>
>Big deal. Yes, Wolfowitz shouldn't have been greasing his cookie sheet
>with government funds, but there are bigger reasons to toss The Wolf
>out the door.
>
>Like, say, perjury and homicide? I haven't forgotten, Mr. Wolfowitz,
>that on March 27, 2003, you testified before the U.S. Congress that
>the occupation of Iraq wouldn't cost the American taxpayer a penny.
>
>You said, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to
>be U.S. taxpayer money." Oh, really?
>
>More... When Wolfowitz laid down that line of jive, he and the Bushes
>knew that Americans just can't pass up a bargain, and here The Wolf
>was offering the sale of the century, a "free Iraq." Not "free" as in
>"self-governing" but "free" as in, we'll get their oil and their
>allegiance for nothing!
>
>We can bomb Iraq and the Iraqis will pay for the bombs!
>
>And where will the Iraqis, holding nothing but bushel-bags of Saddam
>dinars, get these billions of U.S. dollars to pay for the Occupation?
>Wolfowitz testified, "The oil revenues of that country could bring
>between $50 and $100 billion over the next two or three years."
>
>Is that so?
>
>Wolfie's claim was no small matter. It's hard to remember, but lots of
>the Congressional debate was not about Saddam's Weapons of Mass
>Destruction -- The New York Times had already found those for us.
>Senators were asking, What's this little war going to cost us? There
>was no way in hell Congress would have authorized Bush's big adventure
>if it cost $100 billion.
>
>Indeed, $100 billion was the price projected by the President's chief
>economist, Larry Lindsey. The President corrected Lindsey's math: Bush
>fired him. You know the punchline: The war has so far cost the U.S.
>taxpayers over half a trillion dollars -- and counting.
>
>But you weren't wrong, Wolfie. You were lying. And you knew it.
>
>This is serious stuff. I can tell you, as a former government
>racketeering investigator: if you are wrong, well, stuff happens. But
>if you say one thing under oath but knew something very different,
>that, Mr. Wolfowitz, is perjury. Perjury's a felony, Wolf, and you
>know it. Indeed, your neo-con buddy, Elliott Abrams, was convicted in
>1991 for lying to Congress about Reagan's arms-for-hostage swap.
>
>So, did Wolfowitz perjure himself -- or just get it wrong? While the
>question never crossed the mind of the Sheep-o-witz U.S. press, which
>repeated Wolf's no-cost-invasion claim unchallenged, my producer at
>BBC Television asked me to investigate.
>
>I learned that Wolfowitz, then Deputy Secretary of Defense, would have
>gotten his numbers from the expert official designated to measure
>Iraq's oil, Guy Caruso. Caruso once ran the CIA's oil ops; now he's
>the head of Bush's Energy Information Administration. A source close
>to Caruso (in Saudi intelligence, no less) told me the ex-spook heard
>Wolfowitz's testimony and said, "What are they getting this from?"
>
>In 2004, I confronted Caruso in his Department of Energy office in
>Washington. Nice man. Caruso knows his stuff. And, after an hour of
>technical jibberish, he told me the info he gave Wolfowitz's
>department -- and the numbers didn't add up to anything close to
>Wolfowitz's Iraq oil windfall.
>
>I then checked Caruso's numbers with his own numbers man, another
>ex-CIA oil expert, Robert Ebel. I asked Ebel about the Wolfowitz claim
>of an oil gusher in Iraq that would pay for the U.S. Occupation. Ebel
>wouldn't answer until after the cameras were off. But I wasn't asked
>to keep it off the record.
>
>Ebel told me he had put the real numbers up on a think tank Web site
>just before the Humvees rolled into Baghdad. His projections
>conflicted big time with the fantasy facts to which Wolfowitz
>testified. Ebel told me that allies of neo-con conman Ahmad Chalabi
>asked Ebel to remove and bury the realistic numbers. He did.
>
>Did Wolfowitz lie? Ebel smiled, "It was just part of the sales pitch,
>wasn't it?"
>
>The sales pitch?? WAR FOR SALE -- CHEAP!
>
>Well, you can say that one man's sales pitch is another man's perjury.
>If Wolfowitz had knowingly concealed the Caruso team's findings while
>testifying under oath, then The Wolf is guilty of a felony. Moreover,
>perjury that leads to death is homicide.
>
>But he's off the hook. I checked the record. Ever since his crony
>Abrams was charged with perjury, Wolfowitz won't testify under oath.
>Nor will any of the Bushies.
>
>Wolfowitz did not raise his hand and swear to "tell the whole truth,
>so help me, God." The Wolf's home free. How the Lord will judge this
>loophole, I can't say.
>
>So, no perjury charge for Wolfowitz. Of course there's another crime.
>His getting caught icing his cupcake, Ms. Riza, with World Bank funds,
>forces millions of innocent morning newspaper readers to suffer
>visions of these two neo-cons naked and nasty. Urgh!
>
>Still, one can't but help be touched by the romantic side of this
>story. After all, here were two people of different faiths, sharing
>their intense love . . . of money, secrets, and lies.
>
>
>
>---
>
>
>
>
>- Scott Smith: scott@
sludgereport.org
> Sludge Report:
http://www.sludgereport.org
> Blue States Rising:
http://www.bluestaterising.blogspot.com
