GLOBAL COLUMN© BY TED CORDOVA

Tony Blair's 45 minutes to doomsday

Tony Blair had said, at the height of his unncesary servitude to George Bush, that Saddam Hussein was in the capacity of launching in 45 minutes a nuclear attack to any European country. Thank God, he could not. Blair was wrong. Given the weakness and lack of combat capacity of Sadam's army it has been demonstrarted that Tony Blair's doomsday prediction in front of the British Parliament was absolutely wrong.

British Prime Ministers, in critical times -either in triumph or decadence-, have been recognized for candidly defining a momentum, like capturing a crucial instant of History with quick thoughts epitomizing the English unique way of common sense.

From Neville Chamberlain stepping down from the plane that brought him from Berlin, waving a document of "peace, no war" signed by Hitler, to present day Tony Blair warning of the alleged capability of Saddam Hussein to unleash a sort of Doomsday with weapons of massive destruction in "45 minutes", British leaders short sentences have moulded the History, yet frequently, dead wrong..

The great British champion of adlibs with his bulldoggish barking has been Winston Churchill of course.

Describing heroic episodes or gloomy ones he was a master of Historical one-liners:

"Never so few did so much for so many", he said describing the feat of RAF pilots against Nazi's Luftwaffen blitz over the cities of Britain.

A new curtain is falling over divided Europe, it is an "Iron Curtain", he announced after the Second World War to an astonished American group of savvy spectators of the World scene. The iron cutain, as we know now, didn't last to the end of the Century, it was not the definitive Human tragedy that Churchill painted..

Even the definition of 'Cold War' is attributed to Winnie.

Of course, dealing with th arabs there was other brit who should be recalled today, notwithstanding that he contributed a lot to spread the geographic Arab puzzle of nowdays, col T.E.Lawrence, who in 1917 warned to his superior, General Allenby the sort of Viceroy of Palestina -true name of the territory that today includes thanks to the United Nations, the state of Israel: "Arabia is today- the Ottoman empire being explled as a consequenc ofWW-I- for the arabs", said Lawrence, "and it will be forever", he added (circa1919).

Today, one of the most famous (or infamous?)sentences, is the one pronounced by George W.Bush: defning the "axis of evil"(Irak-Iran-North Korea).

The idea was not Bush's creation or imaginaton. It was from David Frum, a presidential speech writer who has since resigned, only to publish a book, entitled "GWB, the right man". However the book is somewhat critical, if not sardonic, to the extent to say, that GWB is a "tart", which I foun randomly exaggerated. That doesn't speak well from a speechwriter or for the most powerful man in Earth. Mr.Frum, a Canadian, should know better- at least about "axis" in History.

BIP