A WOLF AT THE DOOR

It seems like now the people would have a Republican scandal that they could get their teeth into – sex.

The American public, as proven in their lust for a Clinton impeachment, must think that a sex scandal is worse that sending our young boys to the killing fields of Iraq under false pretenses.

The sex scandal of the Republicans is that Wolfowitz has a girlfriend. Wolfowitz and his girlfriend sitting in a tree – K-i-s-s-i-n-g.

In 2005 President Bush named Wolfowitz president of the World Bank, with a tax-free salary of about $400,000. Wolfowitz’s girlfriend and lover, Shaha Riza, was working there at the time, but he said he would recuse himself in any work-related dealings with her.

Wolfowitz was divorced so there was nothing wrong with his seeing Shaha except that she and the old Wolf, a skilled bureaucrat and one of the Bush’s leading architects of the war in Iraq, had been playing hanky-panky with the World Bank’s money.

Wolfowitz appointed her to the State Department and personally arranged a $60,000 pay increase to $193,590 for her. This put Riza on a higher pay level than her boss Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice whose pay is $186,000. And Rice has to pay tax on her salary, but Riza, as a World Bank employee, does not.

No one seems to know what Shaha Riza actually does at the State Department. She has been described as a communications specialist and a senior gender coordinator. She is now working at something called the Foundation for the Future. She is still being paid by the World Bank.

Although all of this should put Wolfowitz's job in jeopardy, Bush, as usual, has expressed "full confidence" in him.

I guess it is up to the American people to really get hold of this, sink their teeth into it and find that stained blue dress.

The California Curmudgeon