For three hundred years the relationship between the USA and Britain has been almost schizophrenic. On one side a grudging admiration for what our colonial cousins have achieved since the Mayflower docked at Plymouth. On the other, derision at the complete lack of any sense of the world west of Los Angeles and east of Boston.

We stood in awe when you landed on the moon - that did really happen, didn't it? We gasped at your courage when you had the guts to elect a B movie actor as your President. We laughed when your tourists told us off for building Windsor Castle under the flight path of London Heathrow Airport; it must be so noisy for Her Majesty, even with all that mediaeval double glazing. We even chuckled when you called us from California and wondered why we sounded so sleepy when it was only 3pm in Los Angeles.

But even with three centuries of such ambivalence we have nevertheless enjoyed a so called special relationship with America, trotting along behind the stars and stripes, supporting you in various conflicts around the world. Our respective leaders swearing life long friendship with each other, waving merrily to the cameras before popping into 10 Downing Street for a cup of English tea, or going for a chummy walk in the wild woods of Camp David. Mrs Thatcher even removed the brick from her handbag before she dropped in on President Reagan at the White House.

But recently it has all gone pear shaped, the sparkle has gone out of US/UK relations, and we are now witnessing the slow destruction of our government because Prime Minister Blair didn't recognise the difference between liberation and ego. When President Bush said that Saddam Hussein was all ready to launch weapons of mass destruction, even though there was no solid evidence to support it, Mr Blair did not look up the history books and wonder if Bush Junior was merely trying to finish off what Bush Senior had started. Mr Blair did not check out the petrochemical interests that supported the Bush campaign and wonder if oil had anything to do with the rhetoric that was pumping out of Washington.

Nobody in the UK government took an objective look at the world and wondered why the Bush administration was not aiming its apparently moral stance, and alleged global concern, at other higher priority regimes that were killing and torturing far more of their people than Hussein - Burma and the Congo being two cases in point. Why was Washington pussy footing around North Korea whose weapons of mass destruction actually do exist and will be used in a tight spot?

Also, did nobody explain to President Bush that his administration's pro Israel stance - and you can argue if this is really the case, but the Arabs see it that way - will only serve to make his forces' presence in Iraq like a red Christian rag to the Islamic bull. Except that in the Middle East there are millions of bulls all ready to die in the ring until they have finally defeated the matador. A recent news report from Saudi Arabia claimed that around three thousand Arabs are unaccounted for and are presumed to have gone across the Iraqi border to fight the western devil. Did Washington seriously think that the locals would throng the streets, waving miniature stars and stripes to welcome their liberators like some 1950s war movie, and Hussein's supporters merely roll over to have their defeated tummies tickled?

Because of such unbelievable naivety we now have a situation where Iraq is slowly going out of control, allied troops are being attacked or killed every day, essential infrastructure is being blown up, and Islamic reinforcements are apparently moving into Iraq to make it the last and ultimate battleground against the imperialist American. On top of that the American economy is accumulating a budget deficit of historic proportions - even higher than during Bush Senior's reign - and the normally Republican south is rumoured to be having second thoughts because of increasing unemployment.
 
So how does this affect our special relationship with the USA? Well, given the generally negative coverage that the Iraq situation is receiving here in Britain, the imminent destruction of our government, and the black eye that our beloved BBC has received in the fall out I would say 'what special relationship?'.