Posted on 05/15/2007 11:06:15 PM PDT by Tulsa Ramjet
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Wolfowitz made an emotional appeal to stay on as World Bank president in a last pitch before the bank's board decides whether he has the credibility to lead the poverty-fighting institution.
The U.S. government failed to rally support among its key allies for a strategy aimed at saving Wolfowitz his job, even as a bank panel found that he violated ethics rules.
Wolfowitz remained defiant as he appeared before the 24-nation board, which will resume a meeting on Wednesday to decide his fate in a scandal over a pay and promotion deal he approved in 2005 for his companion, Shaha Riza, a Middle East expert at the bank.
"I respectfully submit, to criticize my actions or to find them as a basis for a loss of confidence would be grossly unfair and would be contrary to the evidence we have presented to you," Wolfowitz said in a statement to the board.
"Rather than fix blame for something that wasn't wrong, we should all acknowledge our responsibility as I have acknowledged mine," he said, conceding he made mistakes.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Someone who can steer billions in loans to US supporters to the WoT, of course.
He may actually think that he could clean up that corrupted mess that is the World Bank - but as we have discussed previously on FR there are so many alternatives: John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, and why not send Wolfowitz to the UN? Anything to see the moonbats’ heads explode.....
Good ideas. I don’t think Rummy, however, will take another job. He has served his country over and above the call of duty, and brilliantly, and he’s 73, and maybe wants to have some time with his wife and family. Our loss, his gain.
of course, there’s always that. ha ha, good point. Of course, why not get out of it all together and have a U.S. Bank. That way we aren’t beholden to any crackpots.
We do - USAID. Unfortunately there is Inter-American Development Bank and others...under what Constitutional mandate?
ahhhh,...USAID,...methinks you are more in the know than meets the monitor.
The “below-the-radar” USAID is to U.S. International, what the NSA was to the intelligence community.
If the Washington Post is not lying, I think its the end for Wolfowitz. They could of course be lying, since its an even or an odd numbered day...
>>White House Shifts on Wolfowitz
Bush administration signals willingness to replace World Bank president if he is not fired from post.<<
Wolfie screwed up. When you go into a hostile situation as a troubleshooter where you are blamed for the Iraq war which has less than 5% support in Europe you have to be extremely careful because you know they are looking for an excuse.
The World bank doesn’t want his reform, as they tolerate the current level of corruption. They don’t want his management style and they want to pay back the U.S. for invading Iraq after the U.N. turned down our request for a resolution of support.
So when Wolfie got involved in the compensation of someone he was sleeping with, it was a technical error. And that’s enough when the board already wants to fire the CEO.
I agree. It is the end. He is also a potty mouth according to the final parangraph of this May 16 article from The First Post:
Paul Wolfowitz Awaits His Fate
Man in the news: Hubris to blame for the World Bank President’s current predicament
Paul Wolfowitz will be best remembered as a prime architect of the Iraq war when he was deputy to Donald Rumsfeld. But he has been among the fiercest American neo-cons for a generation since he served President Reagan as a diplomat.
Hubris has caught up with him in his latest role as President of the World Bank, however, and in an echo of the recent fate of BP’s Lord Browne, a personal relationship is at the heart of his fall.
Wolfowitz, given the job by President Bush in 2005, was always a controversial pick. He is no friend to the developing world. He promised to ‘end’ any state deemed guilty of supporting terrorists and once destroyed a batch of 600,000 army berets because they had been made in ‘unfriendly’ China.
He declared that he would end corruption while distributing largesse from the coffers of America, the Bank’s largest contributor.
Wolfowitz once destroyed a batch of 600,000 army berets because they had been made in ‘unfriendly’ China.
A special Bank panel decided that he ‘violated’ the code of ethics himself in the way he handled the role of his companion, Shaha Riza, who worked at the Bank.
A high-flying Libyan project director, Riza complains of being cast merely as a ‘girlfriend’ to the divorced Wolfowitz. He personally arranged for her to take a temporary post at the State Department, with a pay rise from $133,000 a year to $190,000 and a guarantee of future promotion.
Last night, he went before the World Bank’s full board and pleaded to keep his job. The Bush administration has backed him so far, but a comment yesterday by White House spokesman Tony Snow was ominous. “There are going to be conversations about how you move forward...”
As Washington awaits the Bank’s decision, an extraordinary Wolfowitz tirade reported in the minutes of a Bank meeting may go down as a grim reflection on the whole American neo-con project: “If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too.”
Charles Laurence
By by, wolfie, by by. Say hello to Riza.
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