JUST AS TONY WAS FOLLOWING MAGGIE:

Dave's small war is a tribute to his hero Tony (Gerald Warner, 3/20/11, The Scotsman)

ALL they are saying is give war a chance. Ticking another box on the Things To Do list, the Heir of Blair last week managed to initiate a war he could call his own.

True, Dave inherited the Afghanistan debacle, but that was a hand-me-down conflict originally the property of his hero Tony. What Dave wanted was a piece of action of which he could take personal ownership; nothing too bloody, nothing too protracted and certainly nothing too expensive - ideally, a wee pretendy war to boost his status.

Libya looked like the answer (as Iraq did to the Great Charlatan). In view of Britain's diminished military capability, Dave could only wage war as part of a consortium. Since the term "war" alarms the masses, the euphemism "no-fly zone" was employed. It was also imperative to accelerate the opening of hostilities before the last British warplanes were consigned to the crusher by an economising Treasury. Fortunately, other beleaguered comic singers such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Don Giovanni Berlusconi were game to buy into a time-share conflict under the auspices of the United Nations, that robust champion of human rights, whose Security Council speedily endorsed the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya.

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