In bed, no-one can hear you scream.

Can't get up? Wake up and find the Clocky

It looks annoying, like a furry swiss roll on wheels. Even its name is irritating: Clocky. But that's nothing compared with what it does. Clocky is surely the most infuriating wake-up call ever devised.

Dreamt up by a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it works like this: You hit the snooze button because you are desperate for a few more minutes' sleep. Clocky then rolls off the bedside table and wheels around the bedroom floor bumping into things, before settling on a place to hide.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Romero

24 March 2004 is the anniversary of the assassinaion of Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Goldámez archbishop of El Salvador. The day before, Romero said in his homily:

Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ... In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.

He was shot through the heart while celebrating mass the next day.

After his death the UN Truth Commission reported:

In November 1987, Amado Antonio Garay ...revealed that on 24 March 1980, Saravia had ordered him to drive a red Volkswagen to the Hospital . He had parked opposite the Chapel. His passenger, a bearded stranger, had ordered him to crouch down and pretend to be repairing something. He had heard a shot, turned around and seen the individual holding a gun with both hands pointing towards the right side of the rear right window of the vehicle. He had immediately smelt gunpowder and at that moment the bearded man had calmly told him: drive slowly, take it easy' and they [drove] off. Garay alleged that he had driven the individual to former Captain Saravia, to whom the stranger had said 'mission accomplished'. Three days later, Garay had driven Saravia to a house where former Major D'Aubuisson was and Saravia had said in front of D'Aubuisson: 'We've already done what we planned about killing Monsignor Arnulfo Romero'.

Findings: The Commission Finds the Following: 1. There is full evidence that [F]ormer Major Roberto D'Aubuisson gave the order to assassinate the Archbishop and gave precise instructions to members of his security service, acting as a 'death squad', to organize and supervise the assassination.

No-one was ever charged with the murder. The investigating magistrate fled the cuntry after death threats. d'Aubuisson's party, ARENA went on to dominate Salvadoran politics from 1989 to the present. El Salvador is a member of the coalition of the willing.

How to not support the troops

Leaving British troops open to war crimes prosecutions is perhaps not a brilliant way to support the troops, but that may be what the Blair government has gone. According to the Independnet:

Tony Blair is under mounting pressure to publish the Attorney General's advice on the legality of the Iraq war after the revelation that Lord Goldsmith changed his mind to back the invasion shortly before it began.

Mr Blair faced an angry backlash at Westminster as Labour MPs warned the Prime Minister his leadership was now threatening to damage the party's vote in the forthcoming general election. One Labour MP said some middle-class voters would not vote Labour again until Mr Blair stood down, because of anger over Iraq. The row over the Attorney General's advice now threatens to overshadow the election campaign.

The Independent has also learned the fresh revelations about the Attorney General's doubts over the legality of the Iraq war are being viewed with concern and consternation by senior military figures.

The controversy has been re-ignited after it was revealed the Government blanked out a damning paragraph from a resignation letter by Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned in protest at the war from her post as the deputy legal adviser at Foreign Office. The redacted two sentences, first revealed by Channel 4, said Lord Goldsmith had supported the view of her legal team that the war would be illegal without a second UN resolution, but changed his opinion 13 days before the attack.

The Guardian gives the text of the letter (suppressed paragraph in boldface):

Official version
1. I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second security council resolution to revive the authorisation given in SCR 678. I do not need to set out my reasoning; you are aware of it... I cannot in conscience go along with advice - within the office or to the public or parliament - which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law.

2. I therefore need to leave the office: my views on the legitimacy of the action in Iraq would not make it possible for me to continue my role as a deputy legal adviser or my work more generally. For example in the context of the international criminal court, negotiations on the crime of aggression begin again this year.

I am therefore discussing with Alan Charlton whether I may take approved early retirement.

In case that is not possible this letter should be taken as constituting notice of my resignation.

3. I joined the office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness.

What they cut out

My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of SCR [UN security council resolution] 1441, and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March.

(The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.)

Australia has signed and ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, so are troops are in the same boat. The Australian government has published its legal advice which is just about identical with the British legal opinion. I wonder if anyone in the Blair government made the Howard government aware their legal opinion was bogus? And I wonder if anyone in either government considered the legal limbo into which they were sending their troops?

opening up Parliament

Scuttle over to Newcopia for a blogfeed of the Australian parliamentary library's research and bill digest service.

climate change 8000 BP

How prehistoric farmers saved us from new Ice Age

Prehistoric farmers who slashed down trees and laid out the first rice paddies and wheatfields triggered major alterations to levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they say.

