Two years later... Two years into it, the Iraq War has cost us dearly: 1,519 US dead, maybe 100,000 Iraqis liberated (from their lives), all at a cost of $157,000,000,000 and counting. How are you going to celebrate tomorrow's two-year anniversary?

Bush is doing so by nominating chickenhawk, Project for a New American Century founding member, and Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz--in a brazen screw-you to the world--as head of the World Bank. But perhaps you'd prefer to attend one of the hundreds of war vigils being held across the country (visit Sojourners or United for Peace and Justice to find one near you).

Why Wolfowitz? The New York Times writes, " Even those who supported the goals of the invasion must remember Mr. Wolfowitz's scathing contempt for estimates that the occupation of Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of troops, and his serene conviction that American soldiers would be greeted with flowers." But beyond his hand in orchestrating the Iraq quagmire, Wolfowitz isn't really qualitifed (on NPR this morning, I heard Bush saying his qualifications are that he heads the Pentagon, which--like the World Bank--is a big organization). The organization is, after all, about funding projects for impoverished countries. Salon's Farhad Manjoo puts it well:

During all of the posts he's held in his professional life -- in academia, at the State Department during the Reagan years, and the Defense Department during the first and second Bush administrations -- it's hard to find a single instance in which Wolfowitz has put international development anywhere on his list of global priorities. Sachs has worked on international development issues for more than two decades, and he knows pretty much everybody in the field. Wolfowitz, he says, "is not known in this field as having any role." Search Wolfowitz's official biography on the Defense Department Web site for words like "development" or "poverty" or "malaria" or "AIDS" or "debt" or "economic policy" and you come up with nothing. The document suggests that Wolfowitz has spent more time thinking about how to position naval ships than how to deploy bed nets to nations afflicted with malaria.

Manjoo goes on to quote Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist who heads the U.N. Millennium Project, who says the World Bank doesn't deal with "amateur-hour" issues: "We presumably wouldn't nominate Wolfowitz to be surgeon general. We wouldn't send him to the Supreme Court to argue a case. He's a defense specialist. This is not a qualification to be the head of the World Bank."

File under: brass cojones: A British MP got booted from the House of Commons yesterday for calling for Tony Blair's impeachment--or, rather, for refusing to withdraw his comment that "There is compelling evidence that the prime minister misled this house in taking us to war. Isn't it high time we held him to account?" Afterwards, he--Adam Price--said:

Most people now believe that the prime minister deliberately deceived parliament and the people. He even deceived members of his own cabinet in taking us to war two years ago. But the rules of the game in Westminster mean we cannot say what most of us think. The prime minister misled us and MPs must be able to debate the issue.

We will not let Tony Blair's lies and deceit be forgotten. 100,000 people have died in the course of this conflict. We must take a stand. I will not be gagged and parliament should not allow itself to be silenced.

For more: Antiwar.com has a great set of links on Wolfowitz, the pullout of troops by Italy and others, abuse of detainess, and possible next targets.