1 Boring Old Man

Wolfowitz Returns To Bush Administration As WMD Adviser

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reports that Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz has been rewarded with a new position in the Bush administration which will allow him to oversee classified intelligence and inform policies on WMD issues:…

Prior to the Iraq war, Wolfowitz established the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to skirt the intelligence community and peddle the most egregiously false claims of Iraqi WMD. In a Jan. 2003 speech, Wolfowitz referenced “Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from abroad” despite the fact that the claim had already been discredited by the CIA. A few months after the Iraq invasion was launched, Wolfowitz admitted that claims of Iraqi WMD was used as a political tool to achieve consensus for the war:…

When Wolfowitz left the World Bank in disgrace and landed at the American Enterprise Institute, he said he was leaving “open the possibility of rejoining the government.” Brookings analyst Philip Gordon speculated at the time that “the need for Senate confirmation would be a big political obstacle” for Wolfowitz to be named to another senior government post. Laura Rozen notes, however, that Wolfowitz’s new position “doesn’t require Senate confirmation.”

Paul Wolfowitz’s career continues to shine as a stunning example of what Paul Krugman has called the “comprehensiveness and generosity of the neocon welfare system.”