Meet the Creep: Paul Wolfowitz.

So it seems Paul Wolfowitz is about to be forced out of another high status position. For weeks now he has been under fire in his capacity as head of the World Bank. He's previously served in positions in the US Defense and State Departments, and was ambassador to Indonesia. But he achieved his highest amount of public exposure as one of the chief architects of the War in Iraq. In order to understand why Wolfowitz is so unliked in the international sphere, one need only be exposed to the basic facts of his political career.

As a young man Wolfowitz embraced idealism. He participated in Martin Luther King's March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and was committed to working to prevent nuclear war. But he eventually fell under the sway of conservative academics Allan Bloom and Albert Wohlstetter, and subsequently neoconservative idol Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. Wohlstetter and Strauss were figures obsessed with military primacy. When Wolfowitz later became a polical science professor at Yale, one of his students was the now-disgraced Cheney aide- Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Wolfowitz' work at Yale primarily concerned nuclear proliferation in the Middle east.

When George Bush, Sr. set up his Team B to undermine detente between the Soviet Union and the United States during the seventies, Wolfowitz was assigned to the committee. The group attempted to make the case that the USSR was bent on world hegemony. Team B made all kinds of wild claims about supersecret weapons systems and the like, but they were proven to be wrong years after the fact. Despite the inaccuracies, Wolfowitz and Team B were successful in shifting the US approach toward the Soviets back to a more aggressive stance.

Shortly after this, Wolfowitz became obessed about Iraq. He believed that Iraq could pose a serious threat to the Persian Gulf oil fields and the security of Saudi Arabia (a close ally of the US). He also identified himself as one of the strongest defenders of Israeli interests in the US government. Policy studies that Wolfowitz issued laid the groundwork for subsequent Middle Eastern policy under the two Bush presidential administrations. Then in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Wolfowitz and Libby were tasked (by George H. W. Bush) with writing a defense strategy for the United States in the post- Cold War world. Their plan recommended "pre-emption" and "unilateralism" as an approach to world dominance. These ideas were later incorporated into the post- 9/11 "Bush Doctrine".

Wolfowitz was a charter member of the Project for a New American Century in 1997. The organization's aim was global leaderhip through military strength. Wolfowitz himself drafted a letter to President Clinton asking him to reject multilateralism, divest US interests from the United Nations, and invade Iraq. He specifically suggested that the US support Ahmed Chalabi's opposition movement (with finances, arms and intelligence). As we've seen, Wolfowitz would get his opportunity to put many of his ideas into practice as Deputy Secretary of Defense in Dubya's cabinet. Beginning on the day of the 9-11 attacks, an alliance between Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz continually pushed for the invasion of Iraq. Wolfowitz asserted that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily". So he adopted a plan to convince both the doubters in the Bush Administration (like the State Department) and the American public of the threat. At its center, his plan employed the spectre of "weapons of mass destruction".

But Wolfowitz lacked the confidence in the intelligence branch to promote his cause for him. In order to make the WMD case Wolfowitz went back to the original Team B model, and formed the Office of Special Plans- which was to be run solely out of the defense department. In addition to trying to fabricate evidence of a store of chemical, biological, and conventional WMD's, the OSP was also meant to prove a (wholly fictional) link between the Hussein regime and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately the OSP became the chief source of intelligence for Bush and Cheney, and we are now painfully aware of the results. Wolfowitz also notoriously said that it would take less than 100K troops to stabilize post-war Iraq, and that the occupation costs would be low because we could sell the nation's own oil resources to finance the entire operation. Of course Wolfowitz' economic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq after the war was an abject failure.

Yet that didn't stop George W. Bush from appointing Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. Over the objections of several prominent economists, he was confirmed and assumed the position on June 1, 2005. Almost immediately Wolfowitz generated controversy by appointing two former members of the Bush administration as advisors. In addition, other appointees drew fire for trying to inject their conservative politics (including opposition to family planning and resistance to the reality of climate change) into official World Bank business. Wolfowitz also applied his efforts against corruption unevenly, clearly skewing his approach according to US foreign policy priorities.

The latest scandal at the World Bank revolves around Wolfowitz' relationship with an employee of the organization, Shaha Ali Riza (A Libyan Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia). Wolfowitz left his wife of thirty-some years to date Riza. Although she was employed at the World Bank before Wolfowitz' appointment, the Bank's charter prohibits such an involvement between an employee and supervisor. Riza was enmeshed in Iraqi reconstruction efforts, and was a vehement advocate of the 2003 invasion. Since this impropriety hit the media, Riza has received a significant promotion (and raise) and gone to work with the US State Department under Lynn Cheney- charged with promoting "democracy" in the Middle East. Yet she is STILL in the employ of the World Bank. I guess what comes around, goes around, eh?