Almost all of them reaped their whirlwind. The first to take the hit was Spain's Jose Maria Azner, who joined the fray in Iraq in the face of over-whelming popular opposition. He also made the cardinal mistake of attempting to blame Basque separatists after Muslim terrorists wreaked havoc in Madrid, presumably in retaliation to Azner's pro-American stance over Iraq. He was out on his posterior within days.

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi was the next to go. He had much to answer for, besides his unstinting moral support for the US aggression in the name of "war on terror." Meanwhile, the prime mover behind the Iraq catastrophe, George Bush, has already seen his popular approval eventually plummeting from 90 percent to as low as 30 percent .

Unfortunately, he is going to be around American necks like an albatross for another 20 months, given that the congressional Democrats have neither numbers nor the inclination to impeach him. But his war wagon has lost its crucial wheels, including Collin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and, not the least, Paul Wolfowitz whose failures at the Pentagon were rewarded with the coveted post of World Bank president.

It's another thing that he forfeited the post following a sleazy scandal. Australia's John Howard has incurred almost no damage as a consequence of his blindly following the US into Iraq, perhaps because of his country's miniscule involvement. But, according to physiologists, he has the least chance of being reelected when Australia goes to the polls at the end of the year.

And then there's Tony Blair -- widely known as Bush's poodle. The British prime minister recently fixed a date for his departure at long last. That auspicious day -- June 27 -- ` is still weeks away for impatient Britons disgusted with Blair's Iraq policy. Among the multitude who want Blair to quit earlier, the majority attribute their attitude to their prime minister's obsequious role as Bush's cheerleader-in-chief.

Yet, the primary cause of Blair's undoing is -- as Professor Avi Shlaim, a noted Israeli historian wrote in the Guardian recently -- "He has the worst record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century." But that is not the only reason why the end of Blair's tenure is looked upon as an unequivocally welcome prospect.

In spite of Blair having an impressive number of conservative and neo-conservative fans, a number of liberal commentators on both sides of the Atlantic lamented the fact that the Iraq "mistake" will overshadow other aspects of Blair's legacy which were truly remarkable, and would make any leader proud.

Blair can be rightly proud of his record of winning three decisive electoral victories since 1997, and for giving the country the best economic years since the war. He redefined the Labour Party's philosophy, to make it friendlier for market economy and globalisation, while claiming that the party wouldn't lose its socialistic underpinnings. Sadly for Blair, according to the same commentators, it will not be Blair's economic achievements but his political mistakes (Iraq included) that will come to define his leadership.

In announcing his resignation in Mid May, he once again tried to justify some of his political decisions that were widely condemned. In doing so, he went on excruciatingly to describe Britain as the "greatest nation on earth."

As a much more distinguished Englishman pointed out more than two centuries ago, "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," obviously few were impressed by Blair's patriotic outburst. More so because he offered no apology for the plethora of half-truths and lies that he and his colleagues resorted to, to make the case for the Iraq war.

Blair's mendacity does not appear to have deterred "liberal" admirers who simply gloss over the Iraq mistake to designate Blair 'a good man and "a great politician," responsible for establishing a new political system. While this may be a reference to "new" or "liberal Labour -- they are hailing a system in which it is increasingly difficult to differentiate Labour ideals from Tory fantasies. They are at odds with Simon Jenkins who pertinently pointed out in the Guardian last month that "Blairism," as such, did not exist and never had. It was all froth and miasma.

In fact, neither Blair nor Gordon, his successor-to-be, possessed a guiding light. If they had any, it was Thatcherism. As a matter of fact, Blair's term in Downing Street has been the continuance of an ideological narrative that began in 1979, not 1997 when Tony Blair became prime minister.

E J Dionne, writing in the Washington Post, rightly confessed to "a deep sadness that (Blair) tarnished a formidable legacy by adapting himself to the third way," a euphemism for ditching social democracy. Blair's advent as Labour leader accentuated a rightward drift that dated back to the electoral debacle of 1983. The crucial elements of the party hierarchy then pinned their hopes on the right-ward swing as the only realistic route to power.

The fresh-faced and remarkably young new leader of the Labour Party was indeed seen as an asset for the party after Neil Kinnock lost his way and John Smith died prematurely. Once his true intention and predilection became clear a new nickname was coined for him: Tory Blair. And he led his party into the1997 election, armed with endorsements from Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch. Labour won by a landslide. But, unfortunately, after the Conservative rout at the end of its uninterrupted 18 years in power, it offered more of continuity than change.

Then came nine-eleven. And Iraq. The latter hasn't overshadowed Blair's achievement as it has eclipsed his other follies and failures. Blair's public endorsement of the pact between Bush and Sharon, that confirmed the permanence of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, is the most egregious British betrayal of Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

The last straw for many Labour MPs and ministers came last year when the prime minister refused to call for the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, lest it be construed as a disloyalty to White House. That, and many other ignominies of his prime ministership, finally portended the beginning of his end.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.