The Scum Also Rises
[The Bush Administration]
by Robert Scheer
http://www.thenation.com/, May
9, 2007
As Paul Wolfowitz twists in the wind after
being found guilty in a World Bank investigation of public payola
to his girlfriend, it does seem that his career might finally
be coming to an end. Pity that the Iraq debacle, which Wolfowitz
promoted, was not sufficient reason for removing him from public
office; instead, President Bush rewarded "Wolfie" with
a promotion to head the World Bank. Add him to the rapidly growing
list of Bush alums whose career trajectory suddenly plummets upon
the disclosure of a pattern of lying obvious to most observers
but not to the President himself.
To understand why scum consistently rises
to the surface of the Bush Administration, it is best to refer
to the wisdom contained in the final memoir of the late, great
Kurt Vonnegut. In an excerpt published in 2006, Vonnegut observed
that "George W. Bush has gathered around him...most frighteningly,
psychotic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable
people who have no consciences."
How better to explain the unwavering arrogance
of people--certainly Wolfowitz, but clearly he is not alone in
this Administration--who consistently get it wrong yet plow on
undeterred by the inconvenience of fact or logic? Most of us,
once associated with the grievous distortions of evidence and
outright lies justifying the invasion of Iraq, not to mention
the horrid waste and death attendant upon the subsequent occupation
that Wolfowitz oversaw, would feel the need to pause for a spell
of critical self-reflection. Not so Wolfowitz, who, unmoved by
the death and destruction he wrought, sailed on to the World Bank
and announced that he would fight what he claimed was that venerable
institution's penchant for, yes, he used the word, "corruption."
Toward that end he would bring with him
a score of Pentagon underlings whose hands were almost as bloody
as his from the Iraq disaster. One of them, Kevin Kellems, former
spokesman for Vice President Dick Cheney, suddenly resigned his
$250,000-a-year job at the World Bank on Monday. Another veteran
from the Iraq buildup to be rewarded was Wolfowitz's lover, Shaha
Riza, his resident Muslim expert, who was promoted to a State
Department position paying more than Secretary Condoleezza Rice
earns. Not quite the $400,000 that Wolfowitz would be raking in
at the World Bank, but Riza's salary had the advantage of being
tax-free--she is still technically a "foreign national,"
despite her access to the inner sanctums of US security debates.
Such rich rewards for folks ostensibly
fighting world poverty would not seem troubling to the PPs Vonnegut
referred to, as they are suffering from a malady that renders
them morally tone-deaf. Citing what he calls the classic medical
text on PPs, "The Mask of Sanity," Vonnegut noted in
his "Custodians of Chaos" piece: "Some people are
born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about
congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this
whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely
haywire nowadays. These are people born without consciences, and
suddenly they are taking charge of everything."
"PPs are presentable," Vonnegut
reminds us, lest we be fooled by their equanimity on talk shows,
"they know full well the suffering their actions may cause
others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are
nuts. They have a screw loose!" Vonnegut includes the executives
who gave us the Enron and WorldCom scandals with the neoconservatives
to indicate the malady's extent. This could be dismissed as the
standard liberal claptrap--turning the culprits into victims whose
illness made them do it. But I offer his observations as the most
plausible explanation of the headlong pursuit of disaster, for
themselves and the planet, on the part of these otherwise canny
overachievers.
Yes, their mendacity does often catch
up with them, and folks like Wolfowitz do not tend to be well
regarded after they have lost the perks of power. The problem
is that the truth arrives too late to prevent considerable suffering.
Indeed, Wolfowitz's embarrassment at the World Bank is a minor
inconvenience compared with the opprobrium he should be receiving
after each day's dose of disaster news from Iraq disproves the
cakewalk of a regime change that he had so assuredly promised.
Then, too, this lying lout will no doubt
be rewarded with something similar to the $4 million contract
that former CIA Director George Tenet recently received to share
a few details of how he went about betraying us.
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