President Bush, the ultimate conviction politician, showed that his elongated time as a lame duck president with the lowest ratings in history has given him a chance to reflect on his contributions to the world.

Talking to the Times on board Air Force One, the president bemoaned his image as a warmonger suggesting that "in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric".  

The Family organises Washington politicians into intimate "prayer cells", influences foreign policy, inspired the creation of the president's Annual Prayer Breakfast in 1953 and sponsored President George Bush's faith-based policy of transferring social welfare responsibilities to religious groups in 2001.

It has actively narrowed debate, limiting what change might be possible. 

When George Bush announced that he favoured keeping troops in Iraq for decades, the media apparently didn't think the opinion of Iraqis mattered. 

Education Minister John Della Bosca has quit the ministry pending the outcome of a police investigation into events that took place at a Gosford nightclub last weekend. 

Speaking in Bathurst after Premier Morris Iemma told a press conference the minister had been stood down, Mr Della Bosca insisted that he had done nothing wrong. 

from Crikey ….. 

You're unpleasant Belinda, but you're no LBJ 

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes: 

Panorama investigates claims that as much as $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or not properly accounted for in Iraq.  

There are contracts for caterers, tanker drivers, security guards and even interrogators, many of them through companies with links to the White House. Now more than 70 whistleblower cases threaten to reveal the scandals behind billions of dollars worth of waste, theft and corruption during the Iraq war. 

Independent experts, however, said that government could take at least three other steps that could force oil and gasoline prices down immediately. Neither Bush nor McCain nor Obama endorse any of them. 

Perhaps the quickest action, the experts said, would be ordering curbs on financial speculation. Financial industry heavyweights have acknowledged in recent testimony before Congress that such speculation is driving oil prices higher. 

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush late on Monday during a speech on the House floor.  

We’re going to hear those fateful words 'Mission accomplished' about Iraq again, unless I am very much mistaken. The British recognise that they have to get their forces out of the country soon after next January 1 because the UN could consider the presence of the American-British force illegal.  

Looks like every day there is a military-style raid somewhere in the US. One of the more recent ones, in Detroit involves the raid of an art gallery, where people had gathered to listen to music, have some drinks and dance.

US President George W Bush has landed in Slovenia at the start of what is expected to be his last European tour, with economic concerns a key issue. 

He will attend the annual US-European Union summit, where he is expected to push for a strong US dollar and action on high fuel prices. 

Wonderful – the people we're liberating are our enemies, because of the extended occupation – now there's a good reason to support the troops and extend the occupation. I guess Congress thought so too.  

Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official. 

US interrogators of terrorist suspects were instructed to destroy handwritten notes that might have exposed harsh or even illegal questioning methods at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a lawyer for one of the prisoners said.