what incompetent will they bring back next, rummy, tenant or bremer?
they rehired that screw up wolfowitz ... you remember him, the one who sweet talked dubya into believing that the iraqis could not wait for an invasion. the fellow who disgraced himself at the world bank by promoting and giving perks to his significant other. they brought the crook back for another go. incredible, even for this regime
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Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues.
Wolfowitz, now a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, will head Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's International Security Advisory Board, the State Department said yesterday in a statement.
"The ISAB provides the Department of State with a source of independent insight, advice, and innovation on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, political-military issues, and international security and related aspects of public diplomacy," the State Department said.
Wolfowitz was among the senior US officials who warned of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction capabilities, a key justification for invading Iraq and toppling the late dictator Saddam Hussein.
"Disarming Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons and dismantling its nuclear weapons program is a crucial part of winning the war on terror," Wolfowitz told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in January 2003, two months before the US-led invasion of Iraq.
A United Nations report in September 2004 found that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion.
A US-appointed fact-finding commission reached the same conclusion in March 2005.
Joseph Cirincione, a senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based policy research group, criticized Wolfowitz's appointment.
"The advice given by Paul Wolfowitz over the past six years ranks among the worst provided by any defense official in history," Cirincione said. "I have no idea why anyone would want more."
Veronique Rodman, a spokeswoman for the American Enterprise Institute, said she had no comment on Wolfowitz's appointment.
Wolfowitz, 64, resigned from the World Bank presidency in May, less than halfway through his five-year term, amid criticism over his securing a pay raise for his companion.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...dvisory_panel/
from may 16, 2007:
Quote:
The Bush administration circled its wagons around Paul Wolfowitz yesterday, saying the World Bank president did not deserve to be sacked for the improper pay rise to his partner, though officials did raise the possibility of a compromise.
"All options are on the table," the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, told reporters. "Members of the board, Mr Wolfowitz, need to sit down and figure out what is in fact going to be best for this bank."
There was no sign of a compromise from Mr Wolfowitz who appeared before the bank board last night, a day after an official investigation found that he broke bank ethics rules by engineering a $60,000 (£30,000) pay rise and a promotion for his partner, Shaha Riza.
"I acted in what I believed were the best interests of the institution," Mr Wolfowitz told the bank board, according to a copy of his remarks obtained by the Washington Post. "I implore each of you to be fair in making your decision, because your decision will not only affect my life, it will affect how this institution is viewed in the United States and the world."
For much of the day yesterday, administration officials insisted that, although Mr Wolfowitz had been wrong to secure the outsize pay rise for Ms Riza, he did not deserve to be sacked.
"What we've said is, yeah, he made mistakes," Mr Snow said. "That pretty much is obvious. On the other hand, it's not a firing offense."
The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, took a similar approach, admitting Mr Wolfowitz's error, but saying it was not serious enough to cost him his job.
"It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that you would want to see the dismissal of the World Bank president over," she said. "I hope it will be resolved in a way that is true to what really happened there but also strengthens the bank, which is a really important institution."
However, doubts about Mr Wolfowitz's ability to lead the bank solidified following a series of telephone calls between the treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, and finance ministers of industrial countries.
Mr Wolfowitz's tenure at the bank has exposed deep divisions between Washington and the Bank's European members, who remember him as the deputy defence secretary at the Pentagon and a prime architect of the war on Iraq.
Until yesterday's round of phone calls, the administration appeared prepared to accept those divisions.
President George Bush is well known for his personal loyalty to administration officials under fire. However, the administration's readiness to back Mr Wolfowitz against his critics goes further, said Sebastien Mallaby, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an author of a book about the World Bank.
The administration is acutely conscious that resentment towards Mr Wolfowitz within the bank is bound up in European opposition to the war on Iraq. It also wants to head off any move to change the system under which it remains a US perogative to choose the president of the bank.
"Wolfowitz is still the guy that the president appointed and he is not going to cave in especially if he believes that the anti-Wolfowitz side is motivated by opposition to the war on Iraq," Mr Mallaby said.
In its report to the bank board on Monday night, the committee investigating Mr Wolfowitz's handling of the conflict of interest between his post as World Bank president and his personal life was unsparing.
Not only did the panel find that Mr Wolfowitz broke bank rules in the compensation package for Ms Riza, but it said that he had put the institution in danger.
In his time at the bank, Mr Wolfowitz had exercised "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest over institutional best interest," said the lengthy report.
"Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply."
It called on the board in its meeting later yesterday to "consider whether Mr Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to ensure that the bank continues to operate to the fullest extent possible" in its mission to fight poverty.
However, Mr Wolfowitz has earned a reputation as a bureaucratic infighter during his more than 30 years in Washington, and has experience of operating amid a large field of enemies. In his rebuttal to the report, he appeared unchastened, continuing to lay the blame for the furore over Ms Riza's promotions on bad advice from the bank's ethics committee.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...16/imf.usnews1
isn't there enough incompetence in this administration without bringing back those who were sacked for another helping?
__________________
“Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth.”
[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97]
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Originally Posted by Anikdote
... Which is a notion I stupid. ...
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Originally Posted by Spare
Well, that settles it ... who cares about facts?
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01-25-2008, 02:01 AM
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