diff --git a/planet.py b/planet.py
index c278c06..881f756 100755
--- a/planet.py
+++ b/planet.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ if __name__ == "__main__":
     verbose = 0
     only_if_new = 0
     expunge = 0
+    debug_splice = 0
 
     for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
         if arg == "-h" or arg == "--help":
@@ -43,6 +44,8 @@ if __name__ == "__main__":
             only_if_new = 1
         elif arg == "-x" or arg == "--expunge":
             expunge = 1
+        elif arg == "-d" or arg == "--debug-splice":
+            debug_splice = 1
         elif arg.startswith("-"):
             print >>sys.stderr, "Unknown option:", arg
             sys.exit(1)
@@ -65,6 +68,20 @@ if __name__ == "__main__":
 
     from planet import splice
     doc = splice.splice()
+
+    if debug_splice:
+        from planet import logger
+        logger.info('writing debug.atom')
+        debug=open('debug.atom','w')
+        try:
+            from lxml import etree
+            from StringIO import StringIO
+            tree = etree.tostring(etree.parse(StringIO(doc.toxml())))
+            debug.write(etree.tostring(tree, pretty_print=True))
+        except:
+            debug.write(doc.toprettyxml(indent='  ', encoding='utf-8'))
+        debug.close
+
     splice.apply(doc.toxml('utf-8'))
 
     if expunge: