George Tenet tried to rewrite his own role in history by going on 60 Minutes last night and calling the Iraq invasion "a national tragedy" that even he knew four years ago was unwarranted and unjustified.

But his own war-like words at the time put the lie to that claim. I'm not talking about his "slam-dunk" language. I'm quoting from his little-reported but highly public prayer a month before the invasion. Going public last night to promote his book, Tenet had this little colloquy with CBS's Scott Pelley:

Pelley: "You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make any sense to you today?"

Tenet: "In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none. It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."

Let's go back to early February 2003, a little more than a month before the unjustified invasion.

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell made the Bush regime's case for war at the U.N. Security Council, even (straight out of Jonny Quest) showing slides of cartoony drawings of mobile WMD labs racing across the Iraqi desert.

The next day, February 6, was the National Prayer Breakfast, where the blood lust was palpable.

The AP's Ron Fournier wrote a perfunctory account of "the 51-year-old tradition that brings hundreds of lawmakers, military leaders, foreign heads of state, and spiritual leaders together in prayer." The crowd, wrote Fournier, "included 56 senators, 240 House members, first lady Laura Bush, National Security Director Condoleezza Rice, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA Director George Tenet."

Fournier dutifully quoted Bush (read the POTUS's own version):

"This is testing time for our country. At this hour, we have troops that are assembling in the Middle East. There's oppressive regimes that seek terrible weapons. We face an ongoing threat of terror."

Tenet also spoke at the prayer breakfast, as I previously noted, and nobody was more hawkish. His words didn't make news. (C-SPAN last showed the event video on February 9, 2003.) But this is what he said, I kid you not. The CIA director walked to the podium and, with no introductory remarks, intoned his own cartoonish view of the world:

God teaches us to be resolute in the face of evil, using all of the weapons and armor that the word of God supplies.

In chapter six of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we're told, Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stance against the devil's schemes.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities, against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Therefore, put on the whole armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of justice in place and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes with the gospel of peace.

Take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray at all times.

Breastplates? And you wonder why Saracens have referred to Bush and his henchmen as "Crusaders"?

Leave aside the fact that the armor supplied by the Defense Department was inadequate — as soldiers told SecDeaf Don Rumsfeld to his face and as my colleague Tom Robbins wrote about in an October 2004 story about soldiers' families.

You can also leave aside the rest of Tenet's homily, which focused on "forgiveness and mercy." That's because Tenet sounded even more like an Old Testament character, condescending and patronizing — you know, slay your enemies but be charitable toward them:

At the same time, the word of God also calls us to a life of forgiveness and mercy. . . . We are told, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back, despairing of no one, and your reward will be great and you will be the sons and daughters of most high, because He is kind to the ungrateful and selfish.

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you give will be the measure you get back. The word of the Lord.

Tenet then sat down. Four years later, the war he supported and promoted has killed as many Americans in Iraq as the number killed in New York City on 9/11.

And now, having put down the good book and picked up his own, Tenet's preaching a different tune.

"The hardest part of all of this has just been listening to this for almost three years," he told Pelley, adding:

"Listening to the vice president go on Meet The Press on the fifth year of 9/11, and say, 'Well, George Tenet said, "slam dunk." ' As if he needed me to say slam dunk to go to war with Iraq. And they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. You know, 'Look at what the idiot told us, and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous. Let's stand up. This is why we did it. This is why, this is how we did it. And let's tell, let's everybody tell the truth."

Besieged on all fronts, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is trying to hire a bodyguard, according to an internal bank job listing obtained by the Voice.

You'd better hurry, because applications for the job of "personal security agent" assigned to the prexy close April 30. And you'd better be really good because the "personal security agent" has "the goal of protecting the principal [the bank president] from physical threat or embarrassment."

Good luck with that. And good luck finding someone inside the bank to protect Wolfowitz. His imported aides — including Boeing scandal figure Robin Cleveland and ex-Cheney flack Kevin Kellems — have been unable to keep him from being lambasted in the corridors of the bank HQ, which is only a few hundred feet from the White House.

Rumblings about Wolfie's search for a bodyguard were revealed this morning by Alex Wilks on worldbankpresident.org, an excellent source of news on the current meltdown. Subsequently, the Voice obtained a copy from elsewhere of the job posting.

