Newsweek Interview: Rupert Murdoch, Chief of Australia's News Corp.

        Bush is Right On Iraq and 'Can't Back Down Now,' Says Murdoch

      British P.M. Blair has Shown 'Great Guts' with Middle East Stance;
              He's Being 'Extraordinarily Courageous And Strong'

    NEW YORK, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Media magnate Rubert Murdoch, in an
interview with Newsweek's Australian partner, The Bulletin, says he thinks
President Bush is right on the Iraq issue. "We can't back down now," he says.
"I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going
to go on with it. The fact is, a lot of the world can't accept the idea that
America is the one superpower in the world."
    (Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030209/NYSU005 )
    Murdoch, the conservative chief of Australia's News Corp., believes the
Iraq situation will make or break the Bush presidency. "He will either go down
in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn. I'm optimistic
it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1," Murdoch says in the interview
appearing in the February 17 issue of Newsweek International (on newsstands
Monday, February 10). Murdoch adds that "Bush has surprised everyone. Even his
opponents have a great deal more respect for him than they did when he was
elected. One senses he is a man of great character and deep humility."
    Murdoch also offered praise for British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "I
think Tony is being extraordinarily courageous and strong on what his stance
is in the Middle East. It's not easy to do that living in a party which is
largely composed of people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort
of pacifist," he says. "But he has shown great guts, as he did, I think, in
Kosovo and over various problems in the old Yugoslavia."
    Murdoch acknowledged that his Fleet Street newspaper The Sun has been
consistently against Blair "on the euro and most European matters." But he
says, "We are more against [British Chancellor of the Exchequer] Gordon Brown
than we are against Tony Blair, and Gordon is, if anything, more of a friend.
I admire him as a person. But his insistence that only the government can
provide health services and education and just locking out the private sector
is really a huge mistake. No one government, one cabinet or one person can run
a health service with over 1 million employees. It's just impossible."

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SOURCE  Newsweek