THE NEXT MOVE FOR WAR: Two weeks before the Iraq invasion, attorney general Lord Goldsmith warned the war could be illegal. So Downing Street set up a team of lawyers ready to plead its case in international courts. Somewhat like those East End gangsters who ensure they kept their slippery briefs close when they went out to collect their monies.

The Guardian reports: It appears that Lord Goldsmith never wrote an unequivocal formal legal opinion that the invasion was lawful, as demanded by Lord Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time.

The Guardian can also disclose that in her letter of resignation in protest against the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq as a "crime of aggression".

 
HOW GOES THE WAR ON TERROR?: Ignore the "ooh, we're all going to die unless you fund my orgnaisation and send Jaffa cakes" element to head of Interpol Ronald Noble's BBC interview, and instead, focus on this bit:

Ronald Noble told the BBC the danger of an al-Qaeda attack had not diminished since the 9/11 strikes on the US.

In other words, three years of killing and money and torture and pissing on civil liberties hasn't made a blind bit of difference.

 
MORALPANICWATCH: In America, a Homer Simpson officiates at gay weddings, and Parents Television Council president L Brent Bozell rushes to the photocopier:

"At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood."

Yes, it's about time The Simpsons stopped being a sitcom and settled down into accurately depicting "the public mood" instead. That's right, L.

Meanwhile, in India, the general secretary of the Catholic Secular Forum (we're not quite sure what that would be, but we've checked Leviticus and there's no injunction against oxymorons) is upset by a film which shows a priest having an affair:

"Religion needs to be a personal affair and should not be a subject for entertainment or for commercial use," Joseph Dias, general secretary of the Catholic Secular Forum, said in a statement.

Now, while it's a pleasing thought - we could march on the US Networks demanding the withdrawal of the blaspehmous Touched By An Angel - it's interesting that Dias is protesting against a movie as a disgusting commercialisation of religion rather than, say, stores like Catholic Supply, which really do commercialise religion. (The after-Christmas clearance sale is on there now, by the way).

 
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?: CNN claims to have documents which show not only did the US know about Saddam's misuse of food-for-oil cash, but even were happy to go along with it:

The unclassified State Department documents sent to congressional committees with oversight of U.S. foreign policy divulge that the United States deemed such sales to be in the "national interest," even though they generated billions of dollars in unmonitored revenue for Saddam's regime.

 
BUT THEN... SINCE WHEN DID REPUBLICANS CARE ABOUT HISTORY?: What's telling about the exchange between Ann Coulter and Bob McKeown is not so much that Coulter didn't know that Canada didn't fight in Vietnam, but that she refused to admit she was wrong.

Although not knowing that Canada avoided Vietnam is a little bit shameful in someone who would style themselves some sort of political commentator - why did Ann think everyone was heading off north of the border during those years? Did she think that leftists just really love maples?