And, speaking of that Meet The Press interview, here's the exchange when Russert implied that if the administration was looking for Sept 11 payback, we'd have been better looking at the Saudis than at Iraq.....

MR. RUSSERT: Vanity Fair magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th, allowed to leave our airspace and were never investigated by the FBI and that departure was approved by high-level administration figures. Do you know anything about that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t, but a lot of folks from that part of the world left in the aftermath of 9/11 because they were worried about public reaction here in the United States or that somehow they might be discriminated against.

Not quite Michael Moore's allegation about the members of Bin Laden's family, but you get the drift.

Interesting that Cheney dosen't even acknowledge Russert's point - that the Saudis who fled were "allowed" to leave, and did so while the rest of us were prevented from flying anywhere...

(And disappointing that Russert didn't call him on it.)

Nearly 70 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein played some part in planning the Sept 11 attacks.

The Bush administration's single greatest accomplishment - from a spin perspective - will probably prove to be the dubious linkage of the two.

So, when the President admits that, hey, it turns out the deposed Iraqi leader had nothing to do with the terrorist events, that should get some serious press, right?

Right?

Wrong.

Particularly considering Vice-President Dick Cheney's attempts to obfuscate the issue - in apparent contradiction of his boss - on last Sunday's Meet The Press .

(Disclaimer - my own paper was equally guilty, not referring to the Bush admission at all in Thursday's editions, even though we did run an op-ed piece that day entitled "Why Europe Must Not Buy Bush's Line").

Just watched the brilliant BBC film "Iraq - The Cameraman's Story", which was simply terrific.

Moving, compassionate, gritty and completely absorbing.

Huge tip of the hat to the people who went through what they did to try to help us understand what even a little more of what was going on over there; and a big - almost licence-fee-sized - thanks to the Beeb for this film.

Howard Kurtz wrtes in the Post about the "kingmaker" culture among the leading political correspondents in the wake of the Democrats' debate the other night, and does a good catchup job on what they had said previously about the candidates.

Nice line on Letterman the other night; commenting on Bush's speech asking congress for another $87bn for the so-called "war on terror".

After working out how much that would be for every American family, Dave says: "And when you're making out those checks, remember there's two 'l's in Halliburton."

Excellent column the other day by Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler, reflecting on the press's coverage of the post-9/11 and Iraq situations.

Here's a quote that summarises it pretty well:

Looking back, my own sense is that the administration was more skillful in switching focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein than the press was in detecting it early, and more skillful in linking Hussein to 9/11 in the public mind than the press was in challenging that, although it tried hard. It is my sense that the shift from strong support for the war in Afghanistan to more dissent against war in Iraq took a while to surface in the press, and some of the early public challenges and displays of disagreement were underplayed or missed.