So World Bank Prez Paul Wolfowitz's siphoning of $100,000's to tip his demanding dominatrix mistress has backfired. This wasn't the spanking he had in mind.

Woe is he! The whole bank staff booed him when Wolfie tried to "explain," and you can hardly blame them.

The hubris of Bush's unpopular appointee provides the "sexy" reason the Bank's Board can use to force his removal, since apparently ruining the world on the whim of one's own conceits is not cause for dismissal.

"His womanising has come home to roost," a Washington insider said. "Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Shaha, but it doesn't look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress."

I'm fascinated that Wolfie, the son of a fervent Zionist who taught himself Arabic and became one of the major architects of neoconservative hawkery, is madly enthralled with a Tunisian/Libyan/Syrian/Saudi Muslim, Shaha Riza, a woman described as a "feminist" — is that the new code for well-paid tops these days?

Shaha was apparently determined to take down Saddam Hussein, and is bitterly divorced from her Turkish ex-husband, a Caspian oil expert (!) who opposes Bush and the Iraq invasion. (Link to comments re: Turkish cites).

Meanwhile, Wolfie's wife, Clare— that's right, he's not divorced— is reported to have written George W. warning him years ago that her husband's adultery could jeopardize national security!

"Shock and Awe" is starting to make sense now....

S & A is the new S & M!

I look at the two lovers and all I can imagine is Dr. Charles Montague and Nurse Diesel sweating possible disclosure in their Nazi bondage armoire in High Anxiety: "Are they gone yet?"

In the current New Yorker, (4/9/07), John Cassidy writes a methodical profile:

Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. A must-read, but not a light one.

Yet Cassidy must've had a few laughs when he made mention in his story of the Exploding Cream Cherry on the top of the whole Shit Sundae:

The World Bank is staffed by a well-paid, highly educated secretariat, the vast majority of whom are non-Americans. ...Nearly 90% of the staff opposed Wolfowitz's nomination. A day after the bank's directors confirmed his appointment, Bank Swirled, a satirical magazine produced by bank employees, reported that a moving crew had delivered some personal items to his new office, including a 1768 map of Iraq, with hundreds of red X's denoting WMD's, hundreds of black X's denoting 'Oil Well$,' and one blue X denoting a 'decent sushi restaurant'.

