Black humour in Washington. A dying man is asked to choose between two donated hearts, a young athlete’s and that of Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence. “I’ll take Wolfowitz’s,” he decides. But the guy’s 61 years old, the doctors exclaim. “Yeah,” croaks the thrombo case, “but his heart’s never been used.” However, it seems the neoconservative architect of the Iraq war does have a beating heart — for a girlfriend who is causing ructions at the World Bank, Wolfowitz’s next posting if President George W Bush’s nomination prevails over European howls of distress. She is Shaha Ali...