The BBC licked its lips and got stuck in when the 9/11 Commission reported, but funnily enough that only seems to have made them hungrier.

Of course the way BBC correspondent Jon Leyne puts it you might imagine that he's knocking the final nail into the coffin of the Bush doctrine by coming out and accusing the administration of propagandising the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. He says 'It has been a subtle operation. Only rarely do administration officials state the case quite as baldly as the Vice President, Dick Cheney, on Monday.'

It's startling isn't it, that Cheney and Bush choose this of all weeks to make their most prominent assertions (click this one for sure if you haven't seen the transcript already) of the link? :

'BORGER: Well, my reading of the report is that it says that, yes, contacts were made between al-Qaida and Iraq, but they could find no evidence that any relationship, in fact, had been forged between al-Qaida and Iraq.

'Vice Pres. CHENEY: And you're talking generally now, not just 9/11.

BORGER: Not just 9/11. And let's talk generally and then we'll get to 9/11.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Talk generally.

BORGER: Generally.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: That's not true. '

I have a strong feeling that the BBC, along with many other bien pensants, have been 'done' here. Commission reports, has linguistic constipation trying to diminish the 9/11 link; Cheney and Bush offer the laxative of real information for the public to reinforce what it already believes: that Saddam's links with Al Qaeda were potential, and maybe actual (forgive pun) dynamite.