the Bush administration launched a last-ditch global campaign to save Paul D. Wolfowitz’s position.

[rodeodance]

Artile is in LBN or see nytimes:

Bank’s Report Says Wolfowitz Violated Ethics
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
In response to the report from a World Bank committee, the Bush administration launched a last-ditch global campaign to save Paul D. Wolfowitz’s position.

[Botany]

1. Not a last-ditch global campaign but a "surge" to save Wolfowitz?

:rofl:

Paul should be gone by the end of the week.

[Tesla]

2. Wonder who goes first, Wolfie or Ganzo!!!

[Lerkfish]

3. the real question we should be asking is WHY

what is wolfowitz's REAL mission at the world bank?

money laundering on an unprecedented global scale occurs to me.

[rodeodance]

4. Wolfowitz appointee Juan José Daboub quietly began changing World Bank policy on contraception,

Forum Name Editorials & Other Articles
Topic subject Juan Cole: Paul Wolfowitz's fatal weakness
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x281633#281633
281633, Juan Cole: Paul Wolfowitz's fatal weakness
Posted by babylonsister on Tue May-15-07 06:47 AM

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/14/wolfowitz /

Paul Wolfowitz's fatal weakness

The cronyism that may cost him his World Bank job is also what caused the Iraq debacle.

By Juan Cole
Pages 1 2

May 14, 2007 | The executive board of the World Bank mulled a possible vote of no confidence in the leadership of its president, Paul Wolfowitz, this weekend. How did the renowned neoconservative and former deputy secretary of defense, a primary architect of the Iraq war, come to these straits? Is he, as he claims, the victim of a smear campaign by those who dislike his politics? Or do the charges of favoritism and nepotism reflect genuine character flaws?

The small morality play unfolding at the World Bank tells us something significant about how the United States became bogged down in the Iraq quagmire when Wolfowitz was highly influential at the Department of Defense. The simple fact is that Wolfowitz has throughout his entire career demonstrated a penchant for cronyism and for smearing and marginalizing perceived rivals as tactics for getting his way. He has been arrogant and highhanded in dismissing the views of wiser and more informed experts, exhibiting a narcissism that is also apparent in his personal life. Indeed, these tactics are typical of what might be called the "neoconservative style."

Soon after becoming head of the World Bank, Wolfowitz lapsed into his typical favoritism, even while he was, ironically, decrying the technique as practiced by governments of the global South. Instead of having an open search for some key positions and allowing for promotions from within, Wolfowitz simply installed Republicans from the Bush administration in high positions with enormous salaries. He brought Kevin Kellems from Dick Cheney's office (where he had been communications director) and gave him a tax-free salary said to have been as high as $250,000 a year. As Wolfowitz's new senior advisor, Kellems was leap-frogged over hundreds of officials with serious credentials in development work, something about which he knew little. When representing Cheney, Kellems went to great lengths to defend the vice president's implausible conspiracy theory linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Another controversial Wolfowitz appointment was Robin Cleveland, whom he made his assistant. She had been an aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell and then associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. She had been implicated in a corruption and nepotism scandal at the Pentagon, but the Department of Defense had determined it did not have jurisdiction to investigate her. In 2003, while at the OMB, she had lobbied then Secretary of the Air Force James Roche to get her brother a job at defense contractor Northrop Grumman, where Roche had been an executive. Though, like Kellems, she lacked experience in international development, she also received a reported quarter of a million dollars a year in compensation at the World Bank. And also like Kellems, she is alleged to have been an abrasive and abusive boss.

Wolfowitz appointee Juan José Daboub quietly began changing World Bank policy on contraception, presumably as a favor to the Bush administration, which depends heavily on the Christian right for support. Daboub, who had been close to the right-wing government of El Salvador, ordered all references to family planning removed from a strategy document for Madagascar. Bank officials were said by the Financial Times to have been afraid that the World Bank's long-standing focus on contraception in forestalling disease was being changed by Daboub, and that poor women would suffer as a result. When the story surfaced, Wolfowitz told National Public Radio that the bank had made no changes in policy on contraceptives.

Experienced, high-level World Bank officials began resigning in droves as they saw Wolfowitz institute a reign of cronies with little development experience and massive salaries. The management style of the newcomers, cliquish among themselves and harsh toward outsiders, alienated those who remained.

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