April 15, 2007 by The Independent/UK
Out of America
Fall of Wolfowitz Marks Twilight of the Neo-Cons
In contemplating the near-certain downfall of Paul Wolfowitz, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Does one weep at the outrageous hypocrisy of it all: the president of the World Bank, self-appointed apostle of “good governance” and scourge of corruption, caught in a blatant act of nepotism and cronyism - exactly the vices he wants to stamp out in the Third World countries his organisation lends money to?
Or does one roar with laughter at the incongruity of it all: sex at the World Bank, as Wolfowitz the cerebral ideas man (even if his ideas about Iraq were as misbegotten as they get) is brought down by matters of the flesh, as he arranged promotions and lavish pay rises for his girlfriend Shaha Riza?
Or does one simply lie back and enjoy the spectacle of a president hissed at and heckled as he tried to explain himself to his staff at an impromptu meeting in the front atrium on Thursday? Is this how international development experts behave? Has there ever been such a lowering of the tone at the annual spring meetings of the bank and the IMF here, normally devoted to less emotional matters, such as debt reduction formulae, exchange rate aberrations and discreetly expensive lunches?
Not, of course, that one should feel too sorry for bank employees themselves, whose handsome tax-free salaries and generous allowances must soften the pain of working even for a boss like Mr Wolfowitz. As for Ms Riza, on the bank’s payroll but on secondment to the State Department, she received a rise last year from $132,000 (£66,500) to $193,000, a higher salary than even the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice (and Condi pays taxes).
SOME EXCELLENT THOUGHTS POSTED IN THE COMMENTS SECTION
(MG) hybridoma2001 offers a strident rebuke of the MSM, stating well some ideas that I've discussed in previous posts:
Same old same old. [Wolfowitz's] sins at the World Bank are dwarfed by his war crimes but the MSM gets all excited about the former, ignoring the elephant in the room. Like the MSM asking: “Is this Bush’s Watergate?” when referring to a subpoena controversy. The MSM is here to accentuate the trivial so that the important can be ignored. Let’s all ignore the MSM. The news they report is trivial and they most definitely are not reporting the biggest story of our day - the overthrow of America by a criminal administration. We are now a country that attacks other countries under false pretenses, tortures people, calls defenders of their homeland “insurgents,” and is otherwise unrecognizable from the America we used to know. The MSM and Nancy Pelosi are not even slightly upset about that. Our country has turned into crap and we are supposed to be concerned about this story?
Posting in the comments section for this article, kathyodat asks some excellent questions:
So why isn’t a serious inquiry on Iraq happening? Would that be related to “Impeachment off the table”? After all, bombing and invading Iran isn’t off the table for the Dems (except Dennis). So what’s going on? Covert collusion?
The Dems refuse to interfere with Bush’s Iraq oil grab, which means they condone it. Ralph Nader had it right when he said the Democratic party is corrupted beyond redemption. I don’t understand why Dennis is still a Democrat, living in a party that reeks of rot.
Things have gone so awry it’s like living in a swamp that’s become a sewer. The good news is that is what it appears to take to get the American people sufficiently involved to start demanding a change. It’s too bad we have to be hanging off the edge of a cliff to get their attention. It looks like an uphlll fight that won’t be won in one or two election cycles.