Thinktank reax to UK media reports that Blair is to announce Iraq pullout timetable

(21 Feb 2007)
1. Mid of Director of the Middle East Programme at Washington DC's Centre for Strategic International Studies Jon Alterman walking down hallway in front of elevators
2. Mid of Alterman in studio
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Programme, Centre for Strategic International Studies:
"The coalition has been withering for a long time and I think this gives lie to the fact that this really has become an American war. It's an American presence, in fact, in an Iraqi civil war, and that's one of the reasons why the British are desperate to get out. They're feeling is partly, they're responsible for Basra, Basra is much more stable than Baghdad where the American troops are. They're feeling also is that you can't win a civil war and you certainly can't win a civil war as an outsider."
4. Mid of Alterman in studio
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Programme, Centre for Strategic and International Studies:
"There's a way in which Tony Blair risked his career for his friendship on George Bush and then he lost it. He was a tremendously powerful British politician but he said ' There's no powerful Britain unless we're at the side of the United States', and it's a very risky move which many many Britons rejected. He said ' I have to stand with George Bush', and that decision has looked worse and worse and worse, his political reputation in Britain is looking worse and worse and worse and his legacy has been tarnished in British eyes by his being much too close to the Americans and that having nearly enough impact making the points he thought were important to make on Americans."
6. Mid of Alterman in studio
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jon Alterman, Director - Middle East Program - Center for Strategic and International Studies:
"It affects the Maliki government because the Maliki government, as a Shia-led government, is so tied to what's happening in the south. It has, therefore, a real symbolic effect, that the world is not standing with them, that the world is not standing resolute. That people are giving up hope that Nouri al-Maliki can ever be the prime minister of all Iraq. He can be the prime minister of the Shia, but he can't be the prime minister of all the country. I think this is one of a number of blows that must hit him hard. I'm sure another part of it is immediately after he calls the American troop surge a dazzling success, after a couple days of decreased violence, suddenly the violence goes right back up and he looks like somebody again who can't control the country."
8. Wide of Alterman in studio
STORYLINE:
Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Programme and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic International Studies in Washington, DC, commented on Tuesday on a report by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) that British Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce a timetable for British troops' withdrawal from Iraq.
Alterman said the Iraqi war has now become an American war.
"The coalition has been withering for a long time and I think this gives lie to the fact that this really has become an American war. It's an American presence, in fact, in an Iraqi civil war, and that's one of the reasons why the British are desperate to get out," he said.
He also commented on how the Iraqi war has influenced Tony Blair's political figure and legacy.
"He was a tremendously powerful British politician but he said ' There's no powerful Britain unless we're at the side of the United States', and it's a very risky move which many many Britons rejected, Alterman said.

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