In The Line Of Fire

Afghanistan was a good war for Tony Blair: a chance to shine on the world stage and remind voters at home, who have been crabbing about still-rotten hospitals and trains, of his decisiveness and capacity to lead. Now the task of standing shoulder to shoulder with George W. Bush risks turning Blair into a contortionist. As Bush marches with apparent enthusiasm toward a war with Iraq, the British public is grabbing Blair by the ankles and saying, "Slow down." A new MORI poll for TIME shows a sharp drop in public approval of Blair's handling of the response to Sept. 11, from 71% in November to 52% now. Only 34% of Britons think their government would be right to join the Americans in stepping up military action against Iraq; 56% think it would be wrong.

These are not the only signs to disturb the equanimity of those who work at 10 Downing St. Columnists are trumpeting their scorn for Blair as Bush's "lapdog" and for sacrificing Britain's standing in Europe. The TIME/MORI poll shows that while 52% of Britons think their government gives the U.S. about the right amount of support on international issues, 40% say it's too supportive. One hundred thirty-five M.P.s have put their names on a motion "that this House is aware of the deep unease among honourable Members on all sides of the House at the prospect that Her Majesty's Government might support United States military action against Iraq." Among them is a Labour former junior defense minister and other backbenchers beyond the usual clutch of antiwar activists. The negative mood is washing back on the government's Afghan policy too, evident in the agitation that greeted the announcement last week that 1,700 more Marines were being committed to the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.

Next week the Prime Minister flies to Texas for several days of talks at Bush's 650-hectare ranch in Crawford. Many sessions are expected to be one-on-one, including a dust-stirring tour lasting several hours. What to do about Saddam Hussein is the overwhelming topic. British and American officials wave off any thought that war is imminent. A Bush aide calls Crawford a "blue sky" meeting, that is, one for thinking big; a British official agrees that "this isn't a planning summit, it's an ideas summit."

Blair aides think a lot of the guff they're taking from critics stems from the misguided view, similar to what obtained after Sept. 11, that Bush is about to start a war half-cocked. He doesn't want to, and he can't. Fall or winter is the earliest all the troops, weapons and intelligence assets could be organized for a land campaign, officials say — let alone a coherent replacement regime to which defectors could be attracted. But the carefully orchestrated images of transatlantic solidarity being planned for the summit belie a huge asymmetry in the two leaders' freedom to maneuver. In mid-March, Americans gave their President a 75% approval rating, according to a Time/cnn poll, and 70% said the U.S. should use military force to remove Saddam Hussein. Not only does Bush command the huge forces of the globe's only super-power, but Americans have given him a blank check to use them. Blair has now committed some 6,000 troops to Afghanistan, an important political marker before the summit. He nevertheless remains a junior partner whose public is a drag anchor.

Yet Blair is determined to keep up with the leader of the free world — and convinced he can pull it off. Call it the Great Pivot. Blair is about to start a major p.r. campaign. He aims to turn his public — and, he hopes, skeptics in Europe and the Middle East too — from focusing on the defeat of al-Qaeda to an entirely different threat not directly linked to Sept. 11: Saddam's programs to build chemical, biological and especially nuclear weapons.

The first salvo in this war for hearts and minds will come before Blair's plane takes off for Texas, when the British government will issue a detailed dossier about Saddam's secret weapons programs. A draft is now circulating in Whitehall. There is internal debate about how much secret intelligence to divulge, but the document will emphasize how persistently Saddam has tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction (wmds), nuclear bombs in particular. "It's very good," says one official who has seen it.

It had better be. It will be a daunting task to shift public opinion, in Britain and elsewhere, to agree that Saddam's pursuit of wmds justifies war in the near future. After all, ask critics, hasn't he been seeking them for two decades? Why should we fight now? Is it just a desire by George Bush to finish what his daddy failed to, and by Blair to bear any burden necessary to snuggle with Uncle Sam? If Saddam does get these weapons, won't he be deterred from using them by fear of retaliation that would annihilate his country? Officials think they have serious answers to all those questions, but that people are now too somnolent to pay attention — "They have stopped thinking about it for some time," says one British official.