[NYTr] Dowd on Wolfie: Resume of Doom
 
Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 21:49:47 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
The New York Times - May 20, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20dowd.html

RC)sumC) of Doom

By MAUREEN DOWD

Paul Wolfowitz may be out of a job soon, but think of what an amazing
rC)sumC) hebll be shopping around:

Work Experience

President of World Bank: 2005-2007

Responsibilities: Reining in European lefties, raining tax-free money
on Arab girlfriend, and giving anti-corruption efforts a bad name.

Achievements: Paralyzed the international lending apparatus to the
point where small countries had to max out their Visa cards to pay for
malaria medicine. Learned the traditions of many cultures, including
those of Turkey, where you apparently are not supposed to take off your
shoes at mosques to reveal socks so full of holes that both big toes
poke blasphemously through.

Deputy Secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush: 2001-2005

Responsibility: Starting a war.

Achievements: Mismanaged the worldbs most powerful army. Shattered the
system of international diplomacy that kept the peace for 50 years.
Undermined the credibility of American intelligence operations.
Needlessly brought humankind to the brink of nuclear war. Destroyed
Iraq.

Demented Visionary: 1993-2001

Responsibility: Concocting a delusional plan for regime change in Iraq
with pals like Shaha Riza, Ahmad Chalabi and his merry band of Iraqi
exiles who conjured up phony intelligence about Saddambs W.M.D.

Achievements: Imagining an Iraq that didnbt exist.

Having Wolfie back on the job market is a tremendous opportunity. What
do we want destroyed next? Could this walking curse on the world run
Halliburton into the ground?

At the Pentagon, Wolfie tried to help Vice get rid of anything multi b
multilateral treaties, multilateral institutions, multilateral
alliances, multiculturalism. Multi, to them, meant wobbly, caviling,
bureaucratic and obstructionist. Why be multi when you could be uni?

In the end, the forces of multilateralism took their revenge: Old
Europe got rid of Wolfie.

But not before his gal pal played the multicultural victim card. In her
statement to World Bank directors, Shaha complained that she had been
denied promotions even before Wolfie got there. bI can only attribute
this to discrimination b not because I am a woman, but because I am a
Muslim Arab woman who dares to question the status quo both in the work
of the institution and within the institution itself,b Shaha wrote.

She said that she had bmet a wonderful American woman who told me that
I should fight back for busb: WOMEN. It never occurred to me as an Arab
and Muslim woman that one day I would be asked by an American woman to
fight on her behalf.b

Already aggrieved, Shaha got really furious when Wolfie came in 2005
and she was told shebd have to work out of the State Department.

bI was ready to pursue legal remedies,b she wrote in her statement,
adding, bmy life and career were torn asunder.b

According to Xavier Coll, the bankbs human resources vice president,
Shaha outlined conditions for her departure that were bunprecedentedb
in terms of guarantees and rewards and way out of line with bank
policy. Mr. Coll deemed it binappropriate and imprudent for the
president to offer Ms. Riza these terms.b

Bob Bennett, Wolfiebs lawyer, told Michael Hirsh of Newsweek that it
was Shaha who bworked up the numbersb on a $60,000 raise to a $193,590
salary and cushy new deal. bShe was outraged that she had to leave,b
Mr. Bennett said.

The self-righteous Shaha played on Wolfiebs guilt, becoming bgreedy in
terms of power,b as a friend of the couple told Newsweek. Even though
she had been a mere flack a few years ago and then a gender coordinator
at the bank, Shaha mau-maued her man into giving her a salary that
topped the secretary of statebs.

Itbs like when Bill Clinton tells friends that he has to work hard to
get Hillary elected president because he feels he owes her for bringing
her to Arkansas in the 70s and interrupting her career. (But do we?)

Or when Tony Soprano gets Carmela some fancy piece of jewelry after he
strays. Indeed, Wolfie sounded Sopranoish when he agitatedly told Mr.
Coll to warn those at the bank he believed were attacking him: bIf they
$%#! with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to $%#! them, too.b

Wolfie used public compensation for private contrition. Gilt for guilt
b not a good deal.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
       
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