With the news still fresh, I'd said on air that I hoped there was irrefutable proof that alZarqawi was in fact dead, because the timing was convenient for Washington, pushing a new report about CIA 'rendition' flights in Europe off the front pages. Nearly as convenient as the previous week's timing of the historic offer by the United States to enter direct talks with Iran. That very welcome piece of news coincidentally pushed off the front page allegations about a massacre of 24 Iraqis by US marines at Haditha, I mused aloud.

The phone started barking just as soon as it could find a signal to bring me the apoplexy of my Axis of Feeble friend, a Tory who thinks David Cameron is in fact Damien from The Omen, all grown up and ready to destroy his party with talk of windmills and no tax cuts.

"That's it, " he spat. "You've lost your bottle. You've got bloody Tribune-itis. You're afraid someone might think you're a neocon or something.

Or that Phoenix will write something nasty about you.

Bit late for that sort of weakkneed bollocks, isn't it?"

Not wanting to be struck off the invite list for the RightWing Conspiracy Christmas Party or, worse, to have to sit at the apostate's table with Francis Fukuyama and miss out on the latest gossip about plans for the post-Castro casinos in Havana (any day now . . . I can almost taste that first mojito at the blackjack table), I had to try and calm my friend down.

We're supposed to be cynical about claims by governments that they're changing the world for the better, remember? If we'd been more sceptical, we might not be in this mess. Neoconservatism spent 30 years exposing the fact that altruistic intentions and unlimited amounts of cash can't force through social engineering in Detroit;

then we suddenly decide we can do it in Baghdad with a discount Ikea nation-building flat-pack, missing the instructions and half the bolts, and then act surprised when the bureaucrats make a balls of it?

"This is loyalty, eh?" he snorted. "Seeing things through? Retreat to cynicism.

You didn't even read the bloody report about renditions, did you?"

He had a point. The Council of Europe report was written by a Swiss politician with a penchant for headline-grabbing terms like 'collusion' and 'spider's web' . . .

language so inflammatory, it masked how little was actually new in its claims. It even acknowledges that "the act of 'rendition' may not (in itself) constitute a breach of international human rights law".

(It's the alleged torture that's problematic. ) The report also repeats claims that Poland and Romania hosted secret CIA prisons but conceded there was no "proof, in the classical meaning of the term".

But I've never had a problem with snatching the worst of the baddies, per se. It's just that I want to keep the practice 'extraordinary'. When enough of it is going on that you need to build new prisons, it sounds suspiciously 'ordinary'. And while a handful of suspects might provide high-quality intelligence that saves thousands of lives, it's hard not to believe that diminishing returns kick in pretty quickly.

"Well, what about Zarqawi?" he asked, slightly less sure of himself. "You didn't even sound thrilled about it."

I'm not thrilled, I said. Yes, it's a good day for the good guys. Here's the bad guy who personally sawed off the head of Ken Bigley; a walking embodiment of what we're at war with. It could even be enough of a small victory to start a US withdrawal, now that the Iraqis finally have interior and defence ministers of their own. But at the moment, it feels like drift and fear of making any bold decisions, even ones that would take maximum advantage of the opportunity presented by killing Zarqawi.

"Right. Well that's a little more like it, " my semi-mollified Tory pal said, finally.

"Just don't go all David Cameron on this climatechange nonsense."

I've been meaning to talk to you about that, I said.