This ploy is pure Bush - in fact, Bush has used it recently himself: Tell angry citizens that you fully intend to pull out of Iraq - as soon as the Iraq gov. requests it - knowing full well that the puppets in Baghdad will never ask any such thing until you TELL them to. AFP reports that Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said. "We are ready to pull out of Iraq, even tomorrow, if the government of Mr (Iyad) Allawi asks us." said. His message was delivered the day after the family of kidnapped Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni appealed to his Iraqi captors to release him a deadline set by Baldoni's captors, a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, for Italy to withdraw its 3,000 troops from Iraq." The citizens of Italy shouldn't hold their breath - you can bet Italy won't be asked to pull out anytime soon.

In the EU elections, "Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the man who controls over 90% of Italian television, has received one of the most humiliating defeats of his political career at the hands of a disgruntled TV anchorwoman. Lilli Gruber, Italy's most famous newsreader who ran for the Olive Tree opposition coalition, won more than 236,000 votes in the capital, Rome - roughly twice as many as the premier. Ms Gruber, also known as 'Lilli the Red' after her flame-red mane, heads a new breed of fierce opponents of the premier who have defected - or have been banished from - that very broadcasting world which is largely controlled by the media-magnate-turned-premier. A hugely popular and well-respected journalist who reported from Baghdad during the war, she has infused fresh blood into the Olive Tree opposition coalition... Now that his popularity appears to be on the wane, he will have to thoroughly rethink his media strategy ahead of the 2006 [Italian] election."

Ya know, sometimes you're better off NOT to have some people defend you. Having Silvio Berlusconi, a known liar and fraud who hardly knows Bush, try to convince the world that Dubya is "sensitive" and "misunderstood," is sorta like having the local bordello madame plead the case that one of her "frequent fliers" is really a paragon of virtue. "He's a normal man, absolutely open to everyone's feelings," gushed Berlusconi in a recent interview. "He's absolutely like us." If by us, Silvio, you mean you and your fellow con artists and dictators, then yes indeed, he most certainly is. The Italian people don't share Berlusconi's "feelings" -they have threatened mass protests if Bush visits.

"Italy's Constitutional Court has thrown out a law giving legal immunity to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi," reports CNN. "The decision is regarded as a major setback to Berlusconi, whose corruption trial in Milan was frozen last June when parliament approved the controversial law. Italy's top court said the law was an illegitimate, unconstitutional measure that contradicted a basic Italian legal right that all citizens are equal before the law. The hotly contested legislation awarded Italy's top five officials, including the president and prime minister, legal immunity during their terms in office. Critics accused the government of drawing up the bill to prevent a potentially damaging verdict during Italy's presidency of the European Union, which ended in December."

"The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, believes the United Nations should intervene militarily wherever dictatorships abuse human rights. He delivers a passionate defence of America's intervention in Iraq in an interview in today's Spectator magazine in which he suggests it should mark the start of an era in which a 'community of democracies' intervenes in the internal affairs of countries ruled by despots... 'I said, given the enormous and paradoxical success of fundamentalism, why don't we reform the UN? Let us say to Mr X or Y in this or that dictatorship, you must recognise human rights in your country and we give you six to 12 months to do so, or else we intervene... We are able, with Russia and America, to look at the states of the world and assess the dignity of the people and we give them democracy and liberty. Yes! By force if necessary, because that is the only way to show it is not a joke. We said to Saddam, do it or we come. And we came and we did it.'"

Remember two weeks back when Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi visited the Bush ranch, and Dubya was seen chummily clapping his pal on the back? Well, this week, the noose tightened around Berlusconi as one of his right hand men, Cesare Previti, was convicted of corruption by a Milan court. The judge described the successful case as one of "devastating corruption...The picture that eventually emerges is certainly that of the biggest corruption in the history of the republic in Italy."