Oh, Britain...

Britain is like that relative that so many people have, who you by and large adore, and they're cool and cultured and sophisticated and different enough from your immediate family to totally rock - but every so often they go ahead and do something that makes you go "Britain - dude, what?"

Or (very possibly) that's just me.

Anyway - Blair's announced that they're going to start pulling British troops out of Iraq, hoping to have them all back home by October. Apparently, Denmark is also withdrawing their troops (Denmark has, uh, soldiers? Huh.) at the same time. This is good. Blair's finally admitting that maybe he sort of screwed this one up and it wasn't the best idea. Great. Better to show up late to the party than not at all, right? I'm pretty excited about this.

Then, what should greet me on the BBC News homepage this morning but this? "Entirely unimportant rich white boy to go to Iraq".

I'm very curious about the timing of this announcement. "Yes, we're going to withdraw our troops because this war is stupid and pointless and an astonishingly bad idea that's just not working for us. But - wait! America! Look! We're sending some of our favorite gossip fodder! So even if you guys screw up and bomb us again and end up killing him, we'll still benefit because by god our newspapers love that type of thing!"

Or, if I want to be optimistic about it, maybe it's part of Blair's Cunning Plan to do away with such a stupidly archaic system as monarchy. I can dream, can't I?