The reason for the delay is it contained, or might have contained, british beef which was banned due to mad cow disease.  Officials were implementing, they thought, US policy.  It was a bureaucratic snafu, but frankly in the bureaucracy of the US government, getting it fixed in 5 days is almost a miracle.  It did piss the Brits off because they busted their butts to help.  But it was delivered, and it was not a political insult.  Now maybe you want to argue that other governments are not as bureaucratic as the US,,,,????  But I don't think these things rise to the level of insults.  If they do, I've been insulted by a number of European countries a lot of times.Refer to story in the London Times

The story was covered with much less accuracy and much more vehemence in the tabloids 1 1/2 weeks after the problem was fixed.  I posted on another site at that time:

While there is some truth in the Daily Mirror story, it is a recycled story written on September 19 that is at least 9 days out of date.  For those of you not familiar with the Daily Mirror, it is a British tabloid, and I'll let you go to their website for yourself and draw you own conclusions.    http://www.mirror.co.uk/
I'm not sure what stories will be highlighted when you look, but some of you may enjoy "Dad killed mum,,,,but I've forgiven him" and "Rick Parfitt: My big mistakes on booze..I ended up in bed with an electrician called Nigel and his wife"

I find the London Times to be a much better source of news, and it was the only other source I found with the story.  Here is the url to their article written September 10:

So if you want to chastise US bureaucracy on this kind of basis, be my guest.