Wolfowitz Told: No Changes, Just Go
WASHINGTON - A senior aide has told Paul Wolfowitz to resign as president of the World Bank, unimpressed by the former White House official’s promise to change his management style.At a meeting with about 30 vice-presidents of the bank on Wednesday, Dr Wolfowitz had asked for suggestions on how to restore faith in his management.
He has been accused of poor consultation and favouritism toward his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, who received a promotion and large salary rises when Dr Wolfowitz joined the bank in 2005. 
Graeme Wheeler, one of Dr Wolfowitz’s two senior deputies, said the bank president needed to step down.
“The fact that Graeme would ask him to resign has been all over the bank today,” a bank official said. “He is an unassuming guy who is very well respected here.”
The session with Dr Wolfowitz and his vice-presidents was seen as reflecting his determination to remain in his job, as he vowed to do on Sunday, despite a rebuke from the bank’s most powerful oversight committee, which issued a statement of “great concern” over his leadership.
Dr Wolfowitz was not specific about what management changes he had in mind, but he said resigning would not be good for the bank, officials said. Instead, he solicited ideas on “the way forward”.
The vice-presidents left the meeting with a mandate to discuss Dr Wolfowitz’s appeal for suggestions - and Mr Wheeler’s call for his resignation - with their staff, the officials said.
The bank’s 24-member executive board had also scheduled a meeting for yesterday to discuss the situation. Officials said the board was still trying to decide whether to reprimand Dr Wolfowitz or to make some other assessment of his role in the transfer and promotion of Ms Riza.
Reports of Dr Wolfowitz’s plans to change his management style did not appear to placate the staff association, which has called on him to resign.
“The staff association has been raising these issues consistently since he came in,” said its chairwoman, Alison Cave. “He has never said how he’s going to work with us. He has never said anything to the staff.”
Dr Wolfowitz, the former No. 2 at the Pentagon, received a vote of confidence from the White House on Wednesday. A spokesman, Tony Fratto, said the bank’s reputation had not been hurt by the controversy. “We’d like to see him remain,” Mr Fratto said.
Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
We have now heard both Wolfie and Gonzo whining nasally “please tell me how I can restore your faith in me”. Having guts and respect for the position they currently hold would have them resign. In Wolfie’s case, ditching a $600K/yr career will be hard on his credit card, and for Gonzo, who else will keep Bush out of jail?
This shonky house of cards of the Bush Administration plus all the cronies, hangers-on, freeloaders and good for nothings seems like it’s about to implode….
But then again I never seem to be amazed at how resilient they are…..
A bit like psychiatric patients at an asylum….
They are resilient because tey have plenty stashed away, and each new caper is just another roll of the dice….
The longer Wolfowitz and Gonzalez drag their ordeals out, the more they and their appointers get soiled and discredited. They keep spinning the facts and the public increasingly learns to dismiss everything that “those guys” say. Their saga now is like the War in Iraq, almost every intelligent observer knows the cause is lost it’s just a question of when and how the protagonists admit to it.
moonraven April 20th, 2007 1:23 pm
Exactly right!!!
Cheney being a prime example of War Profiteering of truly extraordinary proportions….
If it wasn’t as absolutely staggering, patently obvious, as it was criminal….
I mean you’ve got it all ‘mens rea’, ‘actus reus’ and ‘flagrante delecto’….
Didja notice that without fail all the Bush people ‘take responsibility’ for their corrupt or stupid or incompetent or illegal acts, and then blame someone else or the system for the problem, and finish their whining with ‘Let’s put this behind us and find a way forward.’
Their actions never have consequences for themselves.
There is not one of these people who isn’t sociopathic to a high degree. Nor is there one who shouldn’t be locked away for a long time - preferably in an Abu Ghraib somewhere in the dark recesses of the planet.
Perpetrators always find excuses to shift the blame elsewhere….so the attention of bystanders gets focussed elsewhere…..
Or if that doesn’t work, just BLAME the VICTIM…….
Wolfie reflects a major flaw in US “diplomats”, they don’t do accountability. Ditto Rummy, who actually told an interviewer some time ago “we don’t work that way here”. Once in awhile I wish there could be some old fashioned honor, a la hara-kiri, with these despicable morons in positions of influence and power. Talking about operating in a vacuum…
The irony is delightful. The architect of the Iraq invasion doesn’t have an exit strategy for his latest debacle either.
Paul Wolfowitz should never have been appointed to the position of president of the World Bank. Instead he should have been tried for war crimes, along with some others, and be serving a life’s sentence, without benefit of parole, in a federal prison. This administration must surely be the most corrupt, inept and incompetent in the history of this country.
Who will deliver us from these madmen? If the Democrats are our only hope for deliverance then we best pray for deliverance from heaven.
I guess Wolfie ran up against a group of people who aren’t all his underlings, and aren’t all Americans. The World Bank is hardly a benign organization, so it follows that they can’t afford to give Wolfie a pass on his incompetence and arrogance. His demonstrably incorrect assessment of the progress and process of the Iraq war resulted in him being booted “up” to the World Bank, removing him from accountability. Well, looks like the buck caught up to him without his friends Bush, Cheney, etc. to cover his sorry arse.
Wolfie was under the delusion that he is McNamara who after screwing up Viet Nam than served at the World Bank for ten years. He still does not see that the difference is his boss’s did piss publically on the whole world.
Wolfie’s ideas and ethics are considered quainter that the Constitution he has repudiated.
Arrogant criminals think they can get away with the same thing over and over again forever.
Remember how Wolfie demonstrated his qualifications for World Bank president? He accurately predicted that Iraq oil revenues would pay for its reconstruction. I wonder how the rest of his portfolio is doing.
In 1887, Lord Acton said ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’
The present USA administration is a perfect example of the truth of that statement.
One can only hope that Wolfowitz lives up to his personal cowardice by telling all, about his accomplices in all the murders, as he is taken away to the Hangman’s gibbet.
Can I suggest people go to the World Bank website and send emails to their anti-corruption hotline? Their email address is investigations_hotline@worldbank.org
I noticed on their website this new story had been removed:
World Bank Continues Leadership In Fight Against Corruption, Report Shows
(http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21205078~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html) From february this year.
I emailed them to report the removal of this report as an act of corruption in itself, as they were trying to not embarrass and indeed cover up their reported stance on corruption while Wolfowitz ignores calls from his top aides to resign. If we all do it then maybe it will get noticed by someone close to the board.
ALOHA !!
GOVERNMENT IS ONLY AS HONEST AS ITS MONEY …
ALOHA !!
Reform the US Dollar by making it unprintable by the trillions and you will see all these wealthy criminals abandon ship! So long as “they” control the money printing(think Federal Reserve Bank)they will stay in power and as someone said many years ago … POWER CORRUPTS !!!
This is an old story that goes back further than the Roman Empire …
Let go of the “nanny state” nipple and vote both parties out. We are being ruled by a two party aristocracy whose only ambition is to return us, “We The People” to a pre-Consitutional serfdom …