Not too surprising the poor countries are getting poorer.

Angry Wolfowitz in four-letter tirade

Richard Adams in Washington
Tuesday May 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

An angry and bitter Paul Wolfowitz poured abuse and threatened
retaliations on senior World Bank staff if his orders for pay rises
and promotions for his partner were revealed, according to new details
published last night.

Under fire for the lavish package given to Shaha Riza, a World Bank
employee and Mr Wolfowitz's girlfriend when he became president, an
official investigation into the controversy has found that Mr
Wolfowitz broke bank rules and violated his own contract - setting off
a struggle between US and European governments over Mr Wolfowitz's
future.

Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international
leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If
they ***** with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to ***** them too."

__________________________________________________

Another admirable member of the "Family Values" Bush Crime Family
vomits.

Well?

What dirt did he have on the World Bank?


Bret Cahill

Reconsidering Impeachment
Bob Burnett
05.15.2007


In Berkeley, it's difficult to travel more than a few blocks without
seeing an "Impeach Bush" bumper sticker. And whenever I write a column
about the 43rd President, I receive emails suggesting that the
simplest solution to America's problems is his impeachment.
Nonetheless, I'd never taken the possibility of impeachment seriously
until this week, when I realized I've had enough: I want Dubya to go
down.

The movement to impeach George W. Bush started around Labor Day, in
2002, when it become clear that he was determined to invade Iraq. In
March 2003, it gathered momentum when many Americans joined marches
and silent vigils to protest what we considered to be an ill-
considered and dangerous action. Bush was enormously popular and many
"blue" Americans felt we had lost our country: we couldn't understand
why so many of our fellow citizens supported Dubya; or why they voted
to reelect him in 2004. In those dark days, the impeachment movement
seemed to be the last refuge of die-hard liberals: a defiant stance
that had little hope of success.

Times changed: in 2006, Democrats took control of Congress and Bush's
popularity rating sank to Nixonian depths. Meanwhile, evidence of his
malfeasance exploded. Suddenly, even conservative Republicans were
criticizing the President, calling for him to abandon his customary
intractability and engage in real bipartisanship.

As the impeachment movement grew stronger, I resisted its call for
several reasons. While I've never doubted that there are strong legal
grounds for Bush's impeachment, I've been troubled by pragmatic
considerations: if Dubya was removed from office, ***** Cheney would
become President; impeachment proceedings would tie up the 110th
Congress at a time when congressional energy needs to be focused on
undoing Bush Administration mistakes -- such as ending the war in
Iraq; and the impeachment process would further polarize a nation that
has become far too adversarial and combative. When the Speaker of the
House, Nancy Pelosi, said that impeachment was "off the table," I
agreed: it's one thing to be right and quite another thing to be
effective, I thought.

My thinking changed after I read George Packer's magnificent
commentary in the May 14th New Yorker magazine , No Blame, No Shame.
Packer asks the key question: "Why has it become impossible to admit a
mistake in Washington and accept the consequences?" I pondered the
fact that "under the Bush Administration no senior civilian official
or military officer has been held responsible for what will probably
turn out to be the greatest foreign policy disaster in American
history." Then, I had an epiphany: I understood the "why" Packer asks
about. The reason why Bush never admits a mistake or accepts
consequences is because he believes he can get away with it. He was
raised in a system of privilege where there's no accountability.

George Bush's unwillingness to be held personally responsible reflects
on more than his Administration. It's a symptom of a deeper malaise
that infects American politics and, sadly, much of American society.
It's what I think of as the dual justice system. I first ran into this
system many years ago when I was an idealistic probation officer in
Orange County: courthouse habitués informed me that the defendants
whose cases I handled were exclusively from the lower and middle
class, because there was a different system of justice for the rich
and powerful - patricians didn't go through the same process that
plebeians did. Whether their crime was petty theft or murder, the
elite received different treatment than they would have if they had
been poor or a person of color.

There are two systems of justice in the United States: one for the
rich and powerful and a far different system for everyone else. Rob a
bank and you go to prison; loot a savings and loan as an executive and
you're likely to get a hefty fine, if that. Every day, we read about
corporate executives who mismanaged their firms, caused the layoffs of
thousands of poorly paid workers, and then danced away with millions
of dollars of severance pay. We see what happened to the architects of
the disaster in Iraq: Bremer, Franks, and Tenet got the "Presidential
Medal of Freedom," Rice and Wolfowitz got promoted, as did the
invasion supporters within the Pentagon. There was no accountability;
they got away with it. So far.

That's why the impeachment of George W. Bush would send an important
signal to other elected officials, and the power elite. It would be an
indication that the American people are tired of Washington business-
as-usual and serious about holding our leaders accountable for their
actions. I'm not suggesting that the focus be exclusively on Bush,
because I think his whole crew - Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, and Rumsfeld,
among others - should go down, too. However, the logical place to
start is with the guy at the top: the decider-in-chief.

Bob Dylan once wrote "even the President of the United States
sometimes has to stand naked." This is the time for the trappings of
power to be stripped from George Bush. He needs to stand naked before
the law and take full responsibility for the failures of his
Administration. Impeach Dubya.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/reconsidering-impeachment_b_48493.html

An interesting commentary on the apparently rapid disappearance of support for
the administration's military policies among Pentagon flag officers is the fact
that the most recent appointee to be the "Czar" of the fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan could not be found among the ranks of four star generals and
admirals currently serving on active duty. How sad for the administration that
they had to dig into the ranks of ambitious three star flag officers to find
someone willing to do their bidding in exchange for his fourth star.

How sad for the nation that our government has fallen to such a low state.