Bush Alums Reap Their Rewards

By Robert Scheer

"As Paul Wolfowitz twists in the wind after being found guilty in a World Bank investigation of public payola to his girlfriend, it does seem that his career might finally be coming to an end. Pity that the Iraq debacle, which Wolfowitz promoted, was not sufficient reason for removing him from public office; instead, President Bush rewarded “Wolfie” with a promotion to head the World Bank. Add him to the rapidly growing list of Bush alums whose career trajectory suddenly plummets upon the disclosure of a pattern of lying obvious to most observers but not to the president himself.

To understand why scum consistently rises to the surface of the Bush administration, it is best to refer to the wisdom contained in the final memoir of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut. In an excerpt published in 2006, Vonnegut observed that “George W. Bush has gathered around him ... most frighteningly, psychotic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.” .....

Such rich rewards for folks ostensibly fighting world poverty would not seem troubling to the PPs Vonnegut referred to, as they are suffering from a malady that renders them morally tone-deaf. Citing what he calls the classic medical text on PPs, “The Mask of Sanity,” Vonnegut noted in his “Custodians of Chaos” piece: “Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These are people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.

“PPs are presentable,” Vonnegut reminds us, lest we be fooled by their equanimity on talk shows, “they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!” Vonnegut includes the executives who gave us the Enron and WorldCom scandals with the neoconservatives to indicate the malady’s extent......

Then, too, this lying lout will no doubt be rewarded with something similar to the $4-million contract that former CIA Director George Tenet recently received to share a few details of how he went about betraying us."