RAI state television will host the debate at 9:15 p.m. (1915 GMT).

The watchdog said it had served TG4, run by Berlusconi's friend Emilio Fede, with the maximum possible sanction because it had continued to fail to share airtime equally between Berlusconi and his rivals even after a fine for bias a week ago.

Newscaster Fede, one of the most familiar faces on Italian television, is an unabashed cheerleader for Italy's richest man, saying recently he loved the prime minister "like a brother."

"The privileged support that TG4 constantly offers its publisher, the prime minister, shows its allergy to the idea of a conflict of interest," said Enzo Carra, television spokesman for the opposition leftist Daisy Party.

Mediaset, which is 38 percent controlled by Berlusconi through a family holding company, was not immediately available for comment but has said it thought its previous fines -- totaling 300,000 euros for two programs -- were unjustified.

Berlusconi's control of the media -- he directly or indirectly controls 85 percent of Italian TV -- has dominated election debate with the tycoon denying accusations of a conflict between his political office and business interests.

Berlusconi, whose empire spans TV and radio to magazines, books, advertising, movies and football, bombarded Italians with television appearances in the campaign's first five weeks before stricter election laws governing media coverage began.

He has since complained of unfair treatment and argued that not being given all the air time he needed to answer questions made him unexpectedly lose his first TV debate against Prodi on March 14.

But data published in Corriere della Sera newspaper showed Mediaset channels gave Berlusconi total airtime of 10 hours, 21 minutes and 4 seconds from January 1 to March 15, compared with 1 hour, 35 minutes and 21 seconds for Prodi, who has said he is not keen on TV appearances.

The picture was little different at RAI state TV, which Berlusconi indirectly controls as head of government.

Chairman Claudio Petruccioli said last week Berlusconi's center-right coalition had gained nearly twice as much news coverage on RAI as the opposition during the election period.

The specter of a U.S. nuclear first strike even resurfaced this month. An article in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the United States could hit Russia and China without serious risk of retaliation. That sent heads spinning here with visions of Dr. Strangelove.

"The publication of these ideas in a respectable American journal has had an explosive effect," former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar wrote in an article in London's Financial Times newspaper. "Even those Russian journalists and analysts who are not prone to hysteria or anti-Americanism took it as an outline of the official position of the U.S. Administration."

"Today, it's accepted by most of the establishment that we are under pressure, that we are being surrounded, and it's leading to a defensive nationalist vision," said Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of the United States and Canada in Moscow.

Intensifying U.S. criticism -- that Russia is rolling back democratic institutions, interfering in the countries of the former Soviet Union and using its vast energy resources to further its interests -- is leading to widespread resentment here and seen as little more than self-serving rhetoric. Russians widely believe that U.S. programs to promote democracy in Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus are a Trojan horse intended to sideline Russia and expand NATO.

Academics point to reports such as one released recently by the Council on Foreign Relations: "To ease Russian pressure on neighboring states," it said, "the United States should work to accelerate those states' integration into the West."

"We are gradually being pushed to the northeast of the Eurasian continent away from the seas . . . to the place where the depths of freezing is more than two meters," said Natalia Narochnitskaya, vice chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, and a member of the nationalist Rodina Party.

She rues the loss of the three Baltic states to European Union and NATO membership and the possible loss of Russia's naval presence on the Black Sea.

"The messianism of American foreign policy is a remarkable thing," she said. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks, Narochnitskaya said, "it seems like Khrushchev reporting to the party congress: 'The whole world is marching triumphantly toward democracy but some rogue states prefer to stay aside from that road, etc. etc.' "

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks appeared to put U.S.-Russian relations on a new and remarkable footing. President Vladimir Putin facilitated the stationing of American troops in Central Asia to support military operations in Afghanistan. In 2002, Putin, still regarded as a reformer, was offered a year-long chairmanship of the Group of Eight leading industrial democracies.

Today, some public figures in the United States, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have suggested that President Bush boycott the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg this summer to register dismay at Russia's foreign policy and its internal direction.

Many U.S. officials hold up the administration of President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s as imperfect but headed in the right direction; people here say those years were simply chaotic.

