Newsweek's cover piece last week on the $87bn Money Pit was a great pot-boiler which NBC News continued to stir last night with Chip Reid's piece on how Halliburton (from whom Dick Cheney apparently receives 'deferred compensation', whatever that is in legitimate accountancy terms) is contracted to the DoD (without a bid process, incidentally) to import gasoline into Iraq.

I know it sounds ridiculous, since the country is sitting on the world's third-largest stash of oil, but the truly ridiculous thing is that Halliburton are basically charging the US taxpayer $2.65 a gallon to ship gas in which gets sold on the streets of Baghdad for about 20 cents.

It's estimated that Halliburton have overcharged the US government by a total of about $100m so far.

Nice job by John Roberts on the CBS Evening News tonight of picking up on Bush's feeble and transparently opportunistic attempt to link the awful continuing attacks on US personnel in Iraq - which are now up 50 per cent on this time last month - with 9/11...

Mr President, you should be ashamed. In reality the only thing the two scenarios have in common is a massive under-preparedness.

We weren't prepared for 9/11 at least in part because the FBI had spent the best part of the last three years looking for dirt on a former president, while we haven't been prepared for this deadly end-game in Iraq simply because we started the conflict without an exit strategy.

$87bn.... God help us..