Posted on 04/17/2007 11:42:35 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
was wrong to suggest that Paul Wolfowitz was like Robert McNamara. That is disrespectful to McNamara. The better comparison is to Jimmy Swaggart. Let me explain, through the roundabout medium of Norman Podhoretz.
Long ago, in the unbelievably frigid days in Washington just before Ronald Reagan was sworn in, by chance I met Podhoretz at a pre-inauguration party. He was then the editor of Commentary magazine and a big, fervent figure in developing what we would come to know as neo-conservatism. Two important allies in this cause were his wife, Midge Decter, and son in law, Elliott Abrams, later of Iran-contra fame. As a former employee of the soon-to-be-ousted Jimmy Carter administration, whose flounderings during the Iran hostage crisis became the neocons’ symbol of feckless American liberalism, I was not a natural invitee to such parties. But my next-door neighbor was a big-time Republican and had asked me over.
I ended up uncomfortably in a corner with Podhoretz, to whom I had been introduced as an ex-Carterite. Politely, he asked what I was doing now. I said that I had just the day before finished a book about military policy. It would be published a few months later as National Defense. The point of the book, I told him, rose from what I had discovered during some interesting reporting in and around the Pentagon. If you looked objectively at the details of how men and machinery perform in combat, you would end up being skeptical of a lot of the very expensive, fragile, overcomplex weaponry in the U.S. arsenal — and instead would pay a lot more attention to guile, agility, the moral elements of leadership, the bond between the military and the public, and similar assets that money alone couldn’t buy.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
The point of it is to denigrate Wolfowitz. My understanding is that Wolfowitz notified the bank of his situation with his girlfriend before he hired in; he pointed out the potential conflict of interest, and they settled it.
In other words, it was all in the open, and it was part of his original agreement to accept employment. They would move her into another department, and since she was due an advancement, they would see that she got it.
It isn’t a case of him favoring his girlfriend, as its been made out to be. On the contrary, he notified the bank of the possible conflict of interest, and they settled it by arranging her transfer. The ethics committee, not Wolfowitz, and it was arranged as a part of his agreement to accept employment. Up front.
The rest of it, about Swaggart and Haggard and so forth, is just Fallows throwing mud because he doesn’t have an argument.
http://www.slate.com/id/2164368/
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009948
Marron, this is the very first time ever that we disagree, I am sorry to say.
Wolf apologized for his involvement in setting his girl’s salary at an exhorbitantly high rate, well above WB standards. Ostensibly it was compensation for her ruined career, but the Bank’s ethnics board offered an either/or menu of choices, one was a lump sum payment, one was a raise, and one was a promotion. Instead of settling for one on that menu, Paul dictated ALL on that menu, wanting to take care of his girl. Then he bypassed the HR chief, not wanting anyone important to know about it. As for the ruined career, I really don’t buy that argument, nor do i buy wolfies suddenly missing argument about her threatening a lawsuit. On the latter, as an international-institution employee, she was ineligible to sue under US law. She did have the option of going to a WB tribunal, and I would have liked to have read the publicity from that.
But ultimately, she was an EMPLOYEE, not a property-owner, with her job. She seemed to have considered her job property, as any typical fourth-rate, third-world bureaucrat might, and not her employment. If she were in the private sector in the US she would have been expected and willing to go anywhere the bank sent her, even to a job she didn’t think glamorous enough for her inflated self-opinion (after all, she WAS sleeping with the WB chief!)
But she demanded the right to multiple promotions without merit and compensation for the horror of working with Liz Cheney on Iraq, a real Siberia of a job, the absolute toilet-cleaning job of the WB, by her claims, If associating with a neocon like Liz Cheney was the ultimate way to get cooties, why was she LITERALLY in bed with Paul Wolfowitz?
If her career was that important, she could have recused herself from Paul. But she wanted it not just both ways but four or five ways - illegal salary hike above what anyone else got, multiple promotions, compensation for the horror of working with Liz Cheney, plus warm and cozy nights with Paul.
