an unrepentant wolfowitz

Paul Wolfowitz, the neocon former Deputy Defense Secretary turned World Bank President, spoke at the National Press Club yesterday. Oddly enough, the topic of Iraq didn't feature in his prepared remarks, but questioners pressed Wolfie. One asked, "How do you account for the intelligence failures regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?"

From the Post, his response: "Well," he said after a long pause, "I don't have to."

Incredible. But at least he didn't deny the existence of intel failures. Wolfowitz elaborated further on his buck-passing riff:

"And it's not just because I don't work for the U.S. government anymore. In my old job I didn't have to. I was like everyone else outside the intelligence community. . . . We relied on the intelligence community for those judgments, so the question is, in a way, how do they account for it?"

Oh, the lies. How does Doug Feith's special intelligence group at the Pentagon, which picked thru the intel to find nuggets (no matter how poor its sources) that they could twist into supporting what they wanted to see and reported to Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, account for it?

But still, Wolfowitz pressed on, invading Iraq was the right thing to do:

"I still think that what has been done for the United States and the world is something important," he said. Praising the sacrifices of U.S. and allied troops, he added that Iraq will become a place of "tolerance and freedom" in the Muslim world. "I think the whole world, frankly, should be enormously grateful."

We're just a bunch of ingrates, I guess.