The caricature that came true by Ian Gilmour

"I never quite understand what people mean by this neocon thing". This was the astonishing admission Tony Blair made to James Naughtie a year after Saddam Hussein had gone. At least since September 11 2001, the neocons, who were well described by Colin Powell in a conversation with Jack Straw as "fucking crazies", and who comprise Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), Abrams, Perle and others, have dictated the foreign policy of the Bush administration. They are, to coin a phrase, "the axis of evil" in Washington. Yet as late as 2004 the British prime minister did not "quite understand" about them.