Britain breaks rank

Tony Blair's Foreign Office has broken ranks with the White House with Foreign Minister Howell denouncing Israel's escalating military actions now that the IDF has moved forces into Lebanon. And with rhetoric sounding much like Bush's own, IDF chief of staff, Dan Halutz, claimed that the "military incursion" will be limited in nature -- hard to believe given the rather unlimited nature of the attacks so far -- but that this is being done for the usual reason: they're bad, we're good. Of course, the rhetoric is careful to announce that it is "terror" they fight, not actual people:

We will fight terror wherever it is, because if we do not fight it, it will fight us. If we don't reach it, it will reach us. We will also conduct limited ground operations as much as needed in order to harm the terror that harms us.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Peretz says that Israel will not hold territory. They are just going in to clean up the mess:

We have no intention of conquering and holding territory. We plan to clean a strip a mile from our border of Hizbollah bunkers and rocket-launching sites ... We will go in and then we will go out.

Which is a tad hard to believe considering that holding territory after military assaults is standard operating procedure for Israel.

It is hard to judge just how important Britain's discordant position will be regarded by the White House but knowing this White House, it probably won't be very much important at all. For the Bush administration, allies are only allies as long as they're doing what they're told.