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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Mission Accomplished
Posted by Jill | 6:59 AM
The saga of Paul Wolfowitz couldn't be worse if the Bush Administration had SET OUT TO screw up everything it touches.

Funny how the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have lost their jobs through corporate cost-cutting haven't been able to "negotiate" their departures the way Wolfowitz is trying to do with the World Bank:

The negotiations over Mr. Wolfowitz’s possible exit unfolded quickly on Wednesday, officials said. As recently as late on Tuesday night, they said that a last-minute appeal by Mr. Wolfowitz to deny the charges against him and to demand a fair process in which he could stay on the job seemed to backfire. Especially galling to bank board members, officials said, was Mr. Wolfowitz’s request that the 24-member board reject the conclusions of its seven-member subcommittee charging him with violating several codes of conduct and trying to cover up his involvement in Ms. Riza’s salary and promotion.

By the next morning, a flurry of second thoughts and back-channel conversations spread through the bank, officials said, in large part because of the signal from the White House on Tuesday. Previously the administration had rebuffed suggestions that he could not lead the bank, as both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney declared their confidence in his abilities.

In the morning, some bank officials said they were worried that the White House signal was a feint aimed at getting Mr. Wolfowitz to stay. They said they wanted Mr. Wolfowitz to put in writing his promise to resign under the right circumstances.

The events of the day added up, in any case, to a hairpin turn in the fortunes of the beleaguered bank president, who over his two-year tenure has alienated virtually all segments of the bank, and a fair number of economic ministries around the world. In the last few weeks, he has reinforced their anger by dismissing the charges of misconduct against him as a “smear campaign.”

The saga seemed to be playing out according to a time-honored Washington formula: confrontation, impasse and crisis, followed by sudden negotiations to avert a possible breakdown of the institution.


What a disgusting display of Administration incompetence and cronyism this is, and what a dark stain on our relations with the rest of the world. It's one thing for me to let loose a stream of invective on my little bloggie here; it's quite another for a former Administration official and head of the World Bank to let loose with this:

"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."


I hate to tell Wolfowitz this, but this is the real world, not a gangster movie, and he is not James Cagney, he's a pompous blowhard who is largely responsible for the Iraq debacle and is now doing what he can to further shred whatever tatters are left of the United States' reputation in the world. Someone ought to tell him that "Come and get me, coppers!" is not how one behaves on the world stage.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Oh, good Lord, what a wuss
Posted by Jill | 7:38 AM
You'd think that one of the primary architects of the Iraq War, a guy who has held high positions in government, and the head of the World Bank would be able to come up with something better than "My girlfriend made me do it."

Claims of being pussy-whipped: the last refuge of the worst kind of scoundrel:

In a written response, Wolfowitz maintained that he acted in good faith in seeking to resolve an obvious conflict of interest. He accused the bank's ethics committee of forcing him to oversee the raise for his longtime companion, Shaha Riza, as compensation for her transfer to a different job. The ethics panel was afraid to confront her, Wolfowitz said, because its members knew she was "extremely angry and upset."

The ethics committee told Wolfowitz he could not directly supervise Riza, who also worked at the bank, after he arrived in 2005. He said, however, that the panel declined to oversee her job transfer and compensation, instead ordering him to handle those tasks.

"Its members did not want to deal with a very angry Ms. Riza, whose career was being damaged as a result of their decision," Wolfowitz said in his response to the investigating committee's report. "It would only be human nature for them to want to steer clear of her."

Wolfowitz added that the chairman of the ethics panel thought that "due to my personal relationship with Ms. Riza, I was in the best position to persuade her to take out-placement and thereby achieve the 'pragmatic solution' the committee desired."

Wolfowitz effectively blamed Riza for his predicament as well, saying that her "intractable position" in demanding a salary increase as compensation for her career disruption forced him to grant one to pre-empt a lawsuit. He is scheduled to appear before the board this afternoon. The board is expected to begin deliberating on how to respond as soon as tonight. Board members are inclined to issue a resolution expressing a lack of confidence in Wolfowitz's leadership, senior bank officials said.


I wish this were getting as much attention from the media as Paris Hilton's jail sentence.

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