Word: wolfowitzes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Just how clever is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual godfather of the war on Iraq? The memo he signed on Dec. 5 makes you wonder. The paper fleshed out for the public who is eligible to win prime contracts, funded by $18.6 billion of U.S. tax money, to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and supply its new army. Only firms from supportive nations can bid, which rules out those from antiwar countries like Russia, Germany, France and Canada. In its tact, timing and logic, the memo is a disaster. It was released just as the Bush Administration was launching...
...justification for the memo, such as it is, warrants setting out in full. "It is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States," writes Wolfowitz, "to limit competition for the prime contracts of those procurements to companies from the United States, Iraq, coalition partners and force-contributing nations. Therefore, it is clearly in the public interest to limit prime contracts to companies from these countries." As a logical proposition, that paragraph can be reduced to the following: Because A, therefore A--the sort of tautology that would get any high school student a failing grade...
...memo's argument that "limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq" (in other words, war naysayers have to join the occupation if they hope to fully cash in) "and in future efforts" (what future efforts, by the way?), its timing was idiotic. Wolfowitz's findings were posted on a Pentagon website just as President Bush was phoning other heads of state to ask them to give a fair hearing to former Secretary of State James Baker III, whom Bush has just deputed to help renegotiate Iraq's hefty debt. Of the $21 billion...
GLOBAL AGENDA: The baffling Wolfowitz memo...
...Saddam Iraq. Just as U.S. forces thought they were getting a handle on security, a series of coordinated, deadly attacks last week raised the Administration's Iraq troubles to an alarming new level. One day after rockets slammed into Baghdad's al-Rashid Hotel, where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying, the city was hit by four bombings within 45 minutes--three at police stations and one at the headquarters of the Red Cross. Thirty-four Iraqis and one American were killed, and more than 200 people were wounded. The insurgency looked bolder and more sophisticated as it advanced...