George Bush and Tony Blair were defiant to the last over a war that sank their political fortunes, as they staged a White House swansong for their tumultuous double-act.
WASHINGTON: Their partnership came together over toothpaste and will end with a bad taste in the mouth for legions around the world who decry their war in Iraq as a catastrophic failure.
But US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were defiant to the last over a war that sank their political fortunes, as they staged a White House swansong for their tumultuous double-act on Thursday.
Heaping fulsome praise on each other, the two leaders said history would be the judge of their decision to invade Iraq in search of elusive weapons of mass destruction and to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
"Will I miss working with Tony Blair? You bet I will," Bush said after Blair's last visit to the White House before he resigns on June 27.
Blair said that Britain under his successor, Treasury chief Gordon Brown, would remain 'a staunch and steadfast ally' of the United States 'in the fight against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.'
Turning to Bush, he said, "You have been a strong leader at a time when the world needed strong leadership."
But if Blair kept close to Bush to retain a seat at the decision-making table, he failed to get a great deal in return on signature issues like Middle East peace and climate change, critics argue.
It had seemed an unlikely partnership given the two leaders' diverging politics and personalities, especially as Blair had built up such a rapport with Bush's Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton.
They discovered, however, a shared zeal for remodeling the world, fired in Blair's case by a philosophy of 'liberal interventionism' forged in Kosovo and then Sierra Leone.
The 'neoconservatives' in Bush's administration meanwhile champed at the bit to take on Saddam and, they said, refashion the Middle East into a bastion of democracy.
Both leaders also had convictions rooted in their Christian faith, although Blair bridled at the suggestion that they prayed together to find common guidance from God.
"The rap on Blair was that he was Bill Clinton's best friend," said Ari Fleischer, Bush's first White House press secretary.
"Who would have guessed that a conservative like George Bush and a Labour liberal like Tony Blair would have such a similar world view?"
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