AP: "Lawmakers will keep pressing the Bush administration until they get a detailed explanation of its strategy in Iraq, a senator [Richard Lugar] said Wednesday, opening a second day of sometimes contentious hearings on the increasingly violent occupation... Former officials and think tank experts have made up the witness list the first two days. Lugar had strong words for the administration Tuesday when it appeared Wolfowitz was refusing to testify at the senator's hearing scheduled for Thursday. Saying success in Iraq depends on the administration's credibility, Lugar noted that over the past year and a half the administration has 'failed to communicate' its plans to Congress and the American people. But he announced Wednesday that Wolfowtiz had phoned him -- said he could not come to due to a family wedding -- and was sending another Pentagon official."

"During Bush's first week in office, Richard Clarke asked urgently for a Cabinet-level meeting on al Qaeda. He did not get it - or permission to brief the president directly on the threat - for nearly eight months. When deputies to the Cabinet officials took up the subject in April, Clarke writes, the meeting 'did not go well.' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Clarke wrote, scowled and asked, 'why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.' When Clarke told him no foe but al Qaeda 'poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States,' Wolfowitz is said to have replied that Iraqi terrorism posed 'at least as much' of a danger. FBI and CIA representatives backed Clarke in saying they had no such evidence. 'I could hardly believe,' Clarke writes, that Wolfowitz pressed the 'totally discredited' theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, 'a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue.'"

Sending a man as despised by Iraqis as Paul Wolfowitz to Baghdad is like throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire. The last time he was there, on October 26, a rocket pounded the Rashid Hotel while he was in the building, killing one US soldier and wounding 17 other people. Now this weekend, immediately before and after Wolfowitz's arrival, some of the most deadly attacks yet have rocked Iraq, bringing the death toll of US soldiers killed since Bush declared an end to major conflict in May to 250. Scores of Iraqis died in attacks over the weekend, including 50-100 Kurds in an attack on the Kurdish Party Office.

Noam Chomsky writes, "The new reason is that we invaded Iraq to establish a democracy there and, in fact, to democratize the whole Middle East... Last month, for example, David Ignatius, the Washington Post commentator, described the invasion of Iraq as 'the most idealistic war in modern times' -- fought solely to bring democracy to Iraq and the region. Ignatius was particularly impressed with Paul Wolfowitz, 'the Bush administration's idealist in chief,' whom he described as a genuine intellectual who 'bleeds for (the Arab world's) oppression and dreams of liberating it.' Maybe that helps explain Wolfowitz's career -- like his strong support for Suharto in Indonesia, one of the last century's worst mass murderers and aggressors, when Wolfowitz was ambassador to that country under Ronald Reagan. As the State Department official responsible for Asian affairs under Reagan, Wolfowitz oversaw support for the murderous dictators Chun of South Korea and Marcos of the Philippines."

Wayne Madsen writes: "On December 5, ...Paul Wolfowitz threw down the Bush regime's latest gauntlet to the rest of the world... Wolfowitz... named 61 countries eligible for Iraqi reconstruction projects. It is apparent that Wolfowitz had no problem violating the 1977 U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by promising prime contracts for countries that, in return, send troops to Iraq... On December 11, the day after the banned nations expressed their disgust with Wolfowitz's action, the White House engaged in a bit of extortion itself. It said that nations might be able to get off the banned list if they contributed money, and not necessarily troops, to the Iraq debacle... Considering the close relationship of Wolfowitz to [Richard Perle's] Trireme and Halliburton, the Justice Department could argue that as a result of these obvious conflicts of interest, Wolfowitz is acting as an 'individual acting on behalf' of companies engaged in bribery and extortion."

"Mr. Wolfowitz pressed for a war in Iraq for years. He began pressing for it in earnest after Sept. 11, 2001, from his new perch as deputy defense secretary. He argued that a snap American invasion would implant democracy in Iraq faster than you could say Ali Baba, and that quick as a wink a new spirit of republican government and respect for property would spread throughout the Arab lands. What we have instead is a place where U.S. soldiers are killed every day by a foe who still hasn't really been identified yet, where one-third of the Iraqi security force trained at the Pentagon's behest just quit (taking their training with them, presumably), where people throughout the Arab world find a reason to join in denunciations of the United States, and where the administration keeps finding new ways to alienate potential Western allies. It's time for Mr. Wolfowitz to go." Yes, but it's really time for BUSH to go!

