How close we feel to the victims is one thing. What we actually see, and the context in which we see it is another.

I hope that if Baghdad is bombed there will be TV cameras recording what happened. And I hope that the TV stations show us the record without any delay. I think we are entitled to that, and that we have a duty to watch it, regardless of how we feel about the rights and wrongs of it all.

I'm sure there will be brave camera crews recording events - as that film 9/11 reminded us, with those two young French brothers who filmed it as it happened, the firefighters and rescue workers are not the only heroes in a situation like that.

But I'm a lot less confident about the TV stations. showing us the footage.

Another plane disaster to remember - the Iranian Airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes on July 3rd 1988. 290 innocent people died. But of course that doesn't count as terrorism.