The recent argument made by syndicated columnist Helen Thomas that the Peter Principle was operative in President Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank is open to serious question.

The New York Times columnist's suggestion that Wolfowitz's incompetence regarding the Iraq war and his promotion of American hegemony in the New American Century should cause his promotion to be viewed in the light of what actually happened.

Wolfowitz was a smashing success. He and his neo-conservative brethren — Douglas Feith, Richard Perle et al. — succeeded in engineering a war that removed one of Israel's principal enemies and neutralized Syria and Iran, without Israel being obliged to spend one shekel nor shed the blood of one of her soldiers. After all, that was the geo-political purpose behind neo-con thinking in promoting the Iraq war.

Wolfowitz and his cronies are "graduates" of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs aka JINSA. (Note the fraudulent use of Jewish in the title when "Israeli" would be the honest and correct adjective.)

Wolfowitz has been most successful in getting some 1,500 young Americans to die on behalf of Israeli security — not to mention the 10,000 maimed and wounded on Israel's behalf.

Ms. Dowd did indeed miss the boat in condemning Wolfowitz to be a failure when, as pointed out above, he is regarded as a great success in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

William Gartland is a Rio, Wis. resident.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 19 2005.