The picture to the left is that of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, gesturing his feelings to George Bush after the recent ass stomping that Berlusconi's Center-Right coalition received at the polls. He has been a steadfast backer of the Bush administration's excellent Iraqi adventure, however, with the deaths of several Italian troops, and the recent dustup over Giuliana Sgrena's "rescue", Berlusconi couldn't even pull it out of the fire with a last minute pledge to begin withdrawing Italian troops from the quagmire.Just to give you an idea of how thorough an asswhipping his coalition received, the Center-Right lost 11 of 13 regional governments in voting this past week.
Speaking of elections, Tony Blair is about to experience his first true referendum of support on May 5th. While his Labour party took a local trouncing in earlier elections, the upcoming vote will be for bigger marbles - seats in Parliament. And, at least one Labour party candidate is even switching parties to the Liberal Democrats because of opposition to Blair's policies:
...Embarrassingly, one of the ruling Labour party's candidates, Stephen Wilkinson, said on Tuesday he was defecting to the Liberal Democrats, the only major British party to oppose the Iraq war.
"Who would have thought a Labour government would become a lap dog to George Bush's right wing Republican administration," Wilkinson said...
And lastly, in case you missed it, newly elected Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko was in Washington yesterday, meeting with Maximum Leader. Yushchenko was elected, in part, on a pledge to get Ukraine out of Iraq. Maximum Leader's response yesterday?
The two leaders stepped quickly past the most visible irritant in their new friendship. Yushchenko is withdrawing Ukraine's troops from Iraq, a campaign promise that acknowledges the deep unpopularity of the Iraq deployment among Ukrainians.
"He's fulfilling a campaign pledge. I fully understand that," Bush said.
Yeah. Right, Mr. President.
See photo, above.
