Mugabe wants 'bridges' with Britain

You have to wonder if Robert Mugabe is really mellowing out or if he is finally starting to feel the heat. You'd think he'd be in good spirits considering the fratricide tearing apart the main opposition party, MDC.

So I was surprised when Zimbabwe's famously intransigent dictator recently building bridges between his country and Tony Blair's United Kingdom. The British prime minister has been Mugabe's primary scapegoat for most of Zimbabwe's ills, even the bad weather. Zimbabwe's thug-in-chief has referred to the British prime minister variously as 'unholy,. a terrorist, a 'liar' and compared him to Hitler and Mussolini.

(Of course, Mugabe also called Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu 'evil', not that anyone took him seriously before that tirade anyway.)

I'm sure it's nothing more than a ploy for the Mugabe, who's disgraced internationally even if he's still somewhat revered in parts of Africa, to attempt to regain some semblance of the moral high ground. Or maybe with the domestic opposition split, he feels comfortable enough to ask for international help to revive the economy that he and his cronies have destroyed. I suspect that's where he's headed.