It's a one-year job, renewable for up to three years. I won't apply for the post, though I'm mentally ill and thus would be able to buy a gun. But the job does sound perfect for Bernie Kerik, who started his career as a bodyguard for the Saudi royalty before attaching himself to Rudy Giuliani, promising much and delivering nothing in Iraq, and almost becoming the nation's chief bodyguard as Homeland Security chief.

The situation's funny enough without that speculation. Here are some comments in reaction to the job posting, gleaned from the bank's internal bulletin board:

This is hysterical, but one has to wonder in the era of zero growth budgets why the Bank needs to provide a professional level position to a personal bodyguard for its belleaguered president. The position description calls for "protecting the principal from physical threat or embarrassment." In all fairness, Mr. Wolfowitz, I think it's WAY too late to protect you from embarrassment.

Protecting Wolfowitz from embarrassment must be the hardest job in the world. ... Whoever takes this job needs to be ready to embarrass themselves in the process of saving PW from himself and must also be ready to mend socks and lick combs as well.

Another personal security Agent position to guard PW at all times ... this must be in addition to the 12-member protective secret service — yes, special agents — that work around the clock 24-7 since he went on board at the Bank. If he is not in "his previous job", why has he kept such a team at the Bank?

I guess the keeper of the comb wasn't up to the task.
Will the term last up to three years even if the protectee only lasts three more days?

Hmmm. I don't know whether Wolfie is being guarded by a detail left over from his days at the Pentagon. But maybe he knew back on April 4, when this job was first posted, that he wouldn't last and set in motion a plan to protect the next World Bank president.

When Paul Wolfowitz's reign at the World Bank soon comes to an end, we'll remember that one of his first hubristic acts set the tone: He hired publicly disgraced White House budget aide Robin Cleveland as a high-priced "counselor" at the bank.

Reproduced above is Cleveland's e-mail signing off on the move in late 2006 of Wolfie gal pal Shaha Ali Riza from the State Department to the Foundation for the Future (actually just a boondoggle of the State Department, as the Wall Street Journal's Neil King brilliantly noted recently).

Cleveland wrote on behalf of the world's most powerful bank, "The Bank concurs with this proposal." (Find this and other juicy stuff in the World Bank's own Ethics Committee report.)

Criminy! Here's something eerie about Cleveland: She was only available in the spring of 2005 to join the World Bank and start writing personnel memos for Wolfie because her role in the Boeing/Air Force tanker scandal had just doomed her tenure at the OMB. She was a key figure in that Boeing scandal, which ousted a Secretary of the Air Force. Forgotten this particular sorry episode? Here's a hint from a February 2005 Washington Post story:

Former Air Force secretary James G. Roche violated two military ethics rules when he urged a defense contractor to hire the brother of a senior Office of Management and Budget official while the Air Force was trying to win OMB endorsement of a new $30 billion aircraft leasing program, according to the Defense Department's top auditor.

Who was the senior OMB official? Robin Cleveland. Who outed her smarmy e-mail exchanges with Roche? Not only the estimable Defense watchdog POGO but also John McCain, starting in 2003.

(See McCain's demand letter to SecDeaf Don Rumsfeld and this June 2005 Bush Beat item about Roche and other members of the Pentagon's racket club.)

So, by February 2005, Cleveland was clearly on her way out at OMB. Up steps Wolfie and hires her for the World Bank, where she signs off on personnel moves for Wolfie's girlfriend.

And Wolfie wanted the world to believe that he was a corruption fighter.

Two stalwarts of the Bush regime — Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales — are simultaneously facing imminent extinction, but not because of the usual jabbering of their opponents. It's because they've finally, unalterably pissed off people who were once on their own side.

I'm trying to be fair about this. With the button above, courtesy of a Bush Beat foreign correspondent halfway across the globe, you can make up your own mind what to do with Wolfowitz, Gonzales, and the rest of the Bush regime.

Wolfowitz's two-year reign at the World Bank (at which U.S.-appointed post he has still been a full-fledged member of the Bush regime) is more in danger than Gonzo's job as A.G. A special panel of the planet's most powerful bank is discussing Wolfie's fate today, and it doesn't look good after all the revelations of nepotism and coverups and fibs. After all, Graeme Wheeler, promoted to the bank's No. 2 spot, managing director, by Wolfowitz himself, "urged the World Bank president to resign," says the Financial Times, and Wheeler made that call "in front of all of the bank's top officials at their regular weekly meeting."

