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roachboy · 04-14-2007, 09:53 AM

i post this while trying really hard to not say anything sarcastic in response to no. 143....the unfolding scandal at the world bank involving yet another bushcrony is clearly the fault of the democrats...such idiotic conclusions would folow from it. but for this, there is no-one and nothing to blame but the right for this latest example of the kind of shabby, ill-considered nonsense that is apparently the modus operandum of everyday life in conservativeland, such as it is now:

Quote:

Wolfowitz Dictated Girlfriend's Pay Deal
World Bank Board Weighs Its Options

By Karen DeYoung and Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 14, 2007; A01

World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz personally dictated the terms under which the bank gave what it called his "domestic partner" substantial pay raises and promotions in exchange for temporarily leaving her job there during his tenure, according to documents released by the bank's executive board yesterday.

The board issued a statement saying it will "move expeditiously to reach a conclusion on possible actions to take," amid rising speculation over whether the embattled Wolfowitz will resign or be asked to step down. Board deliberations over his future were suspended yesterday morning as the bank began its spring meeting, an annual rite attended by finance ministers and central bank presidents, and one now being overtaken by the controversy surrounding Wolfowitz.

"He has apologized, and there is a process in place," Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said after a meeting with his counterparts from the world's richest nations yesterday. "I don't intend to comment on that here. I do not want that to be read as a lessening of U.S. support for Paul Wolfowitz."

Wolfowitz joined the bank in 2005 after working at the Pentagon, where as deputy defense secretary he was a principal architect of the Iraq war. This made him a controversial figure at the bank, where he fostered resentment among its member nations and 7,000 Washington employees. A number of the bank's leading donor nations, including Britain, expressed public concern about aspects of his leadership long before the current uproar over his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, which began when details of her pay package were publicly revealed last month.

As bank staffers and development activist groups continued to call for Wolfowitz's resignation, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that he has President Bush's "full confidence" and that "we expect him to remain as World Bank president."

Defenders also surfaced from other quarters. The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that "the forces of the World Bank's status quo," angered by Wolfowitz's efforts to fight "corruption-as-usual" and institute more accountability in the institution's lending practices, had seized on a trivial issue to bring him down. One former bank staffer said that "some of the countries who failed to block his election are trying to set him up, and he walked into that trap really well."

But while few knowledgeable observers were prepared to predict Wolfowitz's departure, many expressed concern that the turmoil is threatening to undermine the work and credibility of the bank.

"The issue now, as far as many of us are concerned, is a matter of corporate governance," said a senior bank staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. "The Europeans want him out. The U.S. remains silent, and the board is divided."

Others expressed concern about the effect that the controversy could have on this year's negotiations to finance the International Development Association, the bank's lending vehicle for the world's poorest countries. Europe contributes 60 percent of the IDA's funding, and the United States and Japan together give about 26 percent. U.S. contributions and pledges to the current three-year program total about $3 billion.

Among the more than 100 pages of internal letters, memorandums, and legal and ethics opinions released by the board yesterday was an angry letter from Riza to the board, written Monday, to authorize the release of the documents "in the interest of expediting and facilitating the resolution of this issue."

Riza, a Tunisian-born British citizen who worked at the bank as a communications specialist, made it clear that "I did not wish to leave the Bank." She said she had objected to the arrangements for her departure. "My effort to accommodate the Board's Ethics Committee and avoid creating distractions for Staff, Board and Management from their noble mission while protecting my interest, has only resulted in the most vicious public attacks on me."

Wolfowitz had also asked for the release of the documents, believing that they would show that the board's ethics committee had rejected his offer to recuse himself from consideration of Riza's employment and ordered him to find a solution.

But the documents also revealed that Wolfowitz's description of events has been less than candid. In a May 25, 2005, letter to Wolfowitz's personal lawyer negotiating his contract, Roberto Dañino, then the bank's general counsel, acknowledged that Wolfowitz had disclosed "a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staffer" and had proposed to resolve it "by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member."

Wolfowitz lawyer Robert Barnett responded two days later with an e-mail stating that the proposal "WOULD NOT -- I REPEAT, NOT -- INVOLVE RECUSAL FROM PROFESSIONAL CONTACT" with Riza. "THIS MATTER," Barnett wrote, "MUST BE RESOLVED" before Wolfowitz would sign his contract.

The board eventually ruled that "professional contact" between the two violated bank policy and instructed Wolfowitz to order the personnel department to arrange her departure and compensation.

But the board insisted yesterday that it neither "commented on" nor "reviewed or approved" the agreement that Wolfowitz ordered his human resources department to make with her.

In a memo to the bank's vice president for human resources dated Aug. 11, 2005, Wolfowitz wrote, "I now direct you to agree to a proposal which includes the following terms and conditions." Riza was to be "detailed to an outside institution of her choosing while retaining Bank salary and benefits." She was to receive an immediate raise with approximate annual increases of 8 percent.

By 2010, when Wolfowitz's five-year term expired, she would reach a salary of $244,960, significantly above the maximum of $226,650 allowable for her pay grade. On her return to the bank, she would be automatically promoted to the level of senior country director; if her return were delayed another five years by a second Wolfowitz term, she would be elevated to the level of bank vice president.

In a memo dated Sept. 9, 2005, Wolfowitz aide Robin Cleveland, a former White House official he brought with him to the bank, wrote that Wolfowitz had hired an outside counsel to review the agreement since Dañino, the general counsel, worked for the bank and thus had a conflict of interest. Wolfowitz, the memo said, had selected the Washington firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, "based on their ability to present a strong team within 24 hours which included, among others, the former U.S. solicitor General and Eugene Scalia, a personnel policy expert."

