The George W. and Laura Bush EU farewell tour continued yesterday in the UK. After tea with Her Majesty at Windsor Castle, it was time for a lavish dinner with Gordon Brown at Number 10 Downing Street where the main topic was please, don’t pull your troops out of Iraq before my term ends. Prime Minister Brown, facing a Labour Party crisis of confidence and recent historic local election losses, including the Mayoral race in London, is on record for a year-end withdrawal for Britain’s remaining 4,500 troops.

That would seem bad enough news for still President Bush. That is until apologist and former Speaker of the then Republican controlled US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, weighed in on Friday’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision to reinstate habeas corpus for Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Mr. Brown is under intense scrutiny and attack for suspending those same rights in the UK by pushing through a 9-vote decision (with 600+ votes cast) extending the amount of time terror suspects can be held for questioning to 42-days. Gingrich said the Court over-stepped its boundaries (by enforcing the Constitution?) with a swipe at Barack Obama’s support of the decision saying “this could cost us a city.”

Wow.

So if terrorists blow up a US city with what he can only have presumed to have meant was a nuclear device, nothing from the Republican’s control of Congress and the war is their fault? Indeed, he wishes us to believe that one can only blame Senator Obama because he applauded a decision by the courts to follow the US Constitution?

We have fallen down the rabbit hole.

The President’s behaviour on this trip can only be described as sophomoric, petulant and bizarre. Aside from a blind spot and hubris the size of Texas, he sees no mistakes made in the run-up to the war and cannot understand why thousands of protestors amassed throughout London to remind him of his role in making the world less safe. Kept at a distance, the W Teflon coated remained undisturbed with nothing uncomfortable penetrating it.

This UK visit, I wonder if Air Force 1 pulled up to and used Terminal 5, is on the way home after yet another series of uneventful G-8 meetings where most leaders now ignore him like the geeky kid in high school. Our leaders and local reporters listened politely, in awe of his lack of depth, have no clue what he just said and move along because graduation is close by.

W had a pity private meeting with His Holiness Pope Benedict in Vatican City. The Pope was a recipient of W’s praise during his US tour, (“awesome speech your worship”) in the US and so he felt the need to do something foe W not on the public tour. So it was high praise indeed when he and W met in the private papal gardens not seen by an American since Michael Corleone’s near diabetic coma in The Godfather Part Three. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions there.

After earlier groping the shoulders of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she looked on edge for the rest of the summit meeting. Mr. President, American locker room humour towards female heads of state does not play well in the EU. That was sexual harassment. Were you not a head of state the security team would have tackled you.

So the irrelevancy tour continues with 218 days until regime change in the US. Just keep his damned fingers off the button with Iran.