This reminds me of one of the great philosophers of the 20th Century. He said, “When everybody’s out to get you, paranoia is just good thinking.” -Dr. Johnny Fever, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Do you deny that there are a lot of folks out to get effective Bush officials? We’ve seen this before with another appointee who tried to give a well needed enema to a corrupt international organization. Does John Bolton ring a bell?
These kind of articles strike me as something the author put together under a deadline- the guy is basically flapping his jaw in print. The article gets real tired real fast, the writer’s rancor the most evident portion of his style. The man’s a professional, he should publish as such.
Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. It’s important to judge each one of them on their merit. If they are screaming about Bolton’s mustache not matching his hair or Wolfie’s socks having holes in them, to heck with that, i have no time for them. I like both of them for being human.
But if Bolton was putting a mistress on the payroll and finding some way to boost her salary like some African dictator or Black Mischief colonial Brit, I’d be negative on it no matter who he was, it’s just too sleazy.
The problem with Wolf is that he tried to get an unmerited advantage to take care of his girl and prop up his nasty screaming aides, like the screeching and ignorant Robin Cleveland. Gonzales didn’t do that. Rummy didn’t do that. Bolton never did that. All of their problems were over policy or legally made decisions. There’s a difference of kind rather than degree in what they came under fire for. Wolf’s troubles are substantially different because he was trying to benefit himself with the fleshpots without any sort of ideology or policy, a personal benefit, the sort of thing a clintonite might do. William Webster and Richard Holbrooke did this sort of thing too. Didn’t the clintonites’ personal pocketlining disgust you? That sort of thing always disgusts everyone, particularly if it’s a prig who thinks he’s the ultimate arbiter of morality and points the bony finger with shameless unaccountable caprice subject to no oversight. (he actually made his oversight boards his pentagon cronies, making all decisions airtight and very vulnerable to corruption.) I think the tendency to see the criticism of wolfowitz as part of a single campaign against conservatives and related to the charges against the others is to pull a smokescreen over the personal misdeeds of wolfowitz
I think the willingness to raise these questions is getting easier these days as the war continues to be a failure and the dems make scary gains in congress. If we don’t get rid of the dead wood, we are going to be ruled by raging leftists who are baying for revenge after decades in the political wilderness. we need to reinvestigate and reassert our principles and stand for something better than pocketlining or blaming outside conspiracies for selfmade troubles that we don’t think we need to change.
Paul Wolfowitz - guy has got some major issues. I agree with the charge of hypocrisy and favoritism because he was getting action from his girlfriend. Two things I have problems with Wolfowitz, one - never served and threw our soldiers into battle. Someone asked him one time how many soldiers had died in 2003/2004, he had no clue. NeoCon con-artist. things look shaky in Iraq, and he bails on Bush, and has to assuage his demons by doling out money to the poor around the world at the World Bank. Talk about cut-and-run. no excuse.
Rove - his job is to win elections. nothing more. no huge dissection needed. similar to H.R. Haldeman with Nixon.
Rumsfeld - served his country well. Obtained a victory in iraq, but screwed up trying to nation-build. Nation-building is a money pit. let the iraqis nation build, its their nation, and there is no appreciation for our efforts, except by those that can profit off of it. Even so, Rumsfeld tried to nation-build on the cheap, and with less troops than what was needed. big mistake, but time to re-adjust. Time to go to Fort Apache mode in Bagdad and do CAS strikes in areas of concern. let the iraqis go out and get BDA. Again, its their country. Vehicle patrols? What for? to get blown up by IEDs? Rumsfeld didn’t have a friggin thing to do with Abu Grahb and those wacked out reservists, under the poor leadership of that reservist general who never made rounds at the command she was supposed to lead.
Gonzales - don’t really know him but appears to be getting thrown under a bus by some clueless republicans. Also seems to be a Bush hack that has gotten caught up in a clueless staffers action. You make a decision to fire a crap load of people, you stick with it. Don’t squirm. Squirming is for worms and the crappy are biting.