I broke the story in September 2005 that Wolfie had shipped his gal pal, Shaha Ali Riza, to the State Department to work with Dick Cheney's daughter Liz. But I didn't have even a tenth of the story.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post, Inter Press Service, and Government Accountability Project started unfolding the details of that unsavory deal and other hinky nepotism, including stories about ex-regime factotums Kevin Kellems and Robin Cleveland, both now at the bank, and caught Wolfie in some lies. He says he asked for "recusal" from professional contact with bank employee Riza? We refusal to believe him, and there's evidence to back up us, not him.

Finally, even some of Wolfie's allies have turned against him. See the Bank Information Center's "Who's Saying What" for a brief rundown on that rundown, plus names and negativism.

Too bad for Wolfie, but the British are not coming, the British are not coming. The U.K.'s development secretary, Hilary Benn, says Wolfie has "damaged the bank." That's a helluva way for a member of the Coalition of the Willing to talk.

Even U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has been muted, to say the least, in Wolfie's defense. The Times (U.K.) recently noted that Paulson's support of Wolfie was "only tepid."

Paulson doesn't want to lose his own credibility in international financial circles. And the same thing is happening to Gonzales in the Senate, where many hands are abandoning ship. Republican senators can't afford much longer to blindly back Gonzales.

The Washington Post, for instance, splashed a front-page piece this morning about the beating the attorney general took yesterday. As Dan Eggen and Paul Kane wrote:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales came under withering attack from members of his own party yesterday over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, facing the first resignation demand from a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and doubts from others about his candor and his ability to lead the Justice Department.

I mean, for God's sakes, Oklahoma lowercase-yahoo senator Tom Coburn has deserted Gonzales, saying:

"I believe there's consequences for mistakes. . . . And I believe the best way to put this behind us is your resignation."

It was the GOP senators, not the Democrats, who seemed most outraged by Gonzales's apparent fibs. More from the Post:

While the panel's Democrats focused primarily on the alleged rationale for the firings, many of the Republicans concentrated on Gonzales's declared lack of involvement and inability to remember significant details. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a former U.S. attorney, seemed stunned when Gonzales said he could not recall a crucial Nov. 27 meeting at which a final plan for carrying out the firings was discussed.

"I'm concerned about your recollection, really, because it's not that long ago," Sessions said. "It was an important issue. And that's troubling to me, I've got to tell you."

We might even know by the end of the day whether one or both of these goniffs Gonzales and Wolfowitz is truly gone. If you're so inclined, keep clicking that button. Maybe it's hooked up to something.

Actual high-level diplomacy in the Middle East — who woulda thunk the Bush regime was capable of such a thing? Yet there was Condoleezza Rice yesterday, officially breaking the ice with Hamas.

Americans remain flooded by news of the Virginia Tech massacre — a dump of coverage that saved beleaguered faux banker Paul Wolfowitz from continued widely publicized embarrassments, such as the Government Accountability Project's scoop that Wolfie's ex-flunky Doug Feith ordered a Defense contractor back in 2003 to hire Wolfie's gal pal, Shaha Ali Riza, for an Iraq project.

Meanwhile, Rice flashed her gums, instead of the War Department's guns, to make a diplomatic point that could help slow down the Palestinian-Israeli death dance that used to feature such depressing scenes as joint appearances by doubleplusunpeaceniks Ariel Sharon and Dick Cheney.

In an unannounced — but not unplanned — move, the Secretary of State stopped by an April 17 meeting at the State Department between one of her assistants, David Welch, and Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad to shake hands with Fayyad.

As usual, the New York Times got scooped, running only wire accounts. However, the L.A. Times and Washington Post got it. The Virginia Tech massacre did shove the Post piece all the way back to A19 in the Post's print edition. But it's worth reading (thank you, U.S. warmongers, for the Internet) because until now, high-level U.S. officials had been careful to shun all members of the Palestinian government, even Fayyad, who's regarded as a smart moderate and who worked for years in the U.S. at the World Bank's International Monetary Fund.

A U.S.-led boycott on the transfer of international funds has crippled the new Palestinian government, but Rice's gesture toward Fayyad brought hope of a thaw.

