Exit Strategies: of the Neocons, If Not by the Neocons

/in /by

  1. Anonymous says:

    Hi Marcy. I was wondering how best to collect suggested questions for Monica Goodling’s upcoming visit to the House Judiciary Committee (no date set yet but I have heard it might be next week). Maybe we could do a quick post to solicit questions on TNH and FDL over the weekend? The questions are over at my place (TiredFed.spaces.live). I think the post could be about the setup for the hearing – â€Will the real Monica Goodling please stand up?†Secondhand accounts indicate she is either a buzz saw or a scared little girl (crying for 45 MINUTES in Margolis office???). I would want to know which one is the real Monica before I started grilling her. We would not want the HJC hearing to become a PR disaster. We know she is a conduit for Rove. We don’t want to make her a martyr, just a stool pigeon.

  2. Quzi says:

    If ever there was a pair who deserved ridicule…

    I’ve got an â€exit strategy†for Wolfie: a one-way ticket to Iraq with no armory, and his talented Riza by his side.

  4. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Wolfowitz is apparently â€street legal†by virtue of his legal or informal separation; Riza is now divorced. It’s not clear whether that was true at the start of their relationship. Mrs. Wolfowitz is on record as earlier having written to Bush saying that Wolfie’s purported serial womanizing would eventually become a â€national security†threat. That could be snark against Riza or a legitimate fear based on intimate knowledge of Wolfie. His tenure at the Bank makes clear that his good judgment doesn’t seem to extend very far.

    Office romances are commonplace. These don’t always end well, which has a ripple effect elsewhere in the organization: the higher up the players, the wider the ripples. Also common is the problem of what to do when one partner has authority over the other. (Which puts paid to Wolfie’s claim that he was piloting in uncharted waters.)

    What is unusual is the remarkably poor choices Wolfie made, and Riza demanded or acquiesced in, in dealing with this problem. He seems to have treated it like an intelligence problem at the Pentagon. He just made stuff up, then tried to impose his alternate reality on some of the most talented international bureaucrats going. Fat chance. As EW points out, it’s Wolfowitz’s poor judgment and leadership skills that open him to ridicule, not his personal life.

  5. freepatriot says:

    so everybody is down with this right ???

    we’re supposed to act like wlofie hasn’t been fired, and humiliated on the world stage

    so be sure you don’t laugh in his face

    or anywhere wolfie can hear you

    let’s all spend the rest of wolfie’s life laughing into our sleeves, and acting like wolfie isn’t a walkinf shitstain on humainity

    seems to be a small price to pay to be rid of this slimeball

    we can agree to abide by those terms

    for about 15 seconds …

    na na na na
    na na na na

    hey hey hey

    goodbye

  6. William Ockham says:

    In this vein, I liked the report that the WH said â€all options were on the tableâ€. I immediately assumed that they were planning on bombing the World Bank.

  7. freepatriot says:

    if nothing else, these slimebags got a neverending supply of gall

    ny times reports this from wolfie:

    According to a text made available by a supporter of Mr. Wolfowitz, he warned that a vote of no confidence in his leadership, tantamount to requesting his ouster, “has the potential to do greater long-term damage to the institution†than any conflict of interest he may have failed to avoid.

    yo, wolfowitz, you comb licking toad fucking weasly little pimple inside the asshole of humanity, we offered you a deal last week that would have avoided that very problem

    but you were too busy telling your pathetic transparent lies about your innocence

    now that the evidence has seen the light of day, a lying pissbucket such as yourself has NO RIGHT to seek protection by trying to defend the world bank from damage

    if you had resigned last week, this wouldn’t be a fucking problem in the first place

    there are no words to describe how hypocritical and dispicable you must be to make that argument

  8. Mimikatz says:

    As I understand it, the supremely talented Riza was already Wolfowitz’s intimate ladyfriend when he went to the World Bank. Bush obviously didn’t read Mrs. Wolfowitz’s letter, and the vetting process was probably non-existent (or less than Kerik) because after all, they all knew what a swell guy Paul was, and he wanted to end like Robert McNamara.

    So they appointed him to the institution for which his intimate ladyfriend worked without thinking there was a problem, but then the ethics folks there thought there was, so they sent her to State, complete with a huge salary increase and mail-order security clearance, and lo and behold, it all blew up in their faces.

    Wolfowitz will get the boot because Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson understands the importance of being able to continue to pick the head of the World Bank. Paulson, like DefSec Gates, is not a Bush Texas crony-grifter, but someone with a real reputation and base of his own. He can leave anytime they won’t take his advice seriously, and they know it. By now they also understand that they are sufficiently weakened that they can’t stand a high-level resignation-for-principle. See Admiral Fallon, who I am pleased to say does not believe war with Iran is a good idea no matter why he was picked to be head of Centcom.