"For a person of democratic and liberal persuasions, I can say that Russia has never been freer or more affluent," said Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. "Putin inherited a non-state, so he first wants to build a state and create the conditions for modernization and democracy. Do I worry about some domestic developments? Of course. I could be more critical than most Americans. But it's like blaming winter for following autumn."

In Moscow, strains in the relationship are viewed more as a result of the United States' inability to accept the fact that Russia is no longer the servile entity of the 1990s -- when it blustered but, in the end, always caved because it was weak.

"We have safeguarded and will safeguard our national interests," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters last week. "If someone dislikes this, this is not our problem."

On certain issues, such as the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, Russian officials say they will work with the West, but on their own terms. There is, for instance, broad agreement with the United States that Iran should not acquire nuclear weapons, but little consensus on what steps to take to prevent that from happening. Russia is opposed to imposing sanctions on Iran, with which it has strong economic ties.

But in the area known as Russia's "near-abroad," the former Soviet republics at its periphery, Russia and the West often take diametrically opposed views of the same situation.

In Belarus, Western governments condemned the recent reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko as a farce. Russia declared the contest free and fair, as it has in contested ballots across the former Soviet Union.

Even if Russians recognize electoral fraud, they are not going to concede the point, said Rogov. "My suspicion is that since we see no better alternative, we prefer the status quo -- no matter how bad it is."

Narochnitskaya said the underlying issue is not democracy but influence. "The hysteria around Belarus and the demonization of President Lukashenko has more to do with his anti-NATO, anti-Western stand than his lack of democracy," she said. "Belarus is a missing piece of the puzzle assembled from the Baltics to the Black Sea. There are points on the map where we can yield, but there are some where it's important not to do so."

The point that appears to animate Russians most is Ukraine. Since that country's Orange Revolution, the popular protests that swept President Viktor Yushchenko into power 16 months ago, relations between the two countries have soured. At the beginning of this year, the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom briefly cut off natural gas supplies, which are critical to Ukraine's heavy industry and households. In parliamentary elections last month, Yushchenko's party suffered a humiliating setback to a Moscow-backed candidate.

In Washington and European Union capitals, the cutoff was seen as punishment for Yushchenko's Western orientation, particularly his desire to bring Ukraine into NATO.

For Russia, such a move would be anathema. The defense and civilian industries of the two countries remain closely intertwined, and Russia's Black Sea fleet is based in the Crimea on Ukrainian territory.

"The idea of admitting Ukraine into NATO is hammering the final nail into the coffin of Russia as an independent great power," Rogov said. "We go out, you go in. Unfortunately, it's almost a consensus in Russia that the West is trying to isolate Russia."

"He has served our nation with integrity and honor," said Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who succeeded DeLay in his leadership post earlier this year.

But Democrats said the developments marked more than the end to one man's career in Congress.

"Tom DeLay's decision to leave Congress is just the latest piece of evidence that the Republican Party is a party in disarray, a party out of ideas and out of energy," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

A formal announcement of DeLay's plans was expected Tuesday at a news conference in Houston.

DeLay is under indictment in Texas as part of an investigation into the allegedly illegal use of funds for state legislative races.

Separately, the Texan's ties with lobbyist Jack Abramoff caused him to formally surrender his post as majority leader in January, within days after the lobbyist entered into a plea bargain as part of a federal congressional corruption probe.

More recently, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy said he had conspired with Abramoff and others to corrupt public officials, and he promised to help the broad federal investigation of bribery and lobbying fraud that already has resulted in three convictions.

Neither Rudy, Abramoff nor anyone else connected with the investigation has publicly accused DeLay of breaking the law, but Rudy confessed that he had taken actions while working in the majority leader's office that were illegal.

DeLay has consistently denied all wrongdoing, and he capped a triumph in a contested GOP primary earlier this year with a vow to win re-election.

In an interview Monday with The Galveston County Daily News in Texas, DeLay said his change of mind was based partly on a poll taken after the March Republican primary that showed him only narrowly ahead of Democrat Nick Lampson.

"Even though I thought I could win, it was a little too risky," the paper quoted him as saying.