Fayyad recognized the irony, as the Post's Glenn Kessler writes:

Since joining the Palestinian government last month, Fayyad had previously met only with the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem. Rice avoided members of the government during her last trip to the Middle East.

Fayyad [later] bemoaned the fact that, despite his long ties to the United States — his three children were born in the United States when he worked for the International Monetary Fund — the Palestinian political situation has slipped so much that a "simple handshake" generates headlines.

"For that to become news is depressing," Fayyad said.

Yeah, but at least it's something, he recognized, and he spoke positively about it. Rice's steps toward sanity came only two days after Israel's Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas held a precedent-shattering meeting at which they actually talked about talking about peace.

Kessler's story this morning notes that this was Rice's first meeting with a person in the Hamas-led Palestinian "unity" government:

The move comes as U.S. officials seek regulatory ways to sidestep a ban on aid to the Palestinian government.

Both [moves] indicate a greater willingness by the Bush administration to part with Israel on how to deal with a cabinet headed by a member of the militant group Hamas. Israeli officials have insisted that any person who joins the unity government is tainted by the association with Hamas, even an internationally respected financial expert like Fayyad.

But Rice, at least, is finally straying from the neocon script and seems to be playing the game of international politics the way others do. In that game, such visits and handshakes aren't officially scheduled and they don't come up during daily press briefings (see for yourself). Then, senior diplomatic officials reach out to reporters with spins of such unannounced meetings. Kessler writes:

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, said that Rice personally likes Fayyad and that she arranged for the meeting in part to "sharpen the distinctions" between those members of the Palestinian government who support peace with Israel and those who back Hamas. "If we shun them all, how will we make that clear?" he asked.

Is it possible that U .S. policy in the Middle East will finally detach itself form the clutches of hard-line fanatics in the U.S. and Israel?

The Israeli daily Haaretz reports the Rice-Fayyad meeting, quoting Fayyad as saying the U.S. is thinking of lifting its ban on international banking with the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Fayyad even says, "Things are evolving in a positive way."

Maybe someone at Foggy Bottom is finally listening to people like General Anthony Zinni, who tried to argue years ago that the U.S. should be focusing on stopping the madness between Jews and Arabs in Israel instead of inflaming passions with a military adventure elsewhere in the Middle East. As I recently once again quoted Zinni as saying way back in 2004 about the invasion of Iraq:

I couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move. That the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true: The road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of other things will work out.

There's fear by students, and then there's fear by college administrators of negative publicity. Both were at play at Virginia Tech on Monday. The administrators' fear, old and entrenched, may be part of the reason college officials didn't warn students after the initial shootings Monday that a gunmen was still on the loose.

The original push to force colleges to go public with their crime statistics was initially opposed by many college administrators, as well as by President George H.W. Bush, in the late '80s. But Bush's mind was changed after a personal appeal by the parents of a murdered Lehigh University student named Jeanne Ann Clery that moved the president to tears, one of Bush's advisers at the time tells the Voice.

A federal law that orders colleges to report their crime statistics was then passed in the early '90s and later amended. Opposition to such a law was strong and bipartisan, says the adviser, Doug Wead, who got into trouble with the Bush family in 2005 for taping George W. Bush.

Wead, a master networker famous in Amway circles, was a special assistant to the president back in the late '80s. Primarily a liaison for Bush Sr. to the evangelical right-wing of the GOP, he recalls setting up a meeting in 1989 between the president and Clery's family.

That year, H.R. 3344 was introduced in the House to require colleges to report crime stats. As Wead tells it:

The idea was that if a university had to report crimes committed on campus no parent would send their child to a school that had poor numbers. So to assure good stats and compete favorably with other universities, security would be upgraded, cameras, safety locks on doors, and so on. Simple enough.

But both Democrats and Republicans were loaded with opposition. Bush Sr., my boss, was publicly against it.

So into my White House office walks Frank Carrington, the so-called father of victim's rights. [The late Carrington founded the National Victim Center's Crime Victims' Litigation Program.] He brings with him Howard and Connie Clery and they tell me the story of how their daughter Jeanne was raped and murdered at Lehigh University because the door to her dorm was left open. They seem so helpless. They tremble as they tell their story. And we are all in tears, but what to do about it?

