Just Give Me 50 More Years

Does anyone still believe this "wait until September" claptrap?

The U.S. ground forces commander in Iraq says he might need more time to assess the impact of the new security plan, beyond the September assessment President Bush and the Congress are expecting. Lieutenant General Ray Odierno made the statement Thursday during a news conference via satellite with reporters at the Pentagon. He also spoke about increased efforts to reach out to insurgent groups and a new threat some of his forces are facing as they move into new areas in and around Baghdad.

This is no different than a junkie asking for a few more lines of coke to satisfy his drug fix until he "goes clean for sure." In truth the junkie has no intention of going straight, and neither does the Bush Administration. They're war junkies, and they'll be damned if someone will tell them to get out of the land they worked not hard enough to conquer.

Tell you what, I have no problem giving these guys a few more months, as long as with each extension, we get to send somebody like Paul Wolfowitz over to be the mayor of Baghdad. Maybe after that Sen. Jim DeMint can fill in. After all, the Democrats are such "wimps" by talking about defeat, maybe he can go be the mayor of Baghdad and set an example!

After all, it's easy to be a war junkie, when you're not the one fighting the war.

Zoellick (you know, like Zelig)

So Robert Zoellick will replace Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, and while the initial reaction is certainly more favorable than it was toward his predecessor, well... he's still a Bush appointee, and as such he still has a cozy relationship with big business:

Some groups involved in promoting global health worry about Zoellick's free-market bent and his past support for trade agreements that critics viewed as favoring large pharmaceutical companies.

"It's impossible to imagine the same Zoellick who carried water" for the large pharmaceutical companies "being the kind of advocate African ministers of health need in order to expand their investments in salaries for doctors and nurses," said Asia Russell, director of international policy for Health GAP, which stands for (Global Access Project).

It really tells you something about how much George Bush values competence when the best that can be said about one of his nominees is that AT LEAST they're only ideological.

The Ballad of Paul Wolfowitz

This reads like a bad country song: "You lost your job and now you're losin' me."

PAUL Wolfowitz has really had a bad couple of weeks. He not only lost his job, he lost his girlfriend, too.

Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, was pushed out as president of the World Bank over a controversial pay and promotion package he arranged for his brunette girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza.

Sources say Riza, a brilliant feminist with a promising diplomatic career, was upset by all the publicity and the implication that she was getting ahead with the help of a powerful man. "She was furious about the embarrassment," said one source.

Let this be the last time I ever excerpt Page Six. But this one was too amusing to pass up.

Wolfowitz Out

Per AP.

I've already pretty much made my thoughts plain on this matter. But one other thing. Isn't it amazing the kind of accountability you can get when it's a GLOBAL body doing the oversight, instead of the US Congress? Not that the Democratic Congress is doing a bad job, but they have all sorts of institutional and political and mental constraints.

This isn't a ringing endorsement for global government, just pointing out the obvious.

Smell The Accountability

Looks like Wolfowitz is a goner.

World Bank officials say the bank's board is completing an "exit strategy" that will allow World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to resign this afternoon and "still save some face" over the issue of his efforts to seek a promotion and pay raise for his girlfriend at the bank.

The officials say the bank's board will accept Wolfowitz's resignation but will also acknowledge that the World Bank's Ethics Committee bears "some responsibility" for giving him bad advice on the issue of his girlfriend.

The decision is likely today, officials say, because Wolfowitz had been scheduled to leave tonight for a European trip.

Only took a few months and the full weight of the international community (and most important, the threat that the US wouldn't be allowed to accuse Wolfowitz' successor) to get the Bush Administration to accept defeat. See, we have checks and balances!

Again, there's a "getting Al Capone for tax evasion" angle to this, but you cannot go out into the world and rail against corruption in the developing world when you commit an obviously corrupt and nepotisitc act yourself, one that wouldn't be out of place in an African dictatorship. There are other things to concern one about Wolfowitz' stay at the World Bank, including his selective enforcement of those corruption standards based on who is in line with American military goals. But clearly, Wolfowitz needed to go.