In a separate interview with Time Magazine, DeLay says he plans to make his Virginia condominium his primary residence, a step that will disqualify him from the ballot in Texas and permit GOP officials there to field a replacement candidate. "I can do more on the outside of the House than I can on the inside right now. I want to continue to fight for the conservative cause. I want to continue to work for a Republican majority," DeLay told the magazine for its online edition.

It was not clear Monday night whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry would call a special election to fill out the unexpired portion of DeLay's term, or whether the seat would remain vacant until it is filled in November.

Either way, DeLay's concern about the potential loss of a Houston-area seat long in Republican hands reflected a deeper worry among GOP strategists. After a dozen years in the majority, they face a strong challenge from Democrats this fall, at a time when President Bush's public support is sagging, and when the Abramoff scandal has helped send congressional approval ratings tumbling.

Until scandal sent him to the sidelines, DeLay had held leadership posts since the Republicans won control of the House in a 1994 landslide. At first, he had to muscle his way to the table, defeating then-Speaker Newt Gingrich's handpicked candidate to become whip.

But DeLay quickly established himself as a forceful presence - earning a nickname as "The Hammer" - and he easily became majority leader when the spot opened up.

He sat at the nexus of legislation, lobbying, political campaigns and money.

And while he was a conservative, he raised millions of dollars for the campaigns of fellow House Republicans regardless of their ideology, earning their gratitude in the process.

He supported tax cuts, limits on abortions, looser government regulation of business and other items on the conservative agenda, and he rarely backed down.

DeLay was the driving force behind President Clinton's impeachment in 1999, weeks after Republicans lost seats at the polls in a campaign in which they tried to make an issue of Clinton's personal behavior.

His trademark aggressiveness helped trigger his downfall, when he led a drive to redraw Texas' congressional district boundaries to increase the number of seats in GOP hands.

The gambit succeeded, but DeLay was soon caught up in an investigation involving the use of corporate funds in the campaigns of legislators who had participated in the redistricting.

He attacked prosecutor Ronnie Earle as an "unabashed partisan zealot," and said numerous times he hoped to clear himself of the charges quickly and renew his claim to the majority leader's office.

The trial has yet to begin.

Naeema al-Gasseer, the World Health Organisation's representative for Iraq, told The Washington Post it was a "shocking" state of affairs. "We're not sending the right message."

The US Agency for International Development says that in Iraq "diarrhoea, measles, respiratory infections and malaria - compounded by malnutrition affecting 30 per cent of children under five - contribute to excessive rates of infant and child mortality". Child malnutrition has doubled since the invasion, according to Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's expert on the "right to food", and now stands at around 7.7 per cent.

Brigadier General William McCoy, the US Army commander with control over reconstruction projects in Iraq, said emergency funds were being sought for the clinics from the US military and foreign donors.

He referred repeatedly to a December report from U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to back his assertion that Iraq had failed to cooperate with the inspections. Evidently that cowed the reporters, for there has been little follow-up. But White House damage control should not be allowed to cover up this evidence that the president knew his case for war was based on faulty evidence.

First, the evidence is overwhelming that Bush hosted the January 31 meeting to manage his move to war, not as an occasion to review progress toward disarming Iraq. The record of the session shows this -- with talk of the war plan, the starting date, the justification and the securing of a second U.N. resolution as a legal cover, but there is more than that. Consider the context: the day the memo was taken U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell began the extensive review at the CIA of the allegations he would use to make his Security Council "briefing" -- already scheduled -- supposedly "bulletproof." It was also that same day that the codebreaking National Security Agency issued a directive to spy on the friendly nations who were members of the U.N. Security Council to divine their attitudes on the move to war.

The day before, according to Bob Woodward's account, Bush had told Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, "We will kick ass." By his account, Berlusconi tried to dissuade Bush from war. Woodward duly notes the president resorting to his standard line that no decision had yet been made on military action. The Manning memo suggests otherwise, with Bush revealing March 10 as the projected date for beginning bombing -- a campaign to hit 1,500 targets in four days, the "shock and awe" which U.S. officials bragged about at the time. Moreover, on January 24, the U.S. military commander, General Tommy Franks, had sent his final war plan up through Rumsfeld to the president. Bush's comment to Blair on January 31, that "he was not itching to go to war," is belied by the entire surrounding structure of events.