Ace networker that he is, Wead realized that Bush was going to meet with law-enforcement people that week, so he told the Clerys to join the meeting:

I rehearsed them, telling them that I would be asking each person around the table to say something and when I got to them to blurt out their story to the president. I knew GHWB. He was a softy. They blurted and he changed his position within days.

I don't know what happened to H.R. 3344, but I will never forget the helplessness.

In fact, that particular legislation was transformed into the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, which Bush signed but which fell short of ranking colleges and whose results are difficult to wade through. The law has been amended several times and is now formally called the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, "requiring all colleges receiving federal funds to report crime statistics."

The Clerys, meanwhile, set up an organization called Security on Campus, which is still active in pushing colleges, sometimes by suing them, toward openness about crimes committed against students and others on campuses. As they explain on their website:

Our daughter died because of what she didn't know. The first major initiative of Security of Campus was to ensure that the same fate did not befall other students. In 1987 we began efforts towards enacting laws requiring colleges and universities nationwide to make available, to current and prospective students, complete information about violent campus crimes and drug and alcohol offenses, and, in addition, to provide information about security procedures already in effect.

Security on Campus is extremely active in court against colleges. It recently tried to pressure Harvard into easing a rape-report policy that places additional burdens on victims.

A fear of publicity may have been at work Monday when Virginia Tech officials didn't warn their 27,000 students that two students had been murdered and the suspect was still at large. Later in the day, 30 more people were killed, allegedly by the same gunman. Was there a reluctance to scare students and thus cause a panic? Or was there simply a fear that too much bad publicity would result from the revelation of the first shootings, in which two people were killed? Maybe those questions will be answered only in court. With more than 30 victims, lawsuits against Virginia Tech officials are virtually a certainty. And organizations like the one set up by the Clery family are already experienced. As the Clerys note on their website.

In 1989, we established, as a part of Security On Campus, the Campus Victims Litigation Program. This, the first program of its kind in the nation, has developed a database of case law in civil actions by victims of campus crimes and victims of administrative coverups of such crimes. This, and other legal information, is available to victims themselves, their attorneys and to all other parties who wish to do something constructive about preventing campus crime.

It's too late for that at Virginia Tech, but it's not too late to investigate whether there any coverup of information regarding the campus's first series of shootings Monday.

If so, it still may be difficult to determine what happened, let alone force colleges to be transparent about its responses to crime. Opposition to crackdowns on campus crime, for instance, cuts across party lines. As Wead tells me:

Conservatives resist any gun laws and they don't like more regulations even if those regulations are for academia. They don't like to see the private sector burdened down by rules set by government. It means just more reports and paper.

Liberals, on the other hand, depend on academia for votes, ideas, money, and teams of eager student volunteers. Universities hate this whole idea of accountability because they have to spend money on security to compete with other schools, to make their stats look good by comparison. Who wants to see their campus in the top ten murder campuses in the country?

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spent the weekend desperately trying to keep his job, but e-mails flying around the bank's internal bulletin board show that he'll never quell the internal revolt.

Built into the bank's massive bureaucracy is a Staff Association — not a union, but an officially recognized organization of the bank's 10,000 employees that has a formal say, of sorts, in the operations of the bank. And it's the Staff Association that is leading the revolt. Its pressure, led by chair Alison Cave, forced an unprecedented release of the bank's investigation of Wolfie's sweetheart deal for his gal, Shaha Ali Riza.

He's having as much success with the 10,000 World Bank staffers as he had with the 25 million Iraqis.

On April 12, Cave, speaking on behalf of the Staff Association, called on Wolfie to resign.

Cave's actions earned her praise from at least hundreds, if not thousands, of bank employees, according to a flood of internal e-mails obtained by the Voice.

And the e-mails raise new questions — new to the public, at least — about other issues.

For instance, Suzanne Rich Folsom, head of the bank's Institutional Integrity department, is rumored in the e-mails to have hosted a Republican fundraiser.

That wouldn't be surprising. Folsom is the wife of George Folsom, former president of the International Republican Institute. She was already at the bank when Wolfie arrived in 2005. But now she's the chief corruption fighter. (Read a staff Q&A; with her here.)

As I reported in January 2006, she hired Allison Brigati, the daughter of America's leading lobbyist for the gambling industry, Frank Fahrenkopf, to help her probe corruption within the bank.