As a result, global temperatures - which were slowly falling around 8,000 years ago - began to rise. 'Current temperatures would be well on the way toward typical glacial temperatures, had it not been for the greenhouse gas contributions from early farming practices,' says Professor William Ruddiman of Virginia University.

The theory, based on studies of carbon dioxide and methane samples taken from Antarctic ice cores, is highly controversial - a point acknowledged by Ruddiman. 'Global warming sceptics could cite my work as evidence that human-generated greenhouse gases played a beneficial role for several thousand years by keeping the Earth's climate more hospitable than it would otherwise have been,' he states in the current issue of Scientific American.

'However, others might counter that, if so few humans with relatively primitive technologies were able to alter the course of climate so significantly, then we have reason to be concerned about the current rise of greenhouse gases to unparalleled concentrations at unprecedented rates.'

Elaborating on his theory, Ruddiman said: 'Rice paddies flooded by irrigation generate methane for the same reason that natural wetlands do - vegetation decomposes in the stagnant water. Methane is also released as farmers burn grasslands,' Ruddiman points out.

Similarly, the cutting down of forests had a major effect. 'Whether the fallen trees were burnt or left to rot, their carbon would soon have been oxidised and ended up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.'

Climate Change Killed Neandertals, Study Says

Both Neandertals and the first humans to reach Europe struggled with the changing conditions brought by increasingly cold temperatures, according to a study by 30 scientists.

The two species coexisted in Europe from roughly 45,000 to 28,000 years ago when the Neandertals died out. Why humans survived and the Neandertals didn't has puzzled archaeologists for over a century.

Theories have ranged from interspecies genocide to interbreeding to humans' superior communication skills, hunting technology, and social organization.

The new study—a seven-year effort that combined the work of 30 scientists from 11 nations—suggests, however, that the inability to adapt to climate change led to the Neandertals' demise.

"It's not that it got too cold for them; both humans and Neandertals had clothing such as fur mantles," said Jerry van Andel, a geologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who led the study.

Rather, researchers believe Neandertals failed to adapt their hunting methods when big game species like mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), bison (Bison bonasus), and red deer (Cervus elaphus) fled south and the once-forested landscape of Europe changed into a sparsely vegetated steppe and half desert during the last Ice Age.

Which just goes to show there are swings and roundabouts in every climatic change. I promise the Ruddiman study will get misreported as evidence that global warming does not mean we should do anything to mitigate its effects. I also promise the right lobe of the blogosphere will not draw the obvious linkage between their own refusal to adapt and the sad fate of our Neanderthal cousins.

talk about bred of an airy word...

Stolen bouncy castles could be heading for continent

Police are investigating the theft of 12 'bouncy castles' amid claims they were stolen as part of an illicit international trade in inflatable attractions.

The air-filled plastic structures commonly found at fairgrounds and children's parties belonged to party organiser Darren Latimer.

Mr Latimer, 31, said he believed professional thieves carried out the heist with a view to shipping the stolen goods abroad, and added it was a growing problem in the industry.

'It's an up and coming thing to have bouncy castles in places like Spain and South Africa,' he said. 'They don't have manufacturers there so it's more cost-effective to steal them and take them over.'

Some aspects of globalisation are just to scary to look at closely.

what a lot of cock

Pharyngula has a riveting article on Penis evolution. Delicate souls afflicted with castration anxiety should probably avoid looking at the graphic of transverse sections. At least it's less terrifying than the mythical vagina dentata.

birds of a feather

Females flown in to p-p-p-pick up 'gay' penguins

They are called Charley, Left-Arrow, Diagonal-Line and Six-Point. The four female penguins at Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany are at the centre of debate after being brought in to tempt 'gay' male penguins.

The zoo imported the penguins from Sweden last month after finding through DNA tests that three of their five existing pairs were all male.

The zoo had been mystified why its endangered Humboldt penguins had failed to breed, until they realised the males had paired off, the zoo's director Heike Kück said.

Last year, two of the male pairs spent months sitting on a stone instead of an egg.

But the zoo's decision to introduce females has sparked a furious response from gay and lesbian groups in Germany.