  10. Sparkles the Iguana says:

    How bout companion, partner, gal pal, skirt, dame, honey, co-ed. Or keep it simple and just call her â€Wolfowitz’s female.â€

  11. freepatriot says:

    the â€wolfiwoman†???

    you’d think that a woman would dump a guy the minute she saw him licking his comb, but there’s no accounting for taste …

    ROTFLMAO

  12. Neil says:

    Seriously freep, to put the words taste and comb-licking in the same sentence makes me… Ptwehhww Pthewww. Wolfie’s got a big brain if not good judgment… maybe the big brain is not all he has that’s big and sttractive. I give the relationship less than six months, not that I care.

    In BushCo, laws and rules are for the little people. Now maybe some of it will start to stick… scandal after scandal.

  13. hauksdottir says:

    neoconcubine

    Damnity, I wish I’d thought of that!

    What I fail to understand is the idea of Wolfie as a serial womanizer and married man. Riza using him the way a spy uses any resource her handlers tell her to is something I could understand… it isn’t a nice business. But he’s married? And multiple mistresses??? How can somebody that disgusting be attractive to male or female? Unless there is some weird sexual perversion involving whips and high-heels… but even a 10’ whip would be too close. bleah!!!

    What is intriguing is his wife’s concern that national security was an issue, which implies that his lovers have been foreigners or employees of other governments or had access to departments and information they shouldn’t have. If these were bored or desperate housewives, Mrs Wolfie probably would be angry for the disgrace to her family, but not concerned for the country.

    A succession of spies?

    With Wolfie as a known vulnerable target of acquisition?

    Another important question… were they already lovers when Wolfie took the job? How was he chosen? Who recommended him? Why was this not raised, discussed, and dealt with before his hiring? Did he want the job so that they could be together?

    As a feminist, I don’t like the idea that the woman is always the one who has to leave.

    In this case, I’d fire both of them for threats, blackmail, embarrassment to the company, and total disruption of the staff… as well as the sneakiness regarding her pay raises and security clearance.

    The World Bank needs to clean house to save face and restore adherence to its mission. The only way Wolfie will save face is if he gets a Retin-A treatment.

  16. dipper says:

    I heard Andrew Young defending Wolfie two different times, the latest on PBS News Hour. Why would he do that?

  17. Sojourner says:

    Why is it that creeps like Wolfowitz, no matter what they have done, are allowed to â€save face?†The man is a slimebag, and a disgrace who is helping to push the US into nothingness — and Bushco is pushing to help him â€save face.â€

    Enough already!

  19. Neil says:

    Plame Seeks Showdown With Cheney
    By JOSH GERSTEIN
    Staff Reporter of the The New York Sun
    May 17, 2007

    A lawsuit brought by a CIA agent whose cover was blown by Bush administration officials, Valerie Plame, is expected to face a withering attack this morning at a court hearing in Washington.

    [snip]

    In particular, the suit claims that the defendants violated Mr. Wilson’s right to freedom of speech, violated the couple’s rights to equal protection under the law, violated Ms. Plame’s constitutional right to privacy, and deprived Ms. Plame of her property interest in continuing employment at the CIA. The suit also alleges that the defendants committed a tort against her by disclosing â€private facts,†namely her classified affiliation with the agency.

    The suit faces a formidable array of legal hurdles that could lead to its dismissal. The defendants argue that the legal theories underpinning the case are invalid, that Mr. Cheney is immune from lawsuits relating to his duties, and that the other defendants are immune because the type of wrongdoing alleged by the couple has never been â€clearly established.â€

    In addition, the defendants claim that allowing the suit to proceed would result in the disclosure of classified information about Ms. Plame’s duties and those of other CIA employees. â€For the defendants to now say that they cannot be held liable because the information is secret and sensitive is much like the child who kills his parents and begs for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan,†the couple’s attorneys wrote.

    The briefs in the case were filed before a jury convicted Libby of obstruction of justice and perjury charges in March. â€I think the criminal trial proves pretty conclusively that you can go forward with litigation of this kind and really not have any risk at all to national security,†a lawyer for the couple, Anne Weisman, said.

    more here

  20. Anonymous says:

    Just a tip, paul. Your name means â€small.†Your public life suggests you have been driven by a small-man Napoleon thing for a good long time. Get over it. There’s no â€holding up to ridicule†here. You’ve just exploited the unwarranted and undeserved role on the stage that seems to have been so important to you to document and confirm what total asses you and Shaha are.

    It’s reality. You are buffoons and clowns, so full of yourselves that normal people can see it without having to look close.

    Good thing for you too, as prison is the likely outcome if there was any serious inspection going on.

  21. Waiting for Truth says:

    So, Mr. W. had to explain to his friends and children? How ’bout his wife, too.

  22. Anonymous says:

    Can anyone confirm for me something I think I read somewhere? I thought I’d read that Paul W. will be able to collect an extra $600 K if he can stay on the job until after the first week of June.