Did I mention that Fahrenkopf is a former national chairman of the GOP?

I used the bank's corruption hotline to ask whether Folsom hosted a GOP fundraiser. (I also put in a message to Folsom's flack). Haven't heard back yet.

[Update, 5 p.m. April 16: Folsom's flack, David Theis, responded via e-mail, "Suzanne has NEVER hosted a Republican fundraiser. Never happened. She has engaged in no GOP fundraising or other activities since she joined the bank in 2003 under Jim Wolfensohn." He later added that neither she nor her husband have hosted fundraisers, "nor has she engaged in any other political activity since she joined the bank, beyond voting." Theis responded promptly to me. I apologize for the delay in adding this clarification.]

Meanwhile, as the New York Times reports this morning, Wolfowitz "spent the weekend churning through meetings with a determination to project confidence that he could weather the crisis.":

“I think he has just wanted to tough it out,” said a bank official who watched him. “He’s clearly hoping that once everyone leaves town, he can go on and that all this will fade away. That has not happened and it is not going to happen.”

Especially inside the bank. Most bank staffers were unhappy when the Bush regime installed Wolfie. Now they're really unhappy. Here's a sampling of the e-mails last week to the internal bulletin board after Cave's call for Wolfie's resignation:

Evidently INT [Folsom's department] was asked to investigate the Riza-Kellems-Cleveland appointments and salary increases and the associated breaking of Staff Rules in May 2006. Yet, INT refused to investigate. Could this be because Ms. Folsom is a close associate and ally of Mr. Wolfowitz? There is clearly a conflict of interest here. What kind of governance structure is it when the head of the internal investigation unit will not investigate any allegations linked to the President? Ms. Folsom should be held accountable. Moreover, what was the role of HR and especially the VP of HR in all this? He needs to answer a few questions.

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By the way your comment about this not being the first time they have flouted the Staff Rules — are you indicating the appointment of Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems? I can understand Term Appointments to match the President's term — but on Open Ended appointments which I believe they were given? Who approved such appointments without competition?

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Regarding the latest news on "bending the rules", I am wondering if Mr. Wolfowitz has given a second thought to what he is requiring of WB borrowers in terms of his slogan on "anti-corruption and governance." Sir, practice what you preach — or in your case, try less threats and force on borrowing governments when you are flagrantly crushing all moral/ethical values yourself. . This is not the Pentagon, just in case you were wondering. I've included an "amusing" excerpt from the Bank's Anti-corruption website — talk about serious double standards: "The Bank has identified corruption as among the greatest obstacles to economic and social development. It undermines development by distorting the rule of law and weakening the institutional foundation on which economic growth depends."

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Besides the issue of excessive pay raises, I have not seen any questions raised why the World Bank should pay a staff member to work in the US State Department in an office that many would consider a propaganda machine for an unpopular US administration. If the Bank does indeed need to send her on external assignment, wouldn't Bank resources be better spent, if Ms. Riza worked at an NGO or charity organization? It would be good if the Staff Association could raise this issue with management as well.

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How could Ms. Riza be sent on External Service in the US? It does not comply with the definition in the Staff Rules. "External Service With Pay means assignment to perform services for member governments, international organizations, or other entities providing technical assistance to the Bank Group clientele for which the staff member continues to be paid by the Bank Group." I hope the Board will investigate this thoroughly - including the entire chain of command in HR and MNA Line Management who permitted this to be processed!