The other significant finding in the Manning memo concerns Tony Blair's intentions. The press reporting at the time -- regardless of what Scott McClellan says today -- was that the purpose of the Blair-Bush meeting was to decide whether there needed to be a second U.N. resolution. Postwar investigations in London show that in late January Blair received official advice from his attorney general Lord Goldsmith that such a resolution was necessary to fulfill the terms of the existing resolution 1441. At the meeting with Bush, however, the record shows Blair presented the project as a convenience. "If anything goes wrong... a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs," Blair said, according to Manning's memo.

Bush went along with Blair's talk of a resolution, but his own propositions on justifications for war revealed his true lack of interest in U.N. action. Bush speculated about deceiving Saddam into shooting at U.S. aircraft phonied up to look like U.N. planes, or getting an Iraqi scientist to assert that WMD were being concealed. The most widely reported aspect of the Bush-Blair meeting was these speculations (talk of a Saddam assassination was less justification than opportunity).

Bush told Blair he would "twist arms" to get a U.N. resolution, corresponding exactly to the NSA spy directive, which would track the success of Bush arm-twisting through U.N. members' own communications. Regardless of the outcome, Bush told Blair, "military action would follow anyway." Blair's assurance at that point that Britain stood with the U.S. put him squarely in the box with Bush of seeking to initiate an aggressive war.

Finally, on the matter of U.N. inspections, David Manning appears to have engaged in some policy advocacy, as opposed to strictly confining himself to recording the proceedings of this meeting in his memorandum to Tony Blair. Manning's paper notes the conversation among the leaders on the urgency of action if Bush's timeline was to be met. Blair's adviser argued that, "We therefore need to stay closely alongside Blix, [and] do all we can to help the inspectors make a significant find." But Manning's view did not reflect the realities of -- at least -- U.S. intelligence cooperation with the inspections. Rather, the CIA had been parsimonious in its help, taking weeks to begin providing tips, and then holding back many of its target folders, while national security adviser Condi Rice had put pressure on Blix to declare Iraq in violation.

Immediately upon finishing their talk, at 4:12 p.m. Bush and Blair appeared before newsmen, where Bush declared, "Saddam Hussein is not disarming. He is a danger to the world." Bush then added archly, "This issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months," an almost exact repetition of Blair's comment at their secret meeting, as recorded by Manning, that "we should be saying that the crisis must be resolved in weeks, not months."

President Bush asserted, inaccurately, that Resolution 1441 "gives us the authority to move without any second resolution," a position the Attorney General of Great Britain had rejected only days before. Blair followed up, insisting that Dr. Blix had told the Security Council that Saddam was not cooperating with UN inspectors. In fact, what Blix had said when he reported to the U.N. on January 27 was that there had been difficulties with the Iraqi government but the situation was improving, and he added that his inspectors had made 300 visits to 230 different sites without finding any evidence of WMD. Nuclear inspector Mohammed ElBaradei had agreed, "We have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program." Hans Blix's own take on the Bush-Blair conversation rings true: "The U.S. government did not want to raise the hope that there was any way out but war."

On balance the newly revealed record of President Bush's secret meeting of January 31, 2003, confirms that by that date Bush's Iraq war was certain. The Manning memo supplies an explicit picture of Bush not merely cherrypicking only the intelligence he wanted to use, but scheming to overcome the consequences of not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In all likelihood the debate over the Iraq war will come to center on the question of how much sooner than January 2003 was Bush's war policy cast in stone. Was it September 2002, when Bush blurted out "I don't know what more evidence we need" and set up the White House Iraq Group to sell the war? Was it April at a previous Bush-Blair summit in Crawford or December 2001 when General Franks presented the first war plan to the president? Was it on or immediately after 9/11 or was it the day George W. Bush took the oath of office as President of the United States?

John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., and author of Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press).

Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said Tuesday the opposition would run in by-elections if Thaksin quit now. The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which spearheaded two months of street rallies against Thaksin, threatens to resume their protests on Friday unless the premier quit.

In a live interview Monday night, Thaksin claimed his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party's leading place in last weekend's election, garnering 57 percent of the total popular votes. He said according to unofficial results, the party received 18 million out of the total 28 million votes, down from 19 million last year.