'All sorts of gay and lesbian associations have been emailing and calling in to protest,' a spokesman for Bremerhaven's Zoo on the Sea in north-western Germany said.

Ms Kück defended her decision to bring in the females, which, she said, had had little success in 'turning' the males.

'The central question is, are our penguins really gay or is it simply a lack of opportunity?' she told Der Spiegel. 'So far the males have scarcely thrown the females a single glance. The men have had the opportunity but haven't done it.

'If the penguins really are gay then obviously they can stay gay.'

A relieved world sighs with relief to learn that no member of the House of Windsor is involved in this unsuccessful arranged marriage.

reverberating Habib

Everybody knows that Australia is a close ally of the US and John Howard is a close personal friend of George Bush. That is horseshit of the first water. Neither the alliance nor the friendship stopped the US from deceiving our government and our government are so terrified of having the hollowness of the special relationship exposed they are ready to say and do almost anything in order to maintain the illusion.

Until today the government claimed they did not know if Habib had ever been in Egypt. the fact that he was delivered from US custody into some other mysterious place and then delivered from said mysterious custody back into US custody rather suggests the US government knew where Habib was all along. But not to the likes of Howard, Ruddock and Downer.

14/02/2005 Govt condemns torture

KERRY O'BRIEN: Is it equally believable that when Mr Habib disappeared from Pakistan, Australian officials involved at some stages in the interrogation process were left in the dark as to where he'd gone and couldn't find out, didn't know?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, we asked and we weren't informed.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Isn't that odd, for such a strong ally, that we would be treated with such contempt?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I simply make the point, in relation to this matter, we were seeking consular access in Pakistan. It was denied.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But your ASIO agents in Pakistan had access.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Yes, they did.

KERRY O'BRIEN: The person they had access to, an Australian citizen, a terrorist suspect, disappears. They ask where he's gone and they're not answered.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Yes, and we continued to press for that information, and when we surmised that he might have been taken to Egypt, because there were some suggestions around that that might have happened, we sought consular access at the highest level in Egypt and Egypt denied at all times that he was there.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And three years later, you still don't know where he was then, the Americans still won't tell you, the Egyptians still won't tell you, the Pakistanis won't tell you?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I'm simply saying, Kerry, to you, and I've said it in relation to questions put to me by others, that we sought consular access to him, as we would for any Australian, right through this period. We don't always get access, but we sought it and we continued to seek it. We were denied it in Egypt, we were denied it in Pakistan, we were allowed it at Guantanamo Bay.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Are you in a position to deny that the Americans involved with Mr Habib in Pakistan may have worked with Pakistan and the Egyptians to have Mamdouh Habib taken to Egypt for tough off the books interrogations where the niceties of human rights wouldn't have to be observed?

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I'm not able to make observations on matters that I have no personal knowledge, and I have no knowledge...

ASIO confirms Habib was held in Egypt

ASIO has now told the Senate estimates committee that ASIO knew Habib hd been sent to Egypt. I'll post an extract from the transcript when it becomes available.

Today the director-general of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, told a Senate estimates committee the intelligence organisation knew he was there.

"We established to our satisfaction he was definitely there in February of 2002," he said.

Mr Richardson also told the committee when ASIO first interviewed Mr Habib in Pakistan officers did not believe his claims of torture.

"It was dismissed because we had a fairly good idea of what he'd been up to," Mr Richardson said.

"He was actually with people in Afghanistan who have a history of murdering innocent civilians.

"We didn't consider they needed to be considered, nor investigated. We considered they were humbug and we believe they're humbug today if he was to raise them again."

Is the government now saying that ASIO knew but that (as usual) ASIO did not inform the government? This story is falling apart and it is time for a judicial inquiry with the right to compel evidence from ministers and their political apparatchiks.

don't read this post and definitely don't click this link

New Matilda subscription giveaway

I have a subscription to New Matilda worth $55 ($33 concession) to give away. In the absence of any brilliant ideas for entertaining competitions, I've decided to fall back on the trusty raffle.

You prolly wouldn't be able to read all the pleonastic words or want the prize anyway.

God save the Princess Consort

Charles, Prince of Wales, New South Wales, New Zealand, Canada, Belize, PNG, and a number of other unlikely places is going to make an honest woman of Mrs Parker-Bowles. The palace has announced she will be known as the Princess Consort when Charles becomes king. We won't move to a republic any faster and I refuse to get all hot, bothered and censorious about marriage styles of the rich, royal and famous.

