Before leaving this morning to take S*tchel for his 18-month checkup, I caught the bulk of the Tony Blair / John Howard press conference, where “reporters” peppered the two leaders with ridiculous, grandstanding “questions” about their culpability, as members of the Iraq coalition, in bringing terrorism “to the streets of London.”

Howard—much to his credit—seized the opportunity to point out the number of al Qaeda attacks (the Bali bombing, the 911 attacks) that took place before the Iraq war, and to remind the sneering, leftist ideologues in the press corp that Usama bin Laden first mentioned Australia as an enemy in the context of the liberation of East Timor.  Howard also noted—firmly, and likely with Spain in mind—that any country that allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorists is making a grave mistake.

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update: Glenn, who was watching too, has this to say:

Some idiot correspondent asked Blair if the attacks were his fault because of the Iraq war. And others are taking an equally negative line—one asks if the propaganda war against terror is being lost.

No—but if so, it’s because of people in the media like these. John Howard’s too polite to tell them to read Norm Geras, but he put them in their place with logic, noting that Bin Laden was unhappy about the liberation of East Timor and declared war on that basis long before the Iraq invasion.

Translation: You’re idiots, cowards, and political hacks. Yes! The preening, point-scoring irresponsibility of the press, which is if anything worse in Britain than in America, is one of the most striking things about this war, and it will be decades before it recovers. If it does.

Heh.  Indeed.

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update:  This seems particularly apt, too.

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update 2:  Transcript here.