Everyone has their price . . .

. . . including Italy.

I'm glad those girls are free, and yet something still feels wrong.

A senior Italian politician says he believes a ransom of $1m or more was paid for the release of two female Italian aid workers kidnapped in Iraq.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said no money had been paid but MP Gustavo Selva described the denial as purely "official".

Yep. Something here is definitely bothering me.

Allegations of an Italian ransom, first made in a Kuwaiti newspaper, have been widely reported in Italy.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi fuelled the rumours by talking of "a difficult choice which had to be made", the BBC's Guto Harri notes from Rome.

Gustavo Selva is head of the Italian parliament's foreign affairs committee and a member of the National Alliance, one of the parties in the governing coalition.

"The young women's life was the most important thing," he told French radio on Wednesday.

"In principle, one should not give in to blackmail, but this time I think we had to give in..."

That's it. That's the problem. That one of our allies, with troops in the line of fire, gave the enemy a million dollars.

These aren't the kind of kidnappers you see on TV - you know, the ones that get the money and spend the rest of their lives on an island somewhere drinking and playing pee-pee touch with the local girls.

Nope. These guys are going to take that money and buy mayhem with it - more guns, more ammo, and more bombs. What's the going rate for suicide bombers these days? Or maybe they can bribe some officials with it. Any way you look at it, that money helped those two women (who were there willingly, knowing the dangers) and their families. And it's increased the danger faced by thousands more.

So what's the lesson for today? Kidnapping works.

Good going.