E4X troubles

I originally posted this in the flash cs3 thread but I think it belongs here, sorry for the dupe!

I have an XMLList in the format:

<node>
  <inner>
      <item att="blue">
      <item att="red">
      <item att="green">
  </inner>
</node>
<node>
  <inner>
      <item att="orange">
      <item att="blue">
      <item att="yellow">
  </inner>
</node>
...

and I would like to return all nodes that have an attribute of a given value. For example if given “blue” I would want a return of an XMLList containing both nodes where “orange” would just return the second node. As far as I can figure it would be something like

myXMLList.(node.inner.*.@* == "blue");

but his does not work. If I name the attributes differently on every ‘item’ node it does work. I know I’m doing something wrong but can’t pinpoint it. Is it possible to do this in a short syntax or does this require looping? Thanks in advance!