America: The differences in the American and Italian accounts of the shooting dead of Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari and the wounding of journalist Giuliana Sgrena on the road to Baghdad Airport are so stark that someone has to be telling lies.
An internal Pentagon memo, made available to the US media on Monday, said that the Italians had failed to make arrangements for their safe passage to the airport, were travelling at high speed and had failed to respond to "numerous warnings".
This was directly contradicted by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who said that Calipari had informed the proper authorities that he was heading to the airport, that the car was travelling slowly and that it stopped immediately when a light was flashed at a checkpoint - before US troops opened fire.
Ms Sgrena did not recall any lights and said that the car was travelling slowly. She also suggested that the shooting was deliberate. This has made the well-regarded journalist a target for invective from some commentators in the US media.
According to retired colonel Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Baghdad, "if Giuliana Sgrena had been a target of our soldiers, that witch would be dead".
Peters told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough: "The Italians were clearly hot-dogging. They didn't co-ordinate. They were running at night, trying to run a US roadblock, for God's sakes . . . But the guys, the Italian agents, were clearly trying to be national heroes, darting about in the night, sort of a Ferrari mentality. Sorry it happened, but you cannot blame our troops."
Dan Abrams, of MSNBC, said Sgrena's claim was ridiculous and "the fact that she works for a communist newspaper that's repeatedly criticised the war only goes to [ show] her wanting a soap-box for her views".
The New York Post, under the headline "Rage of the Red Reporter", called her claim that the shooting was deliberate the "paranoid rantings of a political extremist". The Washington Times said: "From her hospital bed, Miss Sgrena, a self-identified communist, has helped fan anti-American sentiment within her own country and abroad."
On Fox News, presenter John Gibson said he was disgusted with this "ardent anti-American who was going to Iraq to do a hatchet job on the American effort there". His guest, Brig-Gen Nick Halley, US army (retired), said: "Remember, this woman is from a communist newspaper. She and others were using this just for their own political purposes."
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The hot topic on Capitol Hill these days is the nuclear option. This has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Minority senators can filibuster a judicial appointment unless stopped by a vote of 60 of the 100 members. Since the Republicans have a majority of only 55-45, the Democrats can thereby stop judicial nominations sent to the Senate by President Bush, like the seven judges filibustered by the Democrats in his last term as being too conservative.
Filibustering has a long history and was used most dramatically by segregationist Democrats to block civil rights legislation in the 1960s. The nuclear option is to pass a resolution by simple majority to override the filibuster law and establish the principle that a simple majority of 51 votes is sufficient for confirmation. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has threatened to bring the business of the Senate to a halt if it is imposed.
Not all Republicans agree that it is a good thing. The chairman of the judicial committee, Arlen Specter, said that the procedure would throw the Senate into turmoil and create hell in the committee. Since being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, Specter (75) is showing an independent streak.
The stakes are high. There is every possibility that one or more vacancies will occur in the ageing Supreme Court in Mr Bush's second term.
A conservative joining the nine-member bench could tip the court towards a review of Roe v Wade, which legalises abortion. Republican majority leader William Frist claims to have the votes to change the Senate rules, and the chairman of the Senate, Vice-President Dick Cheney, can press the nuclear button by ruling that confirmation can be by simple majority.
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Democrats have already begun exercising their muscle in the rival chamber. They scuppered the work of the ethics committee in the House of Representatives by refusing to accept Republican rule changes which would restrict the committee's power. The five-five deadlock followed a report that House majority leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, accepted a trip to South Korea in 2001 from a group registered as a foreign agent, which is forbidden under House rules.
DeLay has been censured three times already by the ethics committee. Republicans responded by replacing the ethics chairman and two other members and changing the rules. The committee is equally split among Republicans and Democrats.
Before January, a 5-5 vote was enough to trigger an investigation. Now a majority must approve.
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America has been bemused by the sight of two old political foes acting like life-long bosom pals. George Bush senior and Bill Clinton appeared in the Oval Office together with President Bush on Tuesday to mark their return from a tour of tsunami-ravaged areas to promote aid. As they bantered about Clinton's impending hospital visit, Bush senior said that his successor had been like the Energiser bunny, hauling him around the Indian Ocean at a frantic rate.
He told a story about how considerate Clinton had been on the tour of South-East Asia. The government plane on which they travelled had one large bedroom and another room with tables and seats. Clinton insisted on his companion taking the bed while he played cards in the adjoining room. Next morning Bush said he looked in and found Clinton sound asleep on the plane's floor.
"We could have switched places, each getting half a night on the bed, but he deferred to me," Bush told Newsweek magazine. "That was a very courteous thing, very thoughtful, and that meant a great deal to me."