It's not every day the Prime Minister can be called a liar outside of Parliament, that is, without Parliamentary privilege. But yesterday John "Of course I'm corrupt. Isn't everyone?" Howard was called just that by Kevin Rudd. "I reject, of course, the absurd allegations of lying made by Mr Rudd and I invite people to wait until the commission has brought down its findings," said the most powerful liar in the land. Standing next to him as he stated his government's motto -- The truth is absurd -- was Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of Weird Names and the woman the incredible shrinking Dubya gets to threaten nations considered to be lesser than his beloved Jesusland.

Kim Beazley got into the act as well. Looking up momentarily from his din-dins in Perth, he advised Howard to "look Condoleezza Rice in the eye and apologise for funding the enemy."

As we can see here, that is impossible for our two-faced PM. And anyway, Condi is showing just what she thinks of him.

Dennis Shanahan suggests that in the face of the escalating AWB scandal, the Howard Government is about "to adopt the Renae Lawrence defence. Lawrence, one of the four drug mules captured in Bali with heroin strapped to her body, maintained that others had forced her to do it with threats." Shanahan says it's all about to get worse because the " AWB is no longer saying the Government didn't know. Even if this is a sign of desperation from AWB, and recognition that they are going to go down over the kickbacks, then desperation could suddenly make it much worse for DFAT and the Howard administration."

Caroline Overington, in her article It's quite simple, reader … you know the pieces fit, says:

There are some people in Australia who claim that the Iraq wheat sales story is hopelessly confusing.

It's actually quite simple.

The Howard Government has long been in possession of a small mountain of documents - cables, emails, spy notes - many of which suggest Australia's wheat exporter AWB was paying bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The Government wants you - the reader - to believe that it never put the pieces of the puzzle together.

For example, it will admit to knowing that AWB traded wheat to Iraq under the UN's oil-for-food program.

It will also admit to knowing that Saddam corrupted the oil-for-food program by demanding that suppliers pay bribes to his regime.

It won't admit to putting those two pieces of knowledge together, to conclude that AWB paid bribes to Saddam.

Is the wheat story really all that complicated?

No, but the Government is hoping you - the reader - are stupid.

You would like to think that ten years of world's best practice corruption would start to make John Howard's supporters a tad uncomfortable. Better to pin your hopes on gettting a first division win in Tattslotto.