Most of by-elections had to be held in Thailand's south, an opposition stronghold which long complained of the government's failure to curb violence along the strip bordering Malaysia.

There is no guarantee any further rounds of ballot-casting could produce MPs, in which a minimum 20 percent eligible votes are required, said the Election Commission (EC).

However, in the vast North and Northeast region, Thaksin-led TRT has scored another mandate relying on the unwaiving support from some 60 million farmers who benefited from the government's populist policies.

Swore in five years ago, the CEO-style telecom tycoon has steered his country out of the shadow of 1997 financial crisis by undertaking structural reforms and boosting consumer demand.

The government launched mass poverty-lifting plans, hailed by the grass-root civilians, but lambasted by opposition and critics as means of buying votes in a more sophisticated form.

Through his cabinet's strenuous efforts, Thailand declared the early repayment of International Monetary Fund (IMF) debts in 2003. The stock market rebounded, real estate boomed and economy maintained a continuous growth. This year, the Thai Chamber of Commerce forecast up 5 percent economic growth, compared to 4.5 percent in 2005.

Thaksin also won high marks for his leadership in responding to the Dec. 26 tsunami in 2004 and the efforts to contain bird flu. The high-profile performance helped him secure a second term in 2005 with an overwhelming grip of 377 parliamentary seats, making him the first ever premier being re-elected in decades in a country long ruled by military and disturbed by coup.

But some of the shine has gone off Thaksin's reputation. Critics and Bangkok urban elite accused him of everything from abuse of power to mismanagement of the southern unrest as well as corruption, abuse of power and cronyism.

The anti-Thaksin demonstration ballooned following Thaksin's family sold their 50-percent stake in Shin Corp, the telecoms giant he founded before entering politics, to a Singapore investment company late January.

The 1.9 billion dollars tax-free deal sparks allegations of wrongdoing and abuse of power by the critics and became the focal point for an escalating political confrontation which have been brewing among portions of the middle class people in Bangkok.

On Feb. 24, the premier abruptly dissolved the parliament and called snap elections on April 2 as a way out of political dilemma which has thrown the country onto the brink of chaos.

Despite the boycott by three major opposition parties, Thaksin has determined to push forward the polls which he portraited as a referendum on his rule.

After the futile appeal for Thailand's revered King to name a new prime minister, the opposition rejected Thaksin's offer to form a national unity government once he returns with fresh mandate.

Buoyed with the solid support from mass countryside population in the north, Thaksin has promised not to take office if mustering less than 50 percent of the votes.

Still, the boycott of the three major opposition parties combined with the disqualification of some 400 obscure-party candidates left Thaksin's party unopposed in 276 out of the total 400 constituencies, nearly 70 percent of districts.

While claiming victory, the embattled premier floated the idea to set up a panel of eminent people to resolve political crisis, which was again turned down by his foes.

The Democratic Party said they were not interested in the offer and no longer trust the prime minister.

Media mogul Sonthi Limthongkul, who launched the anti-Thaksin campaign last September, said the offer was another attempt by Thaksin to maintain the grip on power and would go ahead with a large-scale demonstration scheduled for Friday.

Chamlong Srimuang, a former politician and core leader of anti-Thaksin rallies, on April 2 affirmed the mainstream protest would be resumed after the election until the prime minister resigns.

Democrats have repeatedly accused TRT of hacking into the EC's database to enable disqualified candidates to run apart from paying candidates to make them contest in the poll.

Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said the only certain outcome of the poll was a political mess that could ultimately embroil the Constitutional Court, suggesting no quick fix to a crisis that has wrecked the stock market and economic growth forecasts.

The country may get a new premier, but questions of legality and legitimacy will likely grow louder. This is likely to take a toll on the economy as foreign and local investors wait to see what becomes of the political uncertainty.

Domestic consumption and even the export sector could take a hit if this situation is prolonged, said political analysts.

According to Thai Chamber of Commerce, Thailand's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth could drop to some 3.2 percent from the projected 4.5 percent if the conflict remain unsolved. The country will fail to move forward with several free trade agreement and a portfolio of infrastructure mega-projects.

The outlook for constitutional amendments also seems bleak, given that the civic and pro-democracy groups are unlikely to support supervision by TRT of such a crucial process, they said.

