Posted on 05/20/2007 11:40:12 AM PDT by Kitten Festival
When I was assigned to the U.S. Pacific Command in the mid-1980s, we military officers would often discuss the ambassadors in our theater of operations – a huge area embracing more than 30 countries and most of the Pacific -SNIP-
One name came up constantly as one of the best -SNIP-: then-U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz. He understood the culture, the people and the special circumstances of the world’s most populous Muslim country, and he did a superb job in dealing with that country within the context of U.S. national-security interests.
Understand, then, my wonder over the last few years at Wolfowitz’s fall. From my position, first at the Pentagon, then at the State Department, I watched the talented Wolfowitz self-destruct.
How could such a successful, intelligent ambassador transmogrify into the petulant old man I watched fighting unsuccessfully to keep his job as president of the World Bank? There were early signs.
In 1990, when both of us were at the Pentagon – I worked for Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Wolfowitz for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney – I discovered that Wolfowitz was geared entirely to conceptual thinking and not to practical action, planning and detail and the disciplined routine that government requires.
But there was more. Powell was certain that the Soviet Union was expiring. Wolfowitz, Robert Gates at the CIA, Cheney and a host of retired military officers were certain the Soviets would be back.
In Wolfowitz’s stand, however, I saw something different from the others: a stubborn refusal to see beyond the evil -SNIP-
I also saw more stark evidence of what a poor manager Wolfowitz was. He had no idea how to make the trains run on time – and seemed to have no inclination to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at nashuatelegraph.com ...
Why should we give a crap?
First, lets look at Lawrence Wilkerson
who as an asst. of Colin Powel which does,’t say much
and
On Thursday, May 10, 2007, Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking on National Public Radio, proposed impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
I think Paul Wolfowitz is another one being picked off
by the left and anti WOT folks.
This is a terrible article. The author makes all kinds of assertions, but provides not one concrete example to prove his point.
Wolfowitz was screwed over in order to put George Soros’ pick in the World Bank.
Wolfowitz worked with the World Bank on the employment conditions for his girlfriend. It all had prior approval.
This is just another facet of the pogrom against conservatives.
Wilkerson is a leftist whore posing as an analyst (he has betrayed and attacked the Bush admin. a number of times while serving the cause of the ‘RATs). This column is a confused melange of cliches and babble. There may well be some kernels of truth - I doubt that Wolfowitz was a very good executive - but it’s far from clear that has ANYTHING to do with why the jackals at the World Bank were all over his hide......
You know, I have a simple view that covers both the public and private sectors:
Don't work with, or for godsake hire, your girlfriend.
It would seem a no-brainer.
I’d never heard of the guy before this.
I agree 100%. It doesn't warrant him stepping down, but the old adage "never mix business with pleasure" certainly applies!
A more astute person would have soon the potential problems associated with the head of the bank having his girlfriend work there, and persuaded her to get a job somewhere else
He didn’t hire his girlfriend. When he was made President of the Worldbank, she was already working there for years. She was entitled to a pay raise, which he had to sign. He didn’t want to (conflict of interest), but the commies in the bank assured him to do so, by saying there would be no problem. He was naive enough to follow them, and got caught in their trap.
Thou shalt not dip thy pen into company ink.
See my #13. I just think the both of them — smart people, by most accounts — should have known this was an arrangement that just wouldn’t work.
Ha!
Good Will Rogers quote, too!
He’s made various public comments blasting the WH and Rumsfeld while always trying to make Powell look like a saint and the one redeeming member of the admin. What’s interesting about that is that Wilkerson acknowledges that the supply of pre-war intel (he was at the heart of the effort to prepare Powell’s presentation to the UN) was exactly what the intel community said it should be, yet he still tries now to swing all blame onto Cheney, et al. That is why I think he is fundamentally dishonest and serving left-leaning political interests, no matter how good his prior record (he was a Vietnam Vet, etc.). In working energetically to undermine the Iraq War and the whole War on Terror by his public blasts at the admin., Wilkerson is just as harmful as the MSM and Demagogues, even if he may be loyal to Powell’s view of the country..... p.s. I think it is absurd and offensive for him to now characterize the intel presentation as a “hoax” on the country and the world — he is trying to absolve himself by joining the MSM assault on reason.