Robert McNamara - huge apologist that can’t get over that JFK is dead. His relevancy escapes me. Dems love to regurgitate their old leaders because they all like to apologize, like Bill Clinton who also apologized but only after confronted with DNA evidence. “Depends on what you mean by DNA?”
Cheney? - he is a loyal cheerleader for Bush. I don’t really care for him and the amount of deferments he got in vietnam is unsettling, but it is what it is. he knew Saddam needed to be taken out, and he helped provide a steady hand on the wheel to go through with it. Again, OIF was a victory. Time to take to descope that money pit, though. You win wars, you don’t win peace. Peace is driving by a nation’s own people. We can give them tools, but sometimes civil war is a way cleanse the land of the men causing the problems.
this Fallows is an idiot, but I couldn’t care less is Wolfowitz is fired. That SOB burns me up leaving Bush like that.
Since this is a lie the rest of your comments are bull$hit !
He didn't leave Bush. He's a plant by Bush to clean the mess up over at the World Bank !
No it isn’t. You’ve just lost your credibility. You may wish to get more well-read, you’ve obviously only read the hysterics from Paul’s cronies and nothing else. There is a lot more out there, including facts.
I do not believe that. I see Wolf as making a mess, with his longtime obsession with Iraq, selling the idea to america by telling us it would be cheap and easy to throw out saddam and oh there were wmd too (which there weren’t), and the oil revenues would take care of the tab. When the place turned out to be a mess instead, he turned tail and then headed to the fancy cocktail party circuit of the world bank where he lives like a Roman god, leaving American troops to fight and die in the hellhole he created based on his own ambition and ignorant strategic choices. I guess if there were some leadership in this war and we were winning i would think differently about his fancy sinecure. Instead, we are losing because the war is so badly run. But he got away with it, paying no price for his failure as any normal CEO would. Instead, he failed upward, and a lucrative failing upward it was indeed.
Well,....I don’t know a thing about that. But the dumb ass needs to learn a thing or two about conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof, regarding his girlfriend. He just rubs me the wrong way. But of course, and organization with “World” in their title, I am suspicous of. I’d like to see the list of nations that contribute to it and how its divided up.
What is really want to know is, when are these crazy kids Wolfie and Shaha going to tie the knot?
Seriously, why haven’t they married after all this time? Are they both divorced?
I’ve heard mixed reports but I believe he is separated from his wife, Clare, whom he’d been married to for 30 years and the divorce has not gone through. The Ruth Wedgwood creature who defended Wolf yesterday in the LA Times asserted that Wolf and his girl have been a longtime item together, so I would not discount that an illicit affair had been going on. Now the World Bank identifies them as shackups - errr, domestic partners - so I think they are living together. But I have read reports that they have since broken up, so I am not sure. Clare reportedly wrote a letter to Bush before his appointment as Deputy Defense Secretary, saying that his tomcatting around was something that could leave him vulnerable to blackmail and for that reason he was a security risk. If that’s true, Wolf’s quite a guy.
Shaga is divorced, she was married for a long time to a Turk whose occupation I recall, was interesting, but I can’t remember what it was.
More spewing lies .Wolfowitz and his wife separated in 2001 and divorced in 2002. You are behaving like a cheap propagandist.
(1) Under WB rules she could not be removed from her position because of conflict of interest without a substantial settlement.
(2) Wolfowitz asked to be recused from the entire process
(3) The Bank determined she had to go under a very dubious determination of a conflct. And that she was entitled to a bump in salary to compensate for the loss of position and benefits the seconding would create.
(4) THEN, the Bank’s ethics committee inexplicably demanded he get involved in the process and dictate the terms of her settlement which he did.
(5) The Ethics committee which was intimately involved in the process reviewed the deal and found it accorded with their procedures and policies.
(6) Anti-Wolfowitz thugs got unauthorized copy of his memeo , peddled it to friendly media types and ginned up this cockamamie story before the docs could be released.
(7) When they were released the set up became apparent.
The WSJ, Chris Hitchens and Prof Wedgwood (LA Times) have all detailed this fraud. Only Kitten keeps searching for folks who are peddling it and continuing to post this crap for the uninformed to poison the well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.