of hard men by George Bush yesterday.

"As we like to say in Crawford , he's a stand-up kinda guy, he shows backbone and courage and strong leadership," the president declared in the White House rose garden, as he lavished praise on Mr Blair for standing shoulder to shoulder with him on Iraq.

Such a compliment - Mr Bush's way of telling the world he values Mr Blair's counsel in a week when his influence appears to have waned in the White House - highlights Mr Blair's acute difficulty with the plain-speaking Texan.

What is clearly the highest honour in the president's adopted state sounds to British ears like a jokey aside about how the man dismissed by critics as a creation of spin has turned into a stand-up comedian.