Elsewhere, The Road to Surfdom displays a surprisingly wowserish approach to royal marriage and No Right Turn (correctly) couldn't give a rat's arse. For once, Tim is wrong.

Once upon a time Lord Clarendon's daughter Anne shocked her father and consigned him to political oblivion by marrying the future James II and VII and becoming a rock chopper. When the outraged father asked her how she could become a Papist she answered that she thought the lusts of Henry Tudor an unlikely vehicle for the intervention of the Holy Spirit.

Weirdly, the only woman to marry an heir to the British throne since the unfortunate Anne in 1637 was Diana. The vital historical questions remain on everyone's lips. What will His Excellency the Governor-General say? Why does the Church of Henry VIII oppose divorce? Will Camilla be the first Queen known as a Princess Consort? Will Murdoch get the exclusive rights?

detaining Vanstone

Inquiry into Rau detention planned

The federal government would hold an inquiry into the immigration detention of a mentally ill Australian woman for 10 months, Prime Minister John Howard said.

Cornelia Rau, a 39-year-old permanent resident who came to Australia when she was 18 months old, was released from South Australia's Baxter immigration centre on Friday.

Refugee advocates say Ms Rau was locked in solitary confinement for up to 20 hours a day for about two months.

Mr Howard said Ms Rau's detention was unsatisfactory.

The Man of Steel apparently thinks Immigration Minister Vanstone the best person to advise him on an inquiry into her own unsatisfactory performance.

Sadly, the one thing the inquiry will not address is what's wrong with the way Vanstone and her advisers run the detention camps. It's not all that hard to find out the facts about an Australian citizen. Immigration did not get it right for month after month. These are the same people who tell us they always get it right when they identify undocumented asylum seekers.

If they can't identify an Australian citizen on the missing persons list, what hope do they have with people with no documentation? It's established fact, beyond any doubt, that Cornelia Rau has a severe and long-standing mental illness. Immigration's doctors could not even find that.

Howard's inquiry is not going to question how immigration can detain an Australian citizen as an unlawful immigrant. That would be questioning Kafka. And the minister has no worries that she won't be detained in office.

verbaling Mamdouh Habib

Australian's Long Path in U.S. Antiterrorism Maze

According to Australian intelligence, he went to Afghanistan and entered Qaeda camps. He completed basic training and an advanced course, including surveillance of urban public buildings, a senior Australian official said.

A few days before Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Habib called his wife from Pakistan, Australian officials said this week. (Her phone was being monitored.) In the conversation, they said, Mr. Habib said something big was going to happen in America in the next few days.

But this phone call, which has not previously been reported, does not support the allegation that Mr. Habib had advance knowledge that planes were going to be flown into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, another Australian official cautioned. Just about everyone in Kandahar and the Qaeda camps knew that something big was coming, he said. 'There was a buzz.'

and:

American officials did not explain why they never brought charges. A Defense Department spokesman said of the release, 'This action allows our Australian allies to ensure that their citizens who previously engaged in or supported terrorist activities do not do so in the future.'

Australian officials declined to discuss what measures they were taking, beyond saying that Mr. Habib's passport would be revoked and that he would be closely monitored.

The circumstances of his release were uncertain until the last. On Wednesday, as Mr. Habib was preparing to leave Guantánamo, guards there terrified him by telling him he was being sent to Egypt, according to his lawyer. Mr. Habib had petitioned a federal judge to keep the United States from sending him back there. Not until Mr. Margulies arrived to accompany him to Australia did Mr. Habib know that he was indeed going home.

He arrived Friday afternoon.

'He's not in custody,' said the Australian attorney general, Philip Ruddock. 'He's at liberty.'

Attorney-General Ruddock has always contended that Habib is a terrorist. it's a new element to the story if the US was relying on Asutralia's intercept for evidence. If that evidence was not good enough for a military commission, where the prosecutor, not the commission, determines evidentiary questions, then it must be fairly slender evidence. If Ruddock was privy to that evidence then he has been consistently lying to parliament and people throughout the course of Habib's detention. It's what happens when you abandon ancient liberties in favour of silly laws justified by the supreme emergency idea. The US even kept Ruddock himself in the dark. When governments cock up in the dark, they tend not to want the lights on.