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The President's own salary has undergone an unusual course. [Wolfie's predecessor James] Wolfensohn received a salary of $302,470, set on July 1, 2004. Mr. Wolfowitz received a salary of $391,440, effective July 1, 2005. How was this 29.4 percent pay raise achieved? 4 percent ($12,099) was due to the Wash. area CPI adjustment. The rest ($76,871) was because when Mr. Wolfowitz was appointed he negotiated with the Board about his salary. Presumably $314,569 net of tax (Mr. Wolfensohn's salary plus 4 percent CPI) was not enough. The massive Salary raise was attained by reducing the "Allowance for Expenses" (presumably entertainment, travel etc.) that is allocated to the President from $141,290 (as allocated to Mr. Wolfensohn in 2004) to $70,700 (allocated to Mr. Wolfowitz in 2005). If Mr. Wolfensohn's $141,290 was adjusted for the 4 percent CPI it would have been $146,942. Mr. Wolfowitz requested that of this amount, $76,871 be added to his salary, leaving only $70,070 as allowance for expenses. All this is documented in the Bank's Annual Reports (see under "Remuneration of the President" online). Why did Mr. Wolfowitz request this change? The main justification was that the new higher salary was the same as that of the Managing Director [of the International Monetary Fund, the bank's sister organization]. Why this equivalence should suddenly apply to Mr. Wolfowitz, when it was established otherwise for all his predecessors, is not clear. Of course it could be that being a modest man, Mr. Wolfowitz felt that he could not justify the level of expenses paid to Mr. Wolfensohn. But then he should have just asked for the allowance to be reduced. If he was not going to incur expenses of $146,942 it did not follow that he deserved a higher salary. As any staff member knows, there is a big difference between Expenses and Salary. It could also be that Salary is pensionable and the basis for other benefits, and Allowances are not. We should be told.

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Ms. Cave: Thank you for your well-written representation of World Bank Group staff's outrage about Ms. Riza's special treatment. This situation makes a joke of the ethics office and the institutional integrity people. I am so embarrassed and outraged!

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Can someone tell Kevin Kellems and Robin Cleveland to stop writing in to defend their boss?

Displaying the same contempt toward "old Europe" that the Bush regime showed during its Iraq invasion plotting and the disastrous aftermath, chief war architect Paul Wolfowitz resisted continued pressure Sunday for his resignation from the World Bank presidency.

"I believe in the mission of this organization, I intend to carry it out, I have had many expressions of support," Wolfie said late this afternoon during a D.C. press conference.

Yeah, well, both of his supporters are wrong. Wolfie's corruption has always been too heavyhanded to work at the World Bank, which needs to have a president who at least has the appearance of propriety. The documents now being revealed show him playing extreme hardball on behalf of his gal even before he got the job in the first place. Check out this page on the valuable watchdog site, Bank Information Center, for the official docs and statements.

Wolfiegate (yes, the lies have now become worse than the original crime) overshadowed potentially monumental news from the Middle East: Israeli and Palestinian leaders actually talked face to face and seriously about peace for the first time in several years. As the Daily Star in Beirut reports:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held talks on Sunday, addressing the broader outlines of a possible peace deal for the first time since full-scale talks between the sides collapsed in 2001. Hours earlier, the Israeli premier had said the Jewish state was ready to talk with Arab states over their revived peace plan. . . .

In the first in a series of planned biweekly talks, Olmert and Abbas focused mostly on day-to-day issues such as travel and trade restrictions, but also raised broader issues for the first time since the collapse of peace talks in 2001.

"It was a good beginning," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said of the meeting, which lasted over two hours.

Jews and Arabs haven't officially gotten so close since the first time Wolfowitz got his swerve on with his Arab girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza.

Meanwhile, as the Daily Star also reports, residents of Baghdead, among others, continue to get fucked in a different sense:

Six bombs exploded in predominantly Shiite sections of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 43 people, while two British military personnel died a pair of helicopters crashed north of the capital. On Sunday, health officials raised the toll from a bombing Saturday close to the holy Shiite city of Kerbala, saying 47 people were killed and 224 wounded.

A retired World Bank manager writes in response to my post last night, "Where Was I? Oh, Yeah, Wolfowitz". Oh, and he nails Paul Wolfowitz. As always with such hubristic goniffs, Wolfie keeps getting into more and more trouble the more he tries to explain things.

First, take a look at Wolfie's April 9 e-mail to the World Bank staff. In it, he doesn't mention his gal pal, Shaha Ali Riza, by name, nor does he recount the sweet details of her transfer to the State Department. But he says:

The case of the staff member mentioned prompted me to seek the advice of the Board of Executive Directors upon my arrival at the Bank. I subsequently acted on the advice of the Board’s Ethics Committee to work out an agreement that balanced the interests of the institution and the rights of the staff member in an exceptional and unprecedented situation.

Bull. And every time Wolfie brays about fighting corruption, he steps in it. Check out his April 12 press conference, in which the embattled bank prexy said:

I do think that a general solid principle is, if there is a problem, be transparent about it, disclose everything you know, and figure out what are the appropriate remedies. I think it really is true that transparency is the key, absolute key, here to good governance and in fighting corruption.