In a letter to Wolfowitz after its review, the firm judged the pact "a reasonable resolution . . . that avoids, among other things, the risks of protracted legal proceedings."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

the new york times rushes in to provide an "analysis" that in fact just states the obvious:

Quote:

Wolfowitz Fight Has Subplot
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, April 13 ? When President Bush appointed Paul D. Wolfowitz as the president of the World Bank two years ago, the White House had to put down an insurrection among European nations that viewed the administration?s best-known neoconservative as a symbol of American unilateralism and arrogance.

For a while, Mr. Wolfowitz seemed to defuse those fears, even taking on the Bush administration over how best to aid the poorest nations of Africa. But now it is clear that the chorus of calls in recent days for Mr. Wolfowitz?s ouster is only partly about his involvement in setting up a comfortable job, with a big pay raise, for a bank officer who is Mr. Wolfowitz?s companion.

At its core, the fight about whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank is a debate about Mr. Bush and his tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world, particularly the bank, the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which have viewed themselves ? at various moments since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ? as being at war with the Bush White House and its agenda.

As finance ministers gathered in Washington on Friday for the bank?s weekend meeting, Mr. Wolfowitz worked behind the scenes, seeking support for keeping his job. But there were few endorsements of his leadership beyond those offered by the Bush administration.

In foreign capitals, and among the bank?s staff members, it has been noted that Mr. Wolfowitz?s passion for fighting corruption, which he has said saps economic life from the world?s poorest nations, seemed to evaporate when it came to reviewing lending to Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, three countries that the United States considers strategically vital. Some longtime bank staff members complained that Mr. Wolfowitz relied too little on experts in international development and too much on a pair of aides who served with him in the administration.

Members of the bank?s board from around the world began comparing what they called the murky way in which the bank made some policy decisions to the secretive habits of the Bush administration.

Nancy Birdsall, the president of the Center for Global Development, a group that monitors aid to the world?s poorest nations, described what she termed ?real doubts about Wolfowitz?s judgment? inside the bank.

Mr. Wolfowitz came to the bank with heavy political baggage. Since the bank was set up at the end of World War II, its president has always been an American, a fact that has engendered more and more resentment over time. That reaction was compounded when Mr. Bush selected Mr. Wolfowitz, who had served as deputy secretary of defense and an architect of the Iraq war.

?It took a huge amount of effort to quiet this down,? a member of the bank?s board of governors and an early supporter of Mr. Wolfowitz recalled Friday of the early insurrection. ?And you would think, knowing that he was going into an institution that was deeply suspicious of him and the Bush administration, that he would have done everything he could to allay those concerns.?

At first, Mr. Wolfowitz did so. He made Africa his first priority. He displayed a passion and energy for the work ? much as he did many years ago as ambassador to Indonesia, where he immersed himself in the culture and took on a dictator, Suharto. His campaign against corruption was intellectually unassailable and quintessentially American, and he was certainly right as far as the facts were concerned, members of the bank?s staff and leadership say.

But eventually his focus on that issue put him at odds with career officials at an institution that is famously resistant to outside influence, and which believes that fighting poverty has to come first, even if that means dealing with countries whose leaders are not above skimming a few million dollars along the way.

?He came in to a mood of skepticism and strong reservations by many,? said Geoffrey Lamb, a former vice president of the bank, who worked closely with Mr. Wolfowitz on questions of finance for the world?s poorest nations before he retired last summer. ?My feeling was that he provided a bit of reassurance, by moving actively on aid to Africa and debt forgiveness. Clearly, those early perceptions have changed a lot.?

Over time, Mr. Wolfowitz created an impression that at critical moments he was putting American foreign policy interests first, most notably when he suspended a program in Uzbekistan after the country denied landing rights to American military aircraft, and directed huge amounts of aid to the countries he once recruited to sign on to Washington?s counterterrorism agenda.

It did not help that he relied heavily on a pair of aides drawn from the Bush administration, Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems, who created an inner circle that the bank?s professional staff members said they had great trouble piercing.

Mr. Wolfowitz?s defenders say that he was right to come in with a mission of shaking up the ingrown bureaucracy at the bank, and that the place desperately needed shaking up. But even they acknowledge that management has never been his strong suit, and that his judgment in dealing with the transfer of his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, was questionable.

In the backlash against Mr. Wolfowitz, though, there is also an undercurrent of settling scores ? including those that go beyond the World Bank. Europeans still fume over Mr. Bush?s decision to send John R. Bolton, one of the biggest critics of the United Nations, to New York to serve as ambassador there ? an experiment that ended when it became clear that the newly Democratic Senate would not confirm him to finish Mr. Bush?s term.

Others recall that the administration tried to fire Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian-born head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who famously declared in early 2003 that there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program. Dr. ElBaradei proved to be right, and was soon awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

So far, the White House has expressed confidence in Mr. Wolfowitz, but not with much vigor. There were no signs that President Bush was about to rush to his aid, though that could still happen. European and Asian officials bet it will not.

?There is a sense that we?re finally at a moment when Bush needs the world more than the world needs Bush,? said a senior foreign official who flew into Washington recently for the annual meeting of the bank and the International Monetary Fund. ?And there?s more than a little of that mixed in this whole argument over Wolfowitz?s fate.?

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/wa...=1&oref=slogin

conclusion: wolfowitz should never have been appointed to this position in the first place.

the step-by-step self-destruction of the neo-con movement and of the right's coalition more generally is at this point kind of amazing to watch, a huge slow-motion trainwreck.