And there's one small footnote.

Freed Australian Returns From Guantanamo

The 48-year-old Egyptian-born former Sydney coffee shop owner wore an oversized white T-shirt shirt, rolled-up jeans and tennis shoes as he stepped down from a chartered Gulfstream G-550 jet with an American flag on its tail, walking behind his American lawyer Joe Margulies.

The CIA is reported to use a chartered Gulfstream to effect extraordinary renditions. Ruddock says Australia chartered this flight. Perhaps our great and powerful friends recommended the company. The charter company has a fairly dubious history. It looks like Habib may have flown home in the same plane the CIA used to move him to Egypt for torture.

Kim Beazley has a chance to start his long campaign of vigoorous opposition. The opposition and minor parties have a Senate majority until June.

If nominated I will not campaign, if elected I will not serve

I would like to join Tim Dunlop in announcing I will not run for the opposition leadership. Although the party is in a god-awful mess I have decided to do absolutely nothing to try and change that by questioning the approach of the present leadership. It is vital that everyone else not run for anything either so we can unite the party by talking about absolutely nothing. Ideally, no labor candidates should run for parliament at the next election to ensure there is no disunity when no-one gets elected. Audio of my press conference is available here.

quem di vult destruire dementant

Kevin Rudd has decided the best way to prove he has the courage to be opposition leader is to get off at Redfern. Jenny Macklin, despite her contribution to the Latham disaster will quietly continue to do whatever it is she's been doing since she became deputy leader. The factions and the fixers will congratulate themselves on how well they've handled the whole thing. About the only consolation is that it would be politically difficult for the Man of Steel to take advantage of his 67% approval and call an early election.

in the Ruddy light of a new day

At first, i was attracted to the idea of Beazley leading the ALP again. I think Latham fell without being pushed, and obviously his illness exacerbated his tendency to go it alone. Bringing the old warhorse back for a last run, and perhaps even a Howard-style resurrection, would be a great story. Sadly, events have destroyed that idea.

Beazley has vetoed the idea of Julia Gillard as deputy leader. jenny Macklin refuses to stand aside and Beazley has said he is very happy with her as deputy leader. Beazley is looking to the NSW machine for support. Crean refuses to go away and is up to his armpits in the campaign for the leadership. The reason we keep getting nothing campaigns and nothing platforms is the dominance of the party by its factions. The Democratic Audit of Australia has just released a detailed analysis of the way Australian parties operate. They find:

The Labor Party can claim that its formal structures and processes include powerful representative and responsible components. The Platform is written and amended by a Conference of delegates from the grass-roots organisation. The caucus, the cabinet and the leader are bound by the Conference and the Platform. Each level of the party is formally responsible to a wider sector of the party. In practice, however, three features question the efficacy of this. First, the union base has, for over a century, been able to dominate the numbers at the Conferences. Second, there has been some ‘seepage of authority’ to the top levels of the party. Third, the factions have become allpowerful.

That has to change and, despite Beazley's avowal that he's learnt his lessons, there's no sign he actually has. keeping Macklin and swanning around with the NSW Right and is not going to challenge factional dominance or get the ALP open to the force of ideas again. Rudd would be a better choice. And at least he can utter a sentence without 14 subclauses.

Meanwhile, the ALP rank and file, let alone the ALP's wider supporters in the electorate, are sick of the insider game. As we heard on the 7:30 report:

DR PETER BOTSMAN: No-one doubts Kim's abilities, but this is an insider fallacy, that all we need to do is have a one-horse race and everything's gonna be okay. The truth is that the rank and file are very angry when they hear people on the radio saying that it's just a matter of being, again, loyal to a leader. That's not what people want. People want to be able to participate in the Labor Party and know that their voices count. They want to be able to actually elect a leader themselves, and really, this should be the last time that Labor allows a caucus to simply elect a leader. It really should be a rank-and-file vote for a leader, and the new leader needs to be about advocating those kinds of changes in the party.

MAXINE McKEW: But as Kim Beazley said the other day, it's not a US-style primary system. In the meantime, we're stuck with the caucus system as it is; they elect the leader. Who is the most viable alternative, then, do you think, to Kim Beazley?

