[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 32 (Wednesday, March 16, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H1604]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      APPOINTMENT OF PAUL WOLFOWITZ AS PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD BANK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, having watched that last bill, I 
continually am surprised in this House that I think I have seen 
everything, and then I see another one like this one tonight. But on 
the television today we saw an even more amazing thing. We saw the 
architect of the Iraq war and all the problems that still remain, the 
killings, the massacring of civilians, the instability of the 
government, the inability for them to pick their leadership, their 
inability to give security to the people of Iraq, we see that every day 
on the television. It is all the creation of a man named Paul Wolfowitz 
and his friend, Mr. Rumsfeld, the Secretary of War. The two of them 
together have put together this disaster that we now face.
  Now, one would think that, given the failure of the planning and all 
of what went on in the Iraq war, you would be about to see the end of 
Mr. Wolfowitz one way or another. But history has some really 
interesting things in it.
  Some of you may remember the Vietnam War. There was an architect for 
the Vietnam War. His name was Robert McNamara. Robert McNamara led us 
into the swamp; 58,000 people died. Tons and tons of folks died on the 
Vietnamese side. We wasted money. We put ourselves deeply in debt. And 
when it was over, Lyndon Johnson made him the head of the World Bank. 
Who would think that today the President of the United States would 
reward a man who has created the mess in Iraq with the job of being the 
head of the World Bank?
  Now, what does the World Bank do? At the end of the Second World War 
we set up four institutions. We set up the World Bank, the United 
Nations. We set up the International Monetary Fund. They were all to 
stabilize what was going on economically and tie us together in trade.
  And we take a man who is an avowed American imperialist, who believes 
in establishing hegemony across the whole world on the base of military 
power. That is really what the neocons believe. And the President says, 
you know, this is just the kind of guy we need at the head of the World 
Bank.
  What does the World Bank do? Well, if a country wants to build a dam 
or they want to do some road improvement projects or they want to do 
some AIDS prevention or some AIDS treatment, they come to the World 
Bank and ask for loans. Imagine the world coming to the feet of Paul 
Wolfowitz and trying to get him to understand about rebuilding. This is 
a man who has flattened Afghanistan and flattened Iraq, has come in 
here and asked for $80 billion again and again and again, even today, 
80 more billion dollars, and they still do not have the water running 
and the sewage moving, and they do not have electricity, and they do 
not have the basic requirements of a civil society in Iraq. And he 
comes in here, now to be the head of the World Bank. We are going to 
give him billions of dollars to hand out to the world to rebuild the 
very mess that he created. What in the world is the President thinking?
  I suppose he thinks, well, maybe, you know, Paul created all those 
problems over there, bombed everything and led our neocon ideas, that 
if we could just get enough power, we just bomb enough, you could have 
a city like Fallujah in Iraq. It is a city of about 400,000 people. It 
is flat. Just like we did in the Second World War to Dresden, and we 
did with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He flattened that 
city.
  Well, that was to save it, you know, because they were so resistant 
in that city to American democracy that the only solution Paul 
Wolfowitz and his confreres in the department of war could think of was 
to bomb it flat. And now he is the World Bank president, and he will be 
letting the loans to put Fallujah back on its feet. Man, I have seen 
everything.

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