'Business as usual', as mortar bomb marks Blair's visit to Green Zone

After a mortar dropped on the British embassy compound in Baghdad just before Tony Blair arrived yesterday, his spokesman said there was "nothing to suggest anything other than business as usual". That was accurate, but probably not in the way he intended.

Heavy mortars and rockets are being fired with increasing frequency into the Green Zone. American officials have to wear bullet-proof vests when they walk outside their embassy. One diplomat reportedly demanded blankets made from bullet-resistant Kevlar, so he could sleep more easily.

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So Mr Blair's bodyguards were entitled to be more than usually apprehensive as he paid one last "surprise" visit to Baghdad. Of course, he was not visiting the real Baghdad, the terrifying, war-ravaged city of six million people, but the small, heavily fortified Green Zone, where he received the usual optimistic briefings from Iraqi officials who know what he wants to hear and tailor their account of what is happening accordingly.

"Surprise" visits here are always manipulated to give a false appearance of normality, and never more than today. No warning sirens went off when a rocket detonated in the zone during Vice-President Dick Cheney's visit last week, presumably because his staff did not want the sound booming out of TV screens across America.

Iraq is surely where Mr Blair's style of politics - his tactic of never admitting error and blandly denying there is a crisis - ran into bloody, catastrophic reality.

His tune never changed: since no mistakes had been made, there was no need to devise new policies. Largely, he was simply endorsing US policies, determined by US domestic politics. Since 2003, Iraq has suffered a series of spurious turning points that have often deepened the crisis. But at no point has there been any sense from Mr Blair's speeches and statements that he knew much about what was happening in Iraq or the Middle East.

President George Bush may feel he has no choice but to press on, because to retreat would be too humiliating. But Mr Blair had that choice.

The British force in Basra, where he also dropped in, has long been peripheral to the politics of southern Iraq, where Shia militias are fighting for control. It could have been pulled out long ago.