Buried in today’s Washington Post article about a new poll showing 53 percent of Americans think the Iraq war was “not worth fighting”:

In the new poll, 56 percent said they think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war and 6 in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al Qaeda terrorist network, which struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Amazingly, even with solid majorities thinking Iraq had weapons and provided “direct support” to al Qaeda, the poll showed 51 percent of Americans still think the war was a “mistake.” Imagine what they’d think if they had accurate information.

One of the primary objectives of the World Bank is to combat global poverty. Outgoing World Bank president James Wolfensohn understood the link between global poverty and global security. Paul Wolfowitz, however, remains blind to the impact poverty has on dangers like terrorism and civil unrest.

“If we want stability on our planet, we must fight to end poverty. Since the time of the Bretton Woods Conference, through the Pearson Commission, the Brandt Commission, and the Brundtland Commission, through to statements of our leaders at the 2000 Millennium Assembly – and today – all confirm that the eradication of poverty is central to stability and peace.” — Outgoing World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn, 10/3/04

VERSUS

“These people are not fighting because they’re poor. They’re poor because they fight all the time. ” — President Bush’s nominee for World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, Congressional Testimony, 6/6/96

“We hear a lot of talk about the root causes of terrorism. Some people seem to suggest that poverty is the root cause of terrorism. It’s a little hard to look at a billionaire named Osama bin Laden and think that poverty drove him to it.” — Wolfowitz, 11/15/2002

In order to set spending priorities, the Department of Homeland Security has put together a list of possible terrorist attacks. However, DHS may want to brace itself for President Bush’s 2006 budget first. More than half of the potential scenarios involve some kind of biological attack, chemical attack, or disease outbreak. Yet, the administration’s proposed budget includes:

• Slashing health professions training by 64 percent, a cut that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the training of doctors for children’s hospitals by another 34 percent.

• Though medical experts realize that the National Institutes of Health needs a budget increase of “8 to 10 percent to capitalize on the progress being made in biomedical research,” for the third year in a row the Bush budget provides a “woefully inadequate” increase of less than 1 percent. At that rate, the NIH will not even be able “to continue existing grants.”

• Funding for the CDC’s state and local capacity bioterrorism grants is to be gutted by over $100 million. The grants help state and local agencies prepare for bioterror attacks by improving public health and medical infrastructure, so cuts directly undermine “the United States’ public health readiness if an attack were to occur.”

President Bush will today name Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the war in Iraq, as president of the World Bank.

Wolfowitz is a “highly controversial” choice for the position, the Financial Times notes, in no small part due to his flagrant misjudgments and extreme positions over the last several years. Wolfowitz has been criticized for pressuring intelligence agencies to produce false links between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, attacking Gen. Shinseki’s troop estimates as “wildly off the mark,” holding up funds for Iraq reconstruction, and reportedly approving the harsh interrogation methods that led to abuse and torture in U.S. prisons.

Current bank President James Wolfensohn, appointed twice by President Clinton, was known for “bully[ing] the bank’s staff and board into changing the bank’s focus toward a greater emphasis on alleviating poverty“; last month, the Washington Post described Wolfensohn as “eager to stay on well past June, when his term expires, but increasingly resigned to the prospect that the Bush team would prefer to replace him with someone else.”