The ex-manager who wrote me points out the hypocrisy of this self-styled corruption fighter as Wolfie floods bank staffers with e-mails and selective information:

In his email of April 14, Wolfowitz tries to rationalize his actions. He draws staff attention to his "significant facts." The "significant facts" he omits are:

1) The Board was willing to accept his recusal but had to back down because apparently after subsequent advice from his attorney he had a change of heart and refused to recuse himself on "professional relationship" with his girlfriend. So his offer of recusal was a farce (and the Board saw it as such).

2) Contrary to his assertion that he was only looking after the interests of the Bank, the documents make it abundantly clear that he was only interested in safeguarding Riza's interests. It was he who devised the package (with Ms. Riza's help?) rather than HR.

3) Contrary to what he says, he was actively involved in devising the package for Riza, overruling the considerably less generous (and more reasonable) package proposed by HR. He cleverly directs [a Bank official] to give Riza an option between the two packages. One has to be stupid to elect to choose the vastly inferior package.

4) He was clearly both negotiating for Riza and turning around and acting like the "decider."

If this is not corruption, I don't know what is.

On another matter, thanks to all of you who have welcomed me back online. But you should know that I was not in hell — at least not all of the time. It's true that new management canceled the Bush Beat in February 2006. But it's also true that only a month later, new management installed me as interim editor in chief of the Voice. I had fun doing that job for six months while we searched for the right person. After some twists and turns, we've found that person. If you don't believe me, check out the most recent issues of the Voice.

And in the next few weeks, we'll be unveiling a big dose of national news online, thanks to the many excellent journalists in the Voice's coast-to-coast chain. I'm lucky to be involved in that exciting project too.

OK, back to the bidness of doing journalism rather than talking about it. As the Bush regime's schnooks always show us, talk is cheap.

Is it official yet? Can we finally call what's going on in Iraq a civil war?

Sunnis and Shiites (and their various factions) have been blowing each other up for some time now, and many people have called this a civil war for quite a while.

Now, thanks to Ned Parker's report in this morning's Los Angeles Times, we have proof:

Suspicious of Iraq's CIA-funded national intelligence agency, members of the Iraqi government have erected a "shadow" secret service that critics say is driven by a Shiite Muslim agenda and has left the country with dueling spy agencies.

Parker notes that the CIA funds the government's official spy agency, INIS. That's run by Sunnis. Now there's a Shiite agency that's spying, no doubt, on the spies. What a Mad situation (apologies to Cold War chronicler Antonio Prohías).

Is this a surprise? No. As I pointed out in May 2005, "Iraq's developing civil war couldn't have surprised the Pentagon." That's because the War Department's own James A. Russell pointed it out in June 2002 in the excellent journal Strategic Insights, published by the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Contemporary Conflict, based in Monterey, California. Russell's piece, "Shibboleth Slaying in a Post-Saddam Iraq," noted:

The makeup of Iraq makes it difficult to envision anything but a Sunni-led minority ruling through coercion and force. So if not Saddam, then who and what? Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds present contending histories and circumstances that limit their ability to cooperate in a more representative form of democratic government. Each of these groups has more of an interest in governing themselves than in cooperating with each other.

Russell's no peacenik. Now the managing editor of Strategic Insights, he was astonishingly shunted out of the Pentagon in early 2001 by the dual-disloyalist Doug Feith. No doubt because Russell was, and is, simply a pragmatic military guy with a mind uncluttered by either neocon illusions or personal greed for oil.

Likewise, the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal — and its chief war architect, Feith's boss Paul Wolfowitz, ignored people like General Anthony Zinni, as I pointed out in September 2004 while noting that Iraq was already "plummeting into full-fledged civil war."

Zinni's May 2004 speech at Center for Defense Information dinner was frank and to the point. It's still worth reading what he thought about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq:

I couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move. That the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true: The road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of other things will work out.

But misguided notions about the protection of Israel, combined with the greed for oil, were just too strong in the Pentagon. And that's why the opinions of smart people like Russell and Zinni were ignored.

Now that we have Spy vs. Spy in Iraq, the madness won't stop, and we'll be even more stuck in the middle.