Mark Steyn (who is still under a fatwa of eternal torment following his heinous conflation of bike paths with a certain raging dwarf) hoists some of Britain’s most idiotic columnists on their own petards: The pundits in love with doom and gloom.

"It is hard not to hate George Bush,” wrote [Sir Max] Hastings the other day. “His ignorance and conceit, his professed special relationship with God, invite revulsion. A few weeks ago, I heard a British diplomat observe sagely: `We must not demonise Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.’ Why not? The US defence secretary and his assistant have implemented coalition policy in Iraq in a fashion that makes Soviet behaviour in Afghanistan in the 1970s appear dextrous.”

Does that sound like a Daily Telegraph editor? Former editor, I hasten to add, thank God. Wolfowitz is a demonic figure to the anti-war types for little reason other than that his name begins with a big scary animal and ends Jewishly. But, if you want to know what he’s really like, ask Ann Clwyd: “He was a very charming man, an intellectual,” the Welsh firebrand told the Observer. Just so. I’ve been in his presence on a couple of occasions - he’s very soft-spoken, thoughtful, not in the least bit lupine. He can reel off the names of gazillions of Iraqis he’s been in touch with for years - Kurds, Shias, Sunnis.

Hastings mocks these contacts as “Iraqi stooges”. But better a stooge than a vast anonymous tide of native extras, which is how Sir Max, whose Rolodex doesn’t appear to be brimming with Ramadi and Mosul phone numbers, sees them. Where’s the real “ignorance and conceit” here? No one who knows any Iraqis, as Ms Clwyd does, would compare Wolfowitz with the Soviets.