Delete from multiple tables that may have a one-to-many relationship

NOTE: Conclusions here are provisional and input from a genuine SQL guru would be greatly appreciated.

SQL multiple table delete

Delete rows in three tables that share a key and satisfy a WHERE condition (in one of the tables). Table T3 will have a single row for each of these keys, as will table T2 for that matter, but table 1 will have multiple entries for each key.

The MySQL docs show up to two tables deleted, using three:

DELETE FROM t1, t2 USING t1, t2, t3 WHERE t1.id=t2.id AND t2.id=t3.id;

(This syntax does the same thing, but let's stick to the above, which is a little closer to English "DELETE t1, t2 FROM t1, t2, t3 WHERE t1.id=t2.id AND t2.id=t3.id;")

DELETE journal_t1, journal_t2
FROM journal_t1
LEFT JOIN journal_t2
ON journal_t1.key = journal_t2.key
WHERE journal_t1.key = '800001'

From:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/delete.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/comment.php?id=5721

So for what I need to do:

DELETE FROM t1, t2, t3 USING t1 LEFT JOIN t2 LEFT JOIN t3 WHERE t1.key = t2.key AND t2.key = t3.key

If your table names are longer than t1 you can provide table aliases in the from statement, and use that throughout.

Can't I just write "ON key" or something like that in place of the WHERE clause? That'd be so much prettier... ;-)