The Perfidy of Paul Wolfowitz(2.0)

Once again, gentle readers, a special guest blogger with words of wisdom about disgraced (and disgraceful) World Ban President Paul Wolfowitz. Please welcome my comrade, fellow blogger, and all-around mensch, DJ Black Adam.

I’d like to thank my future Secretary of defense /Security for the Republic of Liberia, Gunfighter, for allowing me the honor of filling in for him today as guest blogger. He picked a topic that I had been following, so I know about Mr. Wolfowitz, but, even with the wisdom of SHAZAM, I didn’t know what “perfidy” meant, so I looked it up on dictionary.com ;-)

perfidy \PUR-fuh-dee\, noun:

“The act of violating faith or allegiance; violation of a promise or vow; faithlessness; treachery”

Well, lets see how Paul got to the “violating a vow” and “treachery” ....

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz was United States Deputy Secretary of Defense during the administration of President George W. Bush and he was one of the principal "architects" of the Iraq War (which you’d think would disqualify him for being in charge of future things he could mess up). He was appointed president of the World Bank Group 01 June 05 and officially resigned on 17 May 07 though his resignation is effective 30 June 07. He resigned after an investigation by the World Bank Group's board of executive directors, which accepted his resignation, "ending a protracted and tumultuous battle over his stewardship, sparked by a promotion he arranged for his companion."

Mr. Wolfowitz’s appointment was very controversial, though by tradition the US appoints the World Bank president as the US is the largest donor, the current administration (in typical Bush/Cheney fashion) didn’t really give a rat’s tail on considering what other governments thought of their choice.

Surprisingly, even with the controversy, Mr. Wolfowitz accomplished a few good things in his short tenure, such as: the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, the Clean Energy Investment Framework, the Africa Action Plan, and the Avian Flu Initiative. In 2006, there was record lending to Africa (unfortunately he didn’t lend me anything to hire mercenaries or rebuild the infrastructure when I take over Liberia, but I won’t hold that against him).

What I do have to hold against him, is what we like to call in Cook County - Chicago Illinois, good ole fashioned “look out for your peoples” politics, as they say elsewhere “patronage” hiring. Now of course, they get away with it a lot here in Illinois (not as much thanks to Patrick Fitzgerald). But ole Paul was already skating on thin ice. What he did specifically was arrange for his “girlfriend’s” separation package from the World Bank and arrange for her a position in the State Department under Dick Cheney’s daughter, with a salary increase of roughly $70,000.00.

Supposedly, the reason he did this was to deal with a conflict of interest pointed out by the Ethic’s committee for the World Bank, as it had come to light that Mr. Wolfowitz had a relationship with Shaha. This relationship caused a problem with Mr. Wolfowitz as World Bank employees are subject to an ethics rule that does not allow personal relationships between bank employees and their supervisors, including indirect supervision through a chain of command. He felt that if he recused himself from all personnel actions or decisions that involved her Shaha, that should be sufficient, unfortunately the ethics committee disagreed with Paul.

Soooooo, Paul decided to dictate the terms of how this lady would leave the world bank and compensation she should receive (in essence, he determined what his girlfriend would get in her good bye package). Bad move # 1, followed by Bad move #2 getting her the hook up with the US State Department.

Don’t get me wrong, the lady is an Oxford graduate, clearly very capable of the positions she has been given, it is the circumstances that cause the questions. Ultimately, Paul did like he learned fro Bush, ignore the rules and do what you want to do to hook up your people, however, unlike G.W., Paul’s card has been pulled and he will just end up getting some 7 figure job in the private sector (Poor Paul).

Do you think he should have gotten the boot, or should the WBG done like the Cook County Board of directors does, look the other way?


Many thanks, DJBA!

Friends, some of you already read DJBA's blog... but those of you the haven't, ought to go give him a few minutes of your time. If you do, I'll bet you go back.

GF


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