Anti American rhetoric

From a cabinet minister:

The decision to pull troops out of Iraq will be independent of the United States and based only on the "British national interest," the Foreign Secretary said today.

So we are going to make decisions without reference to our ally in this conflict? And that's supposed to be a good thing?

When considering the words of politicians you have to look for the effect they intend to produce rather than the words they actually use, and this is plainly an exercise in distancing the UK government from the USA.

The British government has been noticeably reticent when it comes to criticising Islamist maniacs, when they threaten the lives of artists, plan nuclear weapons and kidnap our sailors. The fact that anti-Americanism is thought to be the tactic most likely to succeed with the British public is sobering. We really are in a sort of timewarp back to mid 1930s.