I'm sorry for the lack of posts of late. I'm preoccupied with something at the moment, and it's limiting my time to post. Fear not, normal service will resume any moment now.

I should however say that those of you who have written to ask why I haven't posted about Katrina are right to point out that it's an odd ommission, but the explanation is not, as some have suggested, that I am simply ignoring it because it somehow negates my views about President Bush's foreign policy.

It's simply that I haven't anything to add that is more than banal. And I certainly have little to add to Andrew Sullivan (especially this post).

I have no hesitation in writing that President Bush's behaviour in this regard is indefensible on every level. It's also, from a purely self-serving political position, astonishingly inept. It is beyond my comprehension how he and his staff took so long to comprehend the magnitude of what happened. That of course pales into insignificance beside the more basic and important failure - to use his office to make sure that the right things were done.

But I fail to see how, as some people have suggested to me, the fact that his performance in this instance has been so lamentable somehow demonstrates that his foreign policy is wrong and that I should recant my support for the war, or for the idea of a liberal interventionist foreign policy. That is a total non-sequitur; the two are no more linked than the fact that England are about to retain the Ashes shows that Andrew Flintoff should manage the England football team.

More soon...