Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, who shot into limelight during the post 9/11, has said that President Bush and India’s Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh did not invent the Indo-American alliance; they discovered it. He was commenting on the historical juncture in bilateral relations.

War in Iraq and the US:
Giuliani believes that the goal of the Iraq war — having a responsible government that would not be reliant on outside powers — is correct, although he admits that the execution of US plans has been harder than had been expected. He argues that sometimes painful actions have to be taken to ensure positive results in the long term, and added that it was no mean achievement that Iraq had reached the stage where the Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds could sit on one table to negotiate.

On the other hand, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the US President Bush’s staunchest ally on the Iraq war has finally conceded the ‘three-year-old invasion of Iraq’ as a ‘disaster’. Though Blair did not himself used the word ‘disaster’, he agreed to a question by Sir David Frost, the languid British frontman of the Al Jazeera English channel. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera has long been accused of a decidedly anti-American agenda. Sir David had asked Blair,” Do you agree western intervention in Iraq had so far been pretty much of a disaster”. The answer from Blair was “It has”. Sir David enjoys the distinction of eliciting startling confessions from President Nixon, among others, over the years.