"Not avoiding failure"

What was Tony Blair -- supposedly, the adult in the relationship -- thinking?

"I think there is a real risk that the administration underestimates the difficulties," David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote to the prime minister on March 14, 2002, after he returned from meetings with Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, and her staff. "They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean they will necessarily avoid it."

A U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of the events said the concerns raised by British officials "played a useful role."

"Were they paid a tremendous amount of heed?" said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I think it's hard to say they were."

Perhaps Blair was not the adult his eloquence would have us believe he was. Perhaps this grand desert romance in Iraq was as beguiling to him as it was to Bush.