"One of the leading members of the Bush administration has come under fire at an American university only days after resistance fighters blasted his Baghdad hotel with a rocket attack. US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was visibly shaken as he fended off hecklers at Georgetown University during a speech Thursday. The smooth-talking politician, who kept his cool under fire in Baghdad some days earlier, appeared ruffled and at one point snapped back at the hecklers. 'We hate your policies!' shouted one young woman, standing ten metres from Wolfowitz who went pale and clenched his jaw. 'Killing innocents is not the solution but rather the problem,' she said. 'I have to (infer) you'd be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power,' he replied drily before recalling the regime's cruelties... A visibly shaken Wolfowitz caught his breath to tell one of [the protestors], 'You and I should both calm down.'" Sorry, Wolfy, we're just gettin' started!

From the Guardian (UK): "Now [Franken's book] is being published in Britain, allowing UK readers to learn, for example, what happened when Franken wandered over to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy US defence secretary, to express his view that the technological brilliance of the American military was primarily a result of the policies of Bill Clinton. 'Hi, Dr Wolfowitz,' Franken said. 'Hey, the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?' Wolfowitz, the man most involved in developing the new US doctrine of pre-emptive attack, evidently summoned his full arsenal of well-informed counter-arguments in order to compose his comeback. 'F-ck you,' he said."

WashPost reports: "Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) yesterday called for the resignation of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, accusing the Pentagon official of seeking to undermine Turkey's democratic government. In a May 6 interview, Wolfowitz told CNN Turk that the Bush administration was disappointed the Turkish military did not do more to convince the Turkish parliament to join the coalition against Iraq. 'What we think of as the traditional strong support [in] the alliance were not as forceful in leading in that direction,' he said. 'For a high-ranking American official to urge the undermining of a democratic decision-making by military intervention is appalling in any case,' Frank said on the House floor. 'It is particularly disturbing in this instance.' Frank said he is drafting a letter that he and other lawmakers will send to President [sic] Bush asking him to disavow Wolfowitz's comments."

Salon reports from the White House Correspondents Dinner: "This year's kitsch-a-thon, though, sounds like it was far more somber than in the past. Resident Bush cracked no jokes at the dinner, instead honoring journalists who were killed in the line of duty in Iraq. (For a serviceable news report of the event, read this.) No one, it seems, was in much of a clowning mood. Take the exchange we heard about between comedian/smartass Al Franken and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: Franken: 'Clinton's military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?' Wolfowitz: 'F*ck you.'"

AFP reports: "Deputy US Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz blocked a Chinese initiative in the 1980s to hold inter-Korean talks with US officials in attendance, while serving in the State Department, according to documents released. Wolfowitz, while serving as assistant secretary of state for Asia and Pacific affairs in 1983, opposed the proposal made by late Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping for the conference in Beijing, according to an interview with former US diplomat Charles W. Freeman contained in documents released by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The documents were released as a modern day meeting on North Korea's nuclear aspirations wrapped up in Beijing between the United States, North Korea and China."

On 9-16-98, Paul Wolfowitz told the House of Representatives: "[T]he key lies not in marching U.S. soldiers to Baghdad, but in helping the Iraqi people to liberate themselves from Saddam." Replicons.org writes, Wolfowitz is making the very argument raised by the anti-war movement, that US military aggression is not the only method that will lead to regime change; in fact it is the least effective method geopolitically. The alienation of allies and the heightened fear and distrust of the US in the Arab world are not unavoidable consequences of seeking a more democratic regime in Iraq. Apparently either his statements before Congress were partisan bluster designed to humiliate the Clinton Administration or he has been converted to the dark side by Richard Perle's vision of American imperialism, by today's rhetorical standards, his words would be viewed as heretically pacifist."

Le Monde reports on "The Triumph of Wolfowitz," which was broadcast on France's Arte TV channel - and would never been shown on the censored US media. "The central figure of this upheaval is Paul Wolfowitz, number two in the Pentagon, whose ideas won out among the top American administrators, during the winter 2001-2002. Wolfowitz had put them in writing, in 1992, in a memorandum from the time of the first Gulf war. They had then been considered dangereous by the 41st president, George Bush Senior, and publicly rejected. Wolfowitz affirms that it is time to give up on the doctrines of "containment", characteristic of the cold war, and to resort to "preemptive" actions against the new enemies of America, perceived like an "axis of Evil" (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). It is even necessary to go further, since the disappearance of the USSR allows it. It is no more a question of managing the crises, but of reorganizing the world, by imposing the American values everywhere."