Thursday, May 17, 2007

Happy Wolfowitz Day, Everyone!

Grace Under Fire!

Two years ago, in happier times at the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz reflected on leadership (March 17, 2005) :
....the importance of leadership and what it consists of: not lecturing and posturing and demanding, but demonstrating that your friends will be protected and taken care of, that your enemies will be punished, and that those who refuse to support you will regret having done so.
Xavier Coll, head of human resources at the World Bank, provided investigators with his notes of a meeting with Mr Wolfowitz last year.

In March last year, when a mention of Ms Riza's secondment outside the bank to avoid rules about partners was first published in the magazine US News & World Report, an angry Mr Wolfowitz accused Mr Coll of leaking the information. According to Coll's notes:
'At the end of the conversation Mr Wolfowitz became increasingly agitated and said that he was 'tired of people ... attacking him' and 'you should get your friends to stop it'. Mr Wolfowitz said, 'If they fuck me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too'," naming several senior bank staff he felt were vulnerable."
Now where do you think this unindicted war criminal will alight next?

12 comments:

  1. Wow, Wolfowitz is an ugly character. How is it that Bush and other Politicos on both side nuzzle up to these types ?
    Money-centric society.

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  2. Where? Having hot lunch with Dubya and Jerry Falwell, I hope. ;-)

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  3. Tom C., I think Paulie ought to apply to the Israeli Foreign Office with a hope to becoming its ambassador to the U.S.A. That position wouldn't require him to travel abroad and risk arrest.

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  4. You know what I'm so frickin' tired of?

    1. Bush talking about not caring about how others think of him.
    2. How he read three biographies of George Washington last summer.
    3. He will accept the verdict of historians who write about the 43rd president long after he dies.

    It's easy to understand that wish. Like other thugs who have committed CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, he doesn't want to have to answer for his CRIMES. Entirely understandable

    These warmongers, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Bush. All of them - if they cannot be arrested and indicted - should be haunted, stalked, pursued, condemned and SHAMED every remaining step of their miserable frickin' lives. Starting with Wolfowitz.

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  5. Too bad that Wolfowitz and his cronies will not be hanged for their
    war of aggression against Iraq.

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  6. Come to think of it, these chaps like Wolfie here, are some sort of masters in the game of poker and especially in the art of bluffing in it. They were winning in the beginning without even pairs to show in their hands and doing it with the confidence, swagger and, if needed, even by cheating.

    Just like is the case with other cheaters, they went to well too many times and their came is up and fooling nobody. Little by little, one by one, these empty, immoral, neocons are falling down like Minnesota maple leafs in the late Fall. All their games, what ever they were, were based on myths, make-beliefs, ideology, greed, feeling of superiority etc. which were never based on anything solid, true or real.

    Here's hoping, that the rejection of Wolfman is an indication that this sorry period and the man himself are about to be burried deep in the permafrost among many other fossils in there already and those to come for a long, long time! Adios Wolfie, and may that proverbial door slam on your bony ass on the way out!

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  7. Pekka et.al.:

    Too good to miss is Juan Cole's piece in Salon:

    Paul Wolfowitz's fatal weakness:
    The cronyism that may cost him his World Bank job is also what caused the Iraq debacle.

    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."

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  8. Mmmm, funny Pekka, good humor, I am afraid though that it probably will fall into the 'despairing good will' zone, of hoped for outcomes.
    Our system is corrupt from top to bottom. Wolfman is only an exemplar of that. Will it matter who runs that crooked setup called the World Bank?
    No, it will be run by an assortment of thieves and thugs.

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  9. Wolfie feathered nests in both DOD & WB bureaucracies to established highly-paid & tax-free sheltered workshops for his pliant ideological cronies. Cole's bottom lines:

    Wolfowitz's record of favoritism, ideological blinders, massive blunders and petty vindictiveness has inflicted profound harm on two of the world's great bureaucracies, the U.S. Department of Defense and now the World Bank. He has left both with thousands of demoralized employees and imposed on both irrational policies that pandered to the far right of the Republican Party. He has, in addition, played a central role in destabilizing the Middle East and in leaving one of its major countries in ruins.

    Many of his Himalayan-size errors were enabled by his careful placing of close friends and allies in key and lucrative positions. In the end, his career suffered remarkably little from his substantive policy mistakes. But once he moved beyond the forgiving world of high Republican Party politics, his dependence on cronyism finally caught up with him. That he ran into such trouble at the World Bank for behaving in ways that apparently were business as usual for him at the Department of Defense only underlines how corrupt the Bush administration really is.


    Please, everyone, read the whole damn article!

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  10. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!!! Awesome!! Thanks for celebrating the good news, Vigilante!

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  11. Very satisfying! What next for the Mr. Disaster Waiting to Happen?

    I shudder to think.

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