There's a better question then if this is a caucus election or a primary election. The question is what kind of eleciton should it be. Most progressive parties elect their leader by direct ballot, or by a wider electoral college. The caucus system has not produced a successful leader since Keating. That's getting to be a long time.

Labor needs a new deputy

We will probably never know why Latham chose not to issue a tsunami statement. Clearly the guy is gravely ill and perhaps that effected his judgement. Deputy Opposition Leader Jenny Macklin does not have the pancreatitis defence. US Vice-president Charles Dawes said his job was 'to look at newspapers every morning to see how the president's health is.'

A competent deputy would have been banging on Latham's door 24 hours or so after Latham looked like staying silent on the tsunami. Macklin didn't and the ALP should find a new deputy leader who will. The Beazley unity ticket looks inevitable. That does not mean Labor cannot or should not find a more energetic deputy. It would also be a fine chance to signal that the faction system is on the way out.

Andrew Bartlett's comments are worth reading.

PS Somehow I resisted the temptation to call this 'For the congaline is over...'

This is Tuesday, it must be Iran

The Coming Wars

George W. Bush's re-election was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities' strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control - against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism - during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as "facilitators" of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush's re-ection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America's support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon's civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone," the former high-level intelligence official told me. "Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah - we've got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."

Bush is on record as claiming the election ratified his Iraq policy:

"We had an accountability moment and that's called the 2004 elections," he told the Washington Post.

"The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq and they looked at the two candidates and chose me."

Meanwhile, This is Rumor Control scores 5 out of 10 for the rumour that:

Speechwriters for George Bush are aghast at the President's insistence that his inaugural address contain an explicit military pledge to strike Iran militarily unless they announce an end to their nuclear program.

Iran has around 3 times Iraq's population, and over 4 times Iraq's area. The terrain is more varied, including some of the highest mountain ranges in the region. Broadly the population is better educated and national unity is much greater. Iraq, while nowhere near a democracy, is not an eccentric personal dictatorship wrecked by 12 years of economic sanctions. The US cannot sustain its occupation of Iraq. How the hell can they think about taking on a nation at least 4 times stronger?

The inaugural should make interesting listening. So should the Man of Steel's reaction.

Gay bombs: US secret weapon plan OR Planet Pentagon Bombards Earth with Sex Rays!

Gay bombs: US secret weapon plan

A US plan to develop a bad breath bomb and a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other has been revealed in newly declassified documents.

New Scientist's web site reports that the documents show the Pentagon considered a range of non-lethal chemical weapons aimed at disrupting enemy discipline and morale.

Bush the Imperious meets Wang the Perverted! I doubt this project succeeded or the sex bomb would certainly be available at a number of outlets in Newtown. Presumably the projected weapon would have been carefully designed to ensure the enemy soldiers only developed ungovernable lust and not a desire to marry.

Update
A couple of people assumed I was making this up. That is untrue and here is the proof.

and the other Hickup

Excuses, excuses from a regime too ready to throw away the key

So what now for Hicks? According to the US Department of Defence website, he is one of four Guantanamo enemy combatants who have been charged. There are more than 500 detainees at the US base in Cuba. Most have been there almost three years, since the invasion of Afghanistan. The US military says a quarter are of 'intelligence value' and all remaining detainees are being 'reviewed' to see how dangerous a threat they really pose to the US. We know that close to 200 soon are to be released to their home countries.

The charges against Hicks are quite a way off from being 'tried' by a military commission. Hundreds of writs of habeas corpus are flying around the US court system. The US Supreme Court in June said the detainees do have access to the civil courts and now all eyes are on the case of Osama bin Laden's alleged chauffeur, Samil Ahmed Hamdan. The Bush Administration is appealing a decision of the US District Court last November that the prisoner was entitled to a hearing to determine whether he was a prisoner of war and therefore subject to the Geneva Convention, rather than the Gonzales/Bush convention.

Hicks's lawyers have made an identical application to that of Hamdan's. It is all heading to the US Supreme Court but it may take years to get there.

The Gonzales/Bush plan for the quick railroading of anyone rounded-up by their forces is coming unstuck, and like most else with that spooky regime, there is no fall-back plan.

Major Mori, Hicks' US military lawyer, has made the point that Hicks faces charges much less than anything alleged against Habib. Why then does he remain at Guantánamo facing a military commission? And how long before the Hicks case reaches a court and it, like Habib's, comes unstuck?