Blair: Troops to Stay

There's one man on this planet who has big steel nuts matching those carried around by President Bush: his name is Tony Blair.

BRIGHTON, England — Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday he had not expected the ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq, but he insisted British troops would stay as long as the Iraqi government needed them.

As Blair's governing Labor Party gathered for its annual conference, the prime minister said he had not set a deadline for withdrawing some 8,500 British soldiers from Iraq.

"There is no arbitrary date being set," he said, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Defense Secretary John Reid said British troops could begin handing over their responsibilities to Iraqi soldiers and police next year.

Blair also insisted that two British soldiers rescued from an Iraqi jail last week would not be handed over to Iraqi authorities.

The two soldiers, operating undercover, were arrested Monday in southern Iraq after allegedly shooting two Iraqi policemen who tried to detain them. A British armored patrol surrounded the jail in Basra where the two were held and crashed through the prison walls to rescue them.

As far as Brits go, other than Doug the Embalmer, Tony Blair is the friggin' man. Kudos to him for having a backbone and cast iron balls.