More Speaks for Itself

This time from a Yahoo news story excerpting from a forthcoming biography of Tony Blair:

The extent of Mr Cheney’s opposition emerges in the biography of the British prime minister by Philip Stephens, the Financial Times’ political columnist.

In the run-up to the war, Mr Blair worked closely with Mr Bush to try to secure prior UN backing.

But Mr Stephens writes that Mr Cheney’s opposition to UN involvement left Mr Blair uncertain whether Mr Bush would go down the UN route until he uttered the relevant words in his speech to the UN general assembly in September 2002. One Blair aide remarked: “[Mr Cheney] waged a guerrilla war against the process . . . He’s a visceral unilateralist”. Another agreed: “Cheney fought it all the way – at every twist and turn, even after Bush’s speech to the UN.”

AB