I do not pretend to be unbiased here: Paul Wolfowitz is not just a courageous visionary, he happens to be one of the best men it has ever been my honor to know.

That said, Senator Kerry’s diatribe boggles the mind. The nonsense about “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq[,]” is ironic, to say the least, on two obvious levels.

First, Senator Kerry himself has made “repeated and serious miscalculations about” every important strategic issue in the last 30 years – wrong about the Vietcong, wrong about Latin America, wrong about the Soviet Union, wrong about defense spending, wrong about terrorism, etc. If he is bent on attacking someone, I’m not sure track record is the way for him in particular to go.

Second, one thing I left off the above list is Iraq – Sen. Kerry was spectacularly wrong about that, too. And Paul Wolfowitz was right.

The historians will have plenty of time someday to sort out the difficulties attendant to the occupation. They were certainly difficult enough for Sen. Kerry, who famously managed to miscalculate them in the same breath: having “voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” But while Sen. Kerry spent months arguing with himself about Saddam Hussein, Dep. Sec’y Wolfowitz was busy winning the war and holding fast in the belief that Muslims living under tyrannical terrorist regimes yearned for freedom just like everyone else, and that helping them achieve it was the best guarantor of American national security. We are now watching that vision transform the Middle East.

Pace Sen. Kerry, I can’t think of anyone better to lead the World Bank.