"Thaksin is the only candidate. Even if he wins, it will be difficult for him to rule because the country is split," said Chalongphob Sussangkarn, president of the Thailand Development Research Institute, an independent think tank.

Most of us, presumably, know enough "Average Joe" types to fill a room. Most of us, presumably, don't know a single "Average Joe" type who could pull off a trick like the one reported by the New York Times last week. The issue centered, once again, around a memo that was drafted before the invasion of Iraq.

"During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003," read the Times, "[Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by the New York Times."

"The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable," continued the Times report. "Mr. Bush predicted that it was 'unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.' Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment. The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."



Quite a nifty trick for an Average Joe, yes? This was from the same regular fella who ever-so-earnestly told journalist Helen Thomas last week that he didn't want war, because no president wants war. Here we have merely another lie, an accent in a symphony of lies. If Bush did not want war, why decide upon an attack despite the absence of the public motivator for attack, the weapons of mass destruction? Why try to goad Hussein into a fight?

Remember when the administration made that humorous little video of George searching the Oval Office for the weapons of mass destruction way back when? It was truly an "Average Joe" moment that, in light of the revelations afforded by this pre-war memo, brings the yellow bile up the back of the throat.

Seven more American soldiers died in Iraq over the last few days, bringing the total to 2,332. It is difficult to count the number of civilians who have been slaughtered in the it-isn't-a-civil-war-not-really violence of the last several weeks. It takes a special kind of "Average Joe" to get so many people killed in so short a time thanks to lies of such width and breadth. Most "Average Joes," after all, lie about sex or fishing or their bowling score from Saturday night.

Most "Average Joes," likewise, enjoy being considered straight-shooters. They don't hide from hard truths and expect to be able to handle whatever comes their way. Mr. Bush, it seems, would rather be massaged with pleasing fictions from his staff, and is perfectly happy to have his handlers encase him in bubble-wrap to protect him from the aftershocks resulting from astonishingly bad decisions.

Reporter Murray Wass, writing for the National Journal, wrote another essay last week that exposed more of the lies that were used to trick the people of this nation into supporting the unnecessary and criminal invasion of Iraq. "Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser," wrote Waas, "cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address - that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon - might not be true."

"The pre-election damage-control effort in response to (Ambassador Joseph) Wilson's allegations and the broader issue of whether the Bush administration might have misrepresented intelligence information to make the case for war had three major components," continued Waas. "Blame the CIA for the use of the Niger information in the president's State of the Union address; discredit and undermine Wilson; and make sure that the public did not learn that the president had been personally warned that the intelligence assessments he was citing about the aluminum tubes might be wrong."

It is disturbing enough to encompass the hard fact that there has not been, at any point, an element of "incompetence" in the process that has left us in such a deranged state in Iraq. Virtually every item on the Bush administration's wish list has been obtained in the last four years, thanks to the invasion, occupation and conveniently subsequent mess that has followed. Objectively, one must know that a barrage of falsehoods was required to create such a situation. To see these lies exposed one after another, like a long line of sausage links, would seem to be beyond tolerance.

Sadly, our collective ability to absorb and discard such terrifying information appears to be without limit. The revelations offered by the New York Times regarding Bush's pre-invasion decision to go to war no matter what, and his decision to goad Iraq into a war whether or not they posed a threat, passed through the waters of the mainstream media with nary a ripple. The same went for Mr. Waas's report; the information he provided in such scathing detail was met by the mainstream press with a thunderous nothing.

It is almost amusing. The pundits and politicos are justifying each other's vapid and useless existence these days by carrying forth an empty debate as to whether or not Mr. Bush and his people lied us into a war. Yet when hard evidence of these lies is presented in stark black and white, the response is a whistling silence.

The duality is astonishing; if you are callow enough to subject yourself to the dreck that passes for news on television, you might actually see someone acknowledge the existence of the evidence of these lies before turning on a dime to claim that no one lied about anything. Maybe, just maybe, you'll see someone claim the administration is "incompetent."

No one who lies so often or so effectively can be described as incompetent. This kind of thing requires nimble skills combined with an utter absence of conscience.

"Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support," reads a chilling New York Times editorial from Sunday, "let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror."

Not a bad day's work for an Average Joe.