During an October 19, 2005 speech at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson gave a stinging criticism of the entire intelligence community which compiled the Iraq War Intelligence. He had criticism for U.S. intelligence agencies as well as the international community including the French, Germans, and British who all believed the intelligence prior to the Iraq War.
“ I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth ”
— Lawrence Wilkerson, New America Foundation, October 19 2005[4]
In an interview that aired on the PBS news magazine NOW on PBS in Spring 2006 Wilkerson claimed that the speech Powell made before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, laying out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which Powell had never been made aware. He said, “My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council.”
He stated in the interview that he was “intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council” and that neither CIA Director George Tenent, nor the CIA analysts involved in furnishing Powell with the information on mobile biological laboratories that he would use in his speech, gave any indication that there were disputes about the reliability of the informants who had supplied this information.
Wilkerson still sees this lapse as the result of a profound intelligence failure, saying, “I have to believe that. Otherwise I have to believe some rather nefarious things about some fairly highly placed people in the intelligence community and perhaps elsewhere.”
Wilkerson also agreed with the interviewer that Vice President Cheney’s frequent trips to the CIA would inevitably have brought “undue influence” on the agency. When asked if Cheney was “the kind of guy who could lean on somebody” he responded, “Absolutely. And be just as quiet and taciturn about it as— he— as he leaned on ‘em. As he leaned on the Congress recently— in the— torture issue.”
Wilkerson stood strongly by his earlier description of Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as having formed a cabal to hijack the decision-making process, emphasizing both their determination to ignore the Geneva Conventions and the “inept and incompetent” planning for post-invasion Iraq.
soon=seen
I don’t think he realized he still had a bullseye on his back...
Probably.
I imagine military officers rarely discuss such things.
He should have gotten the people at the bank to get EVERYTHING IN WRITING that giving his girlfriend a raise was not his idea or suggestion.
Wolfowitz did not hire Shaha Riza (she was a valued employee at the World Bank prior to his becoming Prez), nor did he direct her promotion. Before signing his own employment contract he voluntarily and in writing recused himself from any matters pertaining to her position in the Bank, a recusal that was acknowledged also in writing.
The bank’s board, through a convoluted process, determined that she be given a promotion and directed Wolfowitz to carry out the administrative procedures. Unfortunately, this required that his signature be the authorizing one, enabling his enemies to engineer his dismissal. The anti-Jew, anti-corruption fighter Europeans could not tolerate Wolfowitz any longer than it would take them to devise a scheme for eliminating him.
Thanks for the clarification....he shouldn’t have resigned. However, he would have spared himself this entire thing if his g/f had sought employment elsewhere....just sayin’
Here's my view - be quiet until you've read enough to know what you are talking about.
Paul Wolfowitz did not hire his girlfriend. He worked with the ethics committee to move her out of his chain of command, and actually moved her to a job outside the World Bank. Her raise was in part overdue and in part an apology due to being moved into a dead-end job.
The real lesson here is to not trust international desk-jockeys when it's going to be your job to clean out the corrupt desk-jockeys, or trust a Bush to stand behind you.
Thank you for the summation. I'll stand by what I said, though. Whether in business or government, having one's love interest in the mix is seldom a good idea. Not only can it be uncomfortable, it always seems to give ammo to your competitors and enemies.
No, she wasn’t overdue for a raise, she’d been passed over two times already. That’s why she made her bitter statement to the board about everyone persecuting her and no one promoting, her, she was passed over a lot and was certain of her virtue. Being passed over, she lured her boyfriend into the presidency and tried to amass power that illegitimate way, and the ethics committee saw that going on and demanded that she be moved. That really upset her masterplan for world bank domination and she DICTATED to her boyfriend not just a 3.5% raise like the others were living with, but a 35% raise, plus guaranteed no-merit promotions, up to two as ‘compensation’ and Paul went along like a naive lunk, not thinking with his big head. The ethics committee recommended an either/or option but paul gave her both and then tried to hide it, had his spokesman lie about it to the press and then screamed that he was the victim when the truth came out. The guy just wasn’t thinking.
Wolfie wanted to simply recuse himself from matters affecting her. The World Bank Ethics Committee said that was not adequate. He asked others to determine appropriate compensation for her to leave/transfer, and because he could not recuse himself (per the ethics board) signed off on it.
Then the ethics board changed their mind.
Of course what he could have done was marry her. The World Bank has special rules for that. Guess he didn’t want to, or she didn’t want to.
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