Wolfowitz to Run the World (Bank)

[XXPANTHAXX]

Wolfowitz to Run the World (Bank)

David Corn, The Nation
03/16/2005 @ 2:37pm

First George W. Bush picks UN-basher John Bolton to be
ambassador to the United Nations. Then he nominates Karen
Hughes, a champion spinner who has little foreign policy
experience, to be under secretary of state in charge of
enhancing the United States' image abroad. Next, Bush taps
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to run the World
Bank.

The Wolfowitz nomination is a win for the Pentagon but a loss
for the world. Wolfowitz's achievements as a warmonger may
say little about his views on international development, but
his record on Iraq is one of miscalculation and exaggeration.
And the poor of the world deserve a World Bank president with
better judgment.

A leading neocon, Wolfowitz was a chief cheerleader for the
war in Iraq--even before 9/11. In the first months of the
Bush administration, Wolfowitz advocated toppling Saddam
Hussein by sending in US troops to seize Iraq's oil fields
and establish a foothold. Then, according to Wolfowitz, the
rest of the country would rise up against Hussein. As Bob
Woodward reported, then-Secreatry of State Colin Powell
called this idea "lunacy."

Right after the horrific attacks of September 11, Wolfowitz
again called for attacking Iraq. He argued that Iraq would be
a much easier target than Afghanistan. So much for his
strategic sense. And before the invasion of Iraq he was a key
pitchman for the phony case that Saddam Hussein presented a
direct WMD threat to the United States. For example, on
December 2, 2002, he said, "[Bush's] determination to use
force if necessary is because of the threat posed by Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction."

At a subsequent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations,
Wolfowitz claimed the WMD case for war was "very convincing."
(After the invasion, WMD hunters David Kay and Charles
Duelfer concluded there had been no WMDs. And a Senate
intelligence committee report noted that the prewar
intelligence had been flawed--that is, not all that
convincing.)

Shortly after the start of the war, Wolfowitz declared there
had been "no oversell" of the WMD threat. No "oversell"? He
said there were WMDs; there were no WMDs. Isn't that, by
definition, overselling? Wolfowitz did tell Vanity Fair that
the WMD argument had been quite convenient: "For bureaucratic
reasons. we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,
because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." It
just happened to be the only reason deployed by Bush and
Wolfowitz that made the immediate safety of the country the
paramount issue.

But with the WMDs clearly missing in action, Wolfowitz tried
to pivot. Appearing before Congress, he explained that
intelligence is "an art not a science" and that the absence
of WMDs did not mean "that anybody misled anybody." Yet
before the war he had depicted the intelligence not as art"
but as hard-and-fast and "very convincing" material.

When the Bush White House was pushing--or manipulating--the
case for war, Wolfowitz sided with the administration hawks
who believed Hussein's regime had a significant connection to
al Qaeda, despite the absence of credible evidence. He
pressed the CIA and FBI to find proof of the unconfirmed
report that 9/11 ringleader Mohamad Atta had met with an
Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague--even after the two
intelligence agencies had already investigated the matter and
had found nothing to corroborate the allegation.

While selling the war to come, Wolfowitz told Congress the
conflict in Iraq and the subsequent reconstruction would be
financed by oil sales. That, too, was wrong. And Wolfowitz
shares responsibility for the administration's inadequate
planning for the post-invasion challenges in Iraq. General
Tommy Franks, who commanded the Iraq invasion, told Woodward
that he had urged Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld to prepare for the aftermath, but the pair did not
do so.

When Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki suggested that
hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to get the
job done in Iraq, Wolfowitz scoffed at him and said Shinseki
was "wildly off the mark." Misreading the task ahead, he also
naively remarked, "Like the people of France in the 1940s,
[the Iraqis] view us as their hoped-for liberators." Was that
not another "oversell"?

Perhaps developments in Iraq and the Middle East will move
toward Wolfowitz's grand neocon vision. The elections in Iraq
were a positive and encouraging event. But the war is not
over, and all the consequences of the war are not yet
realized or recognized--even though some direct (and still-
mounting) costs are clear: 1500 dead Americans, tens of
thousands of dead Iraqi civilians (perhaps over 100,000),
$200 billion in taxpayer funds, a dramatic drop in the United
States' standing abroad, the creation (according to the
National Intelligence Council) of a new breeding ground for
anti-American terrorists), and the uncontrolled dispersal of
equipment that could be used to produce unconventional
weapons. This war, as of yet, is no slam-dunk.

So what's Wolfowitz's reward for his various misjudgments and
exaggerations? The fellow who is co-culpable for diminishing
US credibility overseas and who symbolizes arrogance and
hubris in policymaking is handed a plum position. (Outgoing
World Bank president James Wolfensohn got to play cello with
Yo-Yo Ma.)

What signal does it send to the rest of the world,
particularly those troubled nations that need effective
assistance from the World Bank? It seems the White House
doesn't care. After the Bolton appointment, why worry about
this one? The G8 nations, the Europeans will roll over. It's
good to be king in a unipolar world.

In 1967, Robert McNamara, the captain of the Vietnam tragedy,
left his post as secretary of defense to become president of
the World Bank. So Bush is establishing a bipartisan
tradition: you screw up a war, you get to run the World Bank.
With this announcement, the impoverished of the world have
less reason for hope.

*******************

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