Loony meets butcher

Now that Dr Blix has done his work, how will Saddam Hussein cope with the latest threat from the West to both his political stability and his sanity? It seems that, as a softening-up exercise before vaporising Baghdad with expensive ordnance, we have begun to export British lunatics to Iraq. And, because this is total war; because we are seriously angry with Saddam, it is not quite enough that we should dispatch George Galloway. We have gone further. We have thought the unthinkable. We have pushed the envelope. This week, cruelly, we have deployed our Weapon of Mash Deshtruction.

You can be assured that by teatime the Iraqi dictator will be in a befuddled state of mind. He may also be bored to the point of expiry. And this is because, at his right-hand side, sipping a mug of tea, puffing on his bloody pipe, and gabbling endlessly about the Chartists and the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and perhaps even reading aloud crucial passages from his numbing contribution to the political debate, Arguments for Socialism, will be Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn.