It's All in the Family

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: MISFEASANCE, MALFEASANCE, EXPOSED, DISGRACED, FIRED . . . . HIRED!

And he has been through that sequence not once but twice – first when he was kicked upstairs from his disastrous fraudulent performance as Deputy Secretary of Defense and was immediately hired as President of the World Bank, and most recently when he was kicked out as President of the World Bank and instantly hired by the American Enterprise Institute, a so-called “think tank”, as a visiting “scholar”. (A “think tank” is Washingtonese for a propaganda-generating organization in scholarly guise, and a place to go when you’ve lost your job.)

Wolfowitz is the person primarily responsible for lying the US into the catastrophic holocaust of Iraq – predicting the invasion would be a "cake walk", that the Iraqis would welcome the aggressors with singing and dancing, and that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily”. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell initially blocked Wolfowitz’ war schemes, but Wolfowitz, along with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, held secret meetings about invading Iraq from which Powell was excluded.

During Wolfowitz' pre-war testimony before Congress, he ridiculed General Eric K. Shinseki's estimates of the size of the post war occupation force and estimated that fewer than 100,000 troops would be necessary in the war. General Shinseki had testified that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq.

Wolfowitz testified:
‘There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.’
In 2006, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid testified to Congress that General Shinseki's estimate had proved correct. In July 2007 the US has at least 154,000 troops in Iraq, with 30,000 sent over as the “surge”. That’s about twice what Wolfowitz said would be needed, and events show that it is still insufficient.

Eventually Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz left the Bush administration as total failures, and Wolfowitz was punished by Bush & Co. with a nomination to be president of the World Bank. Criticism was widespread in European media. The former chief economist for the World Bank said that if Wolfowitz became its president, "'The World Bank will once again become a hate figure.” But the nomination was, of course, praised by the US press.

Wolfowitz’ presidency brought not only protests, but also a gigantic salary for Wolfowitz’ girlfriend, and loudly protested appointments of two of his Bush administration buddies, Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems, as his close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts. Basically, Wolfowitz stole from the World Bank to enrich his friends and was properly fired . . . although he called it a resignation.

End of the line for Wolfowitz, right? Shouldn’t he be looking at the “Help Wanted” ads or considering a career in Burger King management? Oh, no. As soon as he walks out the door of the World Bank he walks into the American Enterprise Institute -- which just happens to be home to other leading advocates of the Iraq war, including omnipresent Richard Perle (ex chairman of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, who has at least as many reasons to be jobless as Paul Wolfowitz has), former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, and Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Cheney.

It’s like a family reunion.