The New Conservative Normal

It's interesting that the same critique made by the so-called establishment press against bloggers is now being employed by conservatives against liberals, namely that y'all are just too angry:

Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.

How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans?

This was written by Thomas Sowell, the guy who called for a military coup a couple weeks ago. And just yesterday we learned that abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph is taunting his victims and their families from prison. So I don't think there's a monopoly on anger in any political party.

But why I highlight this sorry excuse for a column is because it's clearly becoming a new conservative meme. Two years ago it was that liberals didn't have any ideas. Considering that the Bush Administration is following Democratic advice on issues like talking to Iran and Syria, increasing the size of the military, using the Agreed Framework as a base for negotiations with North Korea, etc., that line won't work anymore. Now it's that liberals are too angry. When Frank Luntz says it (and he did several times on Bill Maher last weekend) you know that's what they're going with. Of course, now they have to argue that liberals are too angry AND wusses who won't protect the country. Leading to a new class of angry wusses.

In fact, they are mistaking anger for passion. Whenever Democrats get passionate about issues and actually excite the public, they tend to win elections. When Republicans get passionate, it's about protecting their little fiefdom, which comes off as... angry:

An angry and bitter Paul Wolfowitz poured abuse and threatened retaliations on senior World Bank staff if his orders for pay rises and promotions for his partner were revealed, according to new details published last night.

Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

(Incidentally, the World Bank report says Wolfowitz violated rules and he should go.)

"You're just angry" is a fine way to shut down debate and disengage on ideas, but it's not likely to get very far. Especially when those tut-tutting about anger are some of the orneriest sould who've ever walked the earth.

Lone Wolfowitz

A top aide to Paul Wolfowitz, and this one is not his girlfriend, quit yesterday because he found it "very difficult to be effective in helping to advance the mission of the institution” given the current scandal. It's a sign of things to come:

Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul D. Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled Monday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank’s next chief, but only if Mr. Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said.

European officials had previously indicated that they wanted to end the tradition of the United States picking the World Bank leader. But now the officials are hoping to enlist American help in persuading Mr. Wolfowitz to resign voluntarily, rather than be rebuked or ousted.

The goal, they said, is to avert a public rupture of the bank board over a vote, possibly later this week, to sanction Mr. Wolfowitz. Even if the vote is a reprimand, they said, it could effectively make it impossible for him to stay on.

It really is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion, having Wolfowitz be forced to resign over getting his girlfriend a job. At the very least, getting his girlfriend a contract in Iraq should be more the standard. Or getting America into Iraq. But the fact that his signature role at the Bank was to fight international corruption, only to be revealed as corrupt himself, makes this seem to me like an apt punishment.

The Bank

This is funny stuff:



All this creativity from the progressive movement. Very encouraging. Now if it would only pay anyone money...

Apparently, Wolfowitz also got his chippy a contract to be an advisor to the Pentagon on Iraq in 2003. Man, I need to hook up with some Republican powerbroker to get myself on Easy Street. Any takers? Victoria Clark? Dana Perino?

You can take action and demand that such cronyism has no place at the World Bank at Avaaz.

Wolf Whistle

It's kind of amazing to me that, after all the harm he has caused the world, the indiscriminate slaughter of hundreds of thousands, the loss of America's moral credibility, the one thing that may take down Paul Wolfowitz as the head of the World Bank is that he got his girlfriend a plum job. This is busting Al Capone for tax evasion all over again.

We live in a strange world. What offends people's sensibilities, and what does not, constantly baffles me. A man can help push a country into an immoral war that is the greatest foreign policy disaster in generations, but when he pays off the girlfriend, noses are upturned. America has become a culture of scandal, but the filtering mechanism is broken so that each scandal is treated with equal relevance, whether it's Imus saying something racist or torturing prisoners in Iraq.

Strange.