Bush, Blair face different political fallout

Both leaders, just days apart, have fielded questions raised by a US Senate report that was devastating for the CIA on Bush's side of the pond, and the results of an inquiry that was similarly hard on British intelligence on Blair's side.

The reports have thrown new light on the fragility of accusations surrounding Iraq's arsenal, which were for each the principal justification for going to war.

The reports spared Bush and Blair personal responsibility, at least for now, although they stand accused by a large part of the public of having exaggerated their cases for a war it says had already been plotted in advance.

The US Senate committee will not address whether Bush manipulated the intelligence until after November's general elections.

But the British report left Blair off the hook.

Bush and Blair responded nearly in unison that despite the failures of their spymasters, the war was justified.

"I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all," Blair said Wednesday.

"The dictator in Iraq was a threat. He was a threat to us, he was a threat to the free world, he was a threat to the people in the neighborhood, and he was a threat to his own people," Bush said, also on Wednesday.

Despite the solidarity, the strategies and constraints of Downing Street and the White House are different on several points.

"Tony Blair accepted 'full personal responsibility' for 'the way the issue was presented and, therefore, for any errors made.' Mr. Bush, by contrast, took full personal irresponsibility," said columnist Maureen Dowd in Tuesday's New York Times.

"Bush and Blair are in a sense Siamese twins, but the circumstances they face and the choices they face are very different," said Simon Serfaty, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) a Washington think-tank.

"The public in each case reacts quite differently. In the United States, opinion is less excited than in Europe, even in Great Britain, over the fact that the mountains of weapons of mass destruction have not been found," he said.

Thomas Carothers, of the Carnegie Foundation, also said "President Bush still operates with still at least 50 percent of the American people basically supporting the idea of the war, whereas Tony Blair operates with 10 to 20 percent of British people sharing that view."

On the other hand, criticism of the CIA is more worrisome for Bush than those weaker criticism against Britain's MI6, according to several newspapers and US commentators.

CIA director George Tenet has resigned, officially for personal reasons. The new head of MI6, John Scarlett, was exonerated by the British report.

In the midst of the "war on terror," which Bush has tackled as his own, he finds on his hands a spy network shaken to its foundation, one worry the Blair government does not have.