Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1116 Editor's Choice: 15
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Juliebird;
[Read the article: The end of empire: Wolfowitz on the ropes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are believing exactly what the anti-Bush forces at the UN, the NYT and the World Bank want you to believe.
Do yourself a favor. Get a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, where you would have learned, a couple of weeks ago, this about employment at the World Bank;
"Of its roughly 10,000 employees, no fewer than 1,396 have salaries higher than the U.S. Secretary of State; clearly "fighting poverty" does not mean taking a vow of poverty at "multilateral" institutions. At the time of Ms. Riza's departure from the bank, she was a Grade "G" (senior professional) employee; the typical salary in that grade hovers around the $124,000 mark. For the next level, Grade "H"--the level to which Ms. Riza was due to be promoted--salaries average in the $170,000 range, with an upper band of $232,360. No fewer than 17% of bank employees are in this happy bracket."
Remember in all of this -- Ms. Riza was a Grade G employee of the Bank before Wolfowitz got his job. And, Wolfowitz asked for the World Bank's ethics and human resources people to look at the situation. When Ms. Riza was out-located to the State Department, it was with the full, knowing approval of the World Bank, and they wrote to Wolfowitz, "we consider the matter closed." Then, we got this 'scandal.'
The laxness in reporting the truth about all of this absolutely amazing. Of course one problem is that virtually all of this story was deliberatley leaked by sources in the World Bank who hated Wolfowitz over policy disputes. (How often do you hear about personnel disputes unless one of the two sides involved is talking about it?) At the same time, Ms. Riza had been instructed by the Bank that she should not discuss the matter publicly.
So let's just take our money out of that bank...
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Good.
[Read the article: Wolfowitz's self-created "cloud"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So we agree on something -- that Wolfowitz's ouster is about something entirely apart from Shaha Riza's pay package.
What's odd to me in all of this is that we are facing the forced resignation of an American head of the World Bank (a redundancy, to be sure) and now perhaps also the prospect of the loss of the American hold on that position.
At Salon, that loss for America appears to be seen as a good thing. Anything that is bad for the Bush Administration is good for the Salonistas, American interests be damned.
As I said before, let them fire Wolfowitz. I hope there is no settlement. Because much as the Salonistas are loving the government-by-subpoena in Washington right now, I'd like to see a blizzard of subpoenas in Wolfowitz v. World Bank.
We wouldn't have to worry too much about the U.S. pulling out of the World Bank. Paul Wolfowitz might end up owning it. That payback might be a real bitch.
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No.
[Read the article: Wolfowitz's self-created "cloud"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, no, no, no, no.
Shaha Riza's raise was not "inexplicable." She got it in large part because, in order to AVOID the conflict that she and Wolfowitz disclosed from Day 1, she was forced out of the World Bank and into a position at the State Department. In that process she lost her promotion-track status at the Bank. Her new pay package, the one that no one at Salon seems able to understand, put her in the middle of the next promotion level she would have achieved at the Bank.
The deal was not unreasonable by World Bank standards. It was not a secret deal. It was not a deal that Shaha Riza wanted (she was put out by her assignment out to the State Department). Nor was it a deal that Wolfowitz wanted to engineer himself. He originally asked that someone else determine the deal.
If anybody really wanted to find some hot cronyism, the better places to look might be Cook County, Illinois, or the United Nations.
Have any of you taken the time to read Wolfowitz's statement to the Board? Of course not. I don't think any of you care about proving these charges against Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz is 'guilty' in your minds for the same reasons that the World Bank Board is now determined to make him 'guilty.'
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Does anyone else feel this way about Sidney Blumenthal?
[Read the article: All hail the king]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I read this stuff, and it makes me think that I am his shrink, listening to him free-associate his dreams.
Can anyone from the Clinton regime tell us whether they spent their days at Camp David sitting around campfires, singing kumabya and listening to Sid tell political tales?
If this is an example of Blumenthal's psychological work, I wish him well and I hope he stays with it. He needs the help, for sure.
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Surely this new FT reporting doesn't make the case for Wolfowitz's discharge from the World Bank, does it?
[Read the article: Shaha Riza's Iraq travel plans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, if tasking your companion to go on an ideological junket was illegal, Valerie Plame would be in jail.
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You are right, Lynx -- this article does not say that Wolfowitz's pre-World Bank affairs with Shaha Riza were a crime. They weren't. If they were, Salon would surely have headlined it.
[Read the article: Shaha Riza's Iraq travel plans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As for you, Weikuboy...
"Adolph & Eva"?
How about Valerie & Joe?
Bill & Hillary?
Bill & Monica?
Bill & Paula?
Bill & Kathleen Willey?
Bill & Eleanor Mondale?
Hillary & Markie Post?
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Thank you, Salon commenters.
[Read the article: Who's too posh to push?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, the real story is "defensive obstetrics" in response to "birth trauma" litigation. And, while the story by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker was quite good, even he did not give full credit to the malpractice crisis in obstertics.
And let us not forget the role of John Edwards in all of this. You remember Attorney Edwards. North Carolina's leading birth trauma lawyer in the late 1980's and early 1990's. John Edwards was to obstetrics what Jack Abramoff was to clean governmnent.