From the ABC

Bush's Supreme Court pick withdraws
US President George W Bush has announced that his choice to fill a US Supreme Court vacancy, Harriet Miers, had withdrawn her nomination.
"Today, I have reluctantly accepted Harriet Miers's decision to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States," he said in a statement.
"My responsibility to fill this vacancy remains. I will do so in a timely manner."
The surprise withdrawal of Ms Miers's nomination comes just over three weeks after she was recommended for the high-profile legal post by Bush on October 3.
Mr Bush said his White House counsel will continue to serve him in that post following her withdrawal.
Ms Miers's nomination had run into trouble on Capitol Hill, where law-makers suggested she lacked the votes necessary for confirmation to the United States' highest court.

From Owen Harries' The failure of the Bush Doctrine

[...] Precedents have been set that will come back to haunt us and our children: among them a ready resort to preventive and preemptive wars, the setting aside of the Geneva Convention and habeas corpus, the blatant insistence on the right to double standards, and exceptionally low standards of truth-telling on vital questions of policy. [...]

Hitler exploited Germany's outrage at the enforced settlement of WW1, and used phantom menaces to justify re-militarisation. Bush exploited America's outrage at the Sep11 attacks. It's interesting that a court judgment relating to the first (1993) terrorist bombing of the WTC has just been released.

From Port Authority Found Negligent in 1993 Bombing
[...] David J. Dean, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the verdict "an extraordinary victory." The jury, he said, clearly accepted the plaintiffs' argument that the Port Authority should have foreseen the terrorist attack, based on warnings from its own experts as early as 1985, and shut down the public parking garage. "The case was never about blaming the terrorists," Mr. Dean said yesterday. "It was about what the Port Authority should have done. They disregarded the advice of their own experts and other experts. They were motivated by money. They should have thought about the ultimate sacrifice of human lives." [...]

In regard to Harries' warning about "exceptionally low standards of truth-telling", who expects Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc, and Howard, Ruddock, etc, to suddenly turn round and start telling the honest truth? The 'WMDs in Iraq' is the template for Ruddock's latest rush on the new laws - 'we have advice from compliant sources that there is a small army of highly trained terrorists in our midst, and we can't touch them because there is no evidence'. Lies. Try rounding up the drug lords, fool, where there are trails of evidence.

Ultimate power springs from the taking of life. Expect no cooling of the lust to see Nguyen swing. Expect the crazed loons in charge of the US to enlist third-party players to set the scene for the thermonuclear demonstration of hegemony. What would be a minimal pretext for launching the ICBMs at Iran? Popping a paper bag outside the gates at Pine Gap?

If they can't put Bush on medication pretty soon, he's going to push his cause (endless war) so fast that they'll have to depose him by force.

From The Danger After Miers
[...]This president is so fixated on his supremacy that he has pledged to veto the current defense appropriations bill if Congress passes John McCain's amendment that would clearly prohibit the degrading, inhumane, systemic treatment of "detainees" (prisoners)—including the unmistakable evidence of American use of torture, and not only by the CIA.[...]

From Arms and the academy
[...]A new study suggests that rivers of blood are sometimes a more apposite description of the relationship between business and academia. Using the new Freedom of Information Act, The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has found that 67 British universities and university colleges hold significant investments in the UK's major arms companies.[...]

Duped, again - by the military-industrial complex.

Let's see how far Tony Blair will take the opportunity to ramp up the rhetoric against Iran.

Not long at all TG …. 

 

Little georgie porgie’s ever eager lap-dog has been foaming at the mouth, as reported in yesterday’s Scotsman. 

 

Note that our little johnnie Cromwell & his adjutants have had nothing to say on the matter …. probably worried about the future of NZ / Australia relations, given the appointment of NZ’s new Foreign Minister.   

 

Blair Delivers Blunt 'Action' Warning To Iran