Wolfie On His Way Out
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on May 8th, 2007 8:01 am by HL
Aide Decamps; Wolfie’s Next
The Village Voice
by Harkavy
Wolfowitz Saudi Girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza
Paul Wolfowitz‘s move from the Pentagon to the World Bank in April 2005 was accompanied by music, a parade of marching soldiers, plenty of photographs, and flowery speeches — and even a guest appearance by his estranged wife and their daughter.
(See my May 1, 2005 item, “Wolfowitz Leaves Pentagon Without Causing Further Casualties.”)
His impending exit from the World Bank will be quieter. Likely his security guards will usher him out the back door.
Photo opportunities are unlikely, especially now that his personal photographer, Kevin Kellems, has left the building ahead of him. Kellems, the former aide to Dick Cheney whom Wolfie brought to the bank as a $240,000-a-year publicist (he shot the photos of Wolfie with Bono and Bob Geldof back in ’05), has quit the bank.
Kellems will always be remembered from his bit part in Fahrenheit 9/11 as the “keeper of the comb” for Wolfie.
But good grooming does not a war architect make…..
The only question remaining is who will leave the bank next: Wolfie or his aide Robin Cleveland, the former Boeing-scandal figure who Wolfie brought to the bank from the White House budget office and who signed off on Riza’s move.
HLs Take
Very Interesting reading…Check out this passage from the writers 2005 scoop about Wolfie getting Riza the job (Click through and read the whole thing very illuminating….
In the world of political appointees, however, no one takes a back seat to Liz Cheney (left). She’s now Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, and her bureau has taken over the issuance of the Weekly Status Report, which charts the Bush regime’s “progress” in Iraq and is notable for its extreme fudging of statistics about how many Iraqi cops and soldiers are ready to take over their chaotic country. But Liz Cheney has been a player, by virtue of her daddy, for a few years now. He’s simply returning the favor. As Slate‘s Timothy Noah pointed out last year, Dick Cheney probably owed his Vietnam War draft deferment to the birth of daughter Liz.
Now that she’s fully grown, she’s a key architect of our muddled foreign policies in the Middle East — or at least that’s the job her name earned her. Keep reading, and I’ll give you an example of her crucial role in the disastrous Iraq occupation.
Back in the summer of 2003, when it was already apparent that the Bush regime hadn’t adequately planned for the aftermath of its unjustified invasion of Iraq, the Washington Post’s Peter Slevin and Dana Priest wrote a piece called “Wolfowitz Concedes Iraq Errors,” tracing back that disastrous fumbling. The July 24, 2003, story noted:
- The U.S. occupation, now costing $4 billion a month, has no clear end. And an assessment by outside experts commissioned by the Pentagon warned last week that the window of opportunity for postwar success is closing.
Now the occupation costs closer to $6 billion a month, and any “window of opportunity” in Baghdead has probably been shattered by the nonstop explosions these days.
Throughout 2002, as the invasion was being planned, British officials warned that the Pentagon wasn’t planning for the aftermath, as the Downing Street Memo and other documents now have confirmed. Of course, Hurricane Katrina shows that the Bush regime isn’t too sharp when it comes to any aftermath.
In the case of Katrina, we’re paying the cost of unjustified inaction before a crisis. In the case of Iraq, we’re paying the cost of unjustified action that caused a crisis.
We’ve known for quite a while that in 2002, the top officials of the Bush regime ignored State and Pentagon careerists when it came to planning a post-war occupation. Here’s a passage from the Post story that elaborates on this:
- Officials critical of the occupation planning said some problems could have been predicted — or were, to no avail, by experts inside and outside the Pentagon.
Before the invasion, for example, U.S. intelligence agencies were persistent and unified in warning the Defense Department that Iraqis would resort to “armed opposition” after the war was over. The Army’s chief of staff warned that a larger stability force would be needed.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his team disagreed, confident that Iraqi military and police units would help secure a welcoming nation.
