[OPE-L] Wolfowitz's world

[Jurriaan Bendien <adsl675281@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Patrick,

The story was detailed also in the Wall Street Journal, on Monday 16 April.
Wolfowitz had disclosed his relationship with Riza, and the Ethics Committee
suggested that she should get another job elsewhere, that her pay would
continue and that she would get a raise.

Specifically, Ad Melkert advised Wolfowitz in a memo on July 27, 2005 that
the possible disruption of the career prospects of the staff member could be
valued on the basis of an "in situ promotion" based on her performance.

In the same memo, Melkert advised Wolfowitz that he and the general
councillor should communicate this straightaway to the vice-president of the
personnel department, so that it could be implemented. Two weeks later
Melkert made the same point again.

But when he wrote Wolfowitz on 8 August, Melkert said that the Ethics
Committee could not itself intervene directly in questions affecting staff
members, and so he should get Xavier (the vice-president of personnel) to
act on his instructions to settle the matter.

On this basis, Melkert can claim that technically he had nothing to do with
the size of the paypacket that Riza eventually got. Likewise, Wolfowitz can
validly claim that he did exactly what the Ethics Committee told him to do.
But Riza was paid far more that WB staff rules allow, on Wolfowitz's
initiative, plus she failed to get WB approval for outside work as
consultant to the defense contractor SAIC.

The pro-Zionist Dutch writer Leon de Winter (adjunct fellow of the Hudson
Institute) claims that in reality the European donor countries and the top
of the international aid mafia want Wolfowitz to go, because Wolfowitz wants
to see results for WB activity, and carry through a restructuring which
hurts their interests.
www.elsevier.nl/opinie/weblog/asp/artnr/148157/weblogid/4/index.html

But this is most probably not true. Everybody wants to see results for
WB activity. Instead, it is Wolfowitz's complicity in the killing fields
of Iraq and Afghanistan and his lack of experience as a banker that
are the more likely objections. This was also the argument made by
the FT: to do its job, the WB needs a credible figurehead, and if
you have an apologist for mass murder and a liar as a leader then
you don't get much credibility.

Jurriaan