Another, "it isn't my fault"

[Wagner]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6697311.stm

Yeah, you didn't put your girlfriend in a post, which was illegal and resulted in your firing, it was the media

[Eric5273]

Sorry to say, but this bastard has done far worse things in his life than that. He's very very lucky if this is the worst thing that ever happens to him.

[rebound]

Wow. You guys really don't care about the facts, eh?

[Wagner]

The fact is, it isn't the medias fault he was fired.

[rebound]

Heh. Give me some time to find the facts for you...

Naturally, no one cared when they were published a few weeks back. He's a scapegoat, that's all.

[rebound]

Wagner (and Eric), here's some "facts" instead of anti-Bush media spin for you:

1st Link

When Paul Wolfowitz became President of the World Bank in 2005, our private prediction was that it would take about a year before the bureaucratic interests at the bank and in the global "development" industry made a play to oust him. We were off by a few months.

The forces of the World Bank status quo are now making their power play, demanding that the bank's board ask him to resign over an ethics flap involving his girlfriend. The dispute is so trivial that it betrays that this fracas has little to do with Mr. Wolfowitz's ethics. The real fight here is over his attempt to make the bank and its borrowers more accountable for results, especially by exposing and punishing corruption.
...
So now his enemies have turned to "ethics," specifically Mr. Wolfowitz's allegedly improper assistance to his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, who already worked at the bank when he became President. The notion of any "cover-up" here is preposterous since Mr. Wolfowitz disclosed his relationship with Ms. Riza while negotiating his employment contract.

2nd Link

The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a longtime World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:
"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)

That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board--composed of representatives from donor nations--decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.

Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005, ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "there would be two avenues here for promotion--an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."

3rd Link

Moreover, Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged the conflict promptly upon his nomination. I believe that he consistently acted in good faith attempting to carry out the board's wishes that the conflict be resolved without unduly penalizing her for making a career move she did not seek. He would have avoided much grief if he had simply presented the details of the arrangement to the ethics committee, if in fact he didn't, but it wasn't unreasonable to assume he was acting as directed, especially since the committee expressed satisfaction with the outcome. A clearer public explanation also would have helped, but no fair reader of the released documents would call his actions a "scandal."

Those interested in the success of the World Bank should be under no illusion as to what is really motivating the staff revolt now playing out and what the consequences are likely to be. Many are opposed to Mr. Wolfowitz's anti-corruption emphasis, some on the good faith basis that he is placing disproportionate emphasis on the issue at the expense of other development priorities. Others, however, are opposed on the selfish basis that elevating anticorruption and governance considerations will result in lower lending levels and more difficult negotiations with borrowing governments. Still others may fear exposure of corruption among staff itself and possible adverse donor reaction if widespread corruption appears to plague Bank operations.

4th Link

Imagine that a top civil servant at a major multinational institution arranges a job for a fortysomething female colleague that comes with a $45,000 raise and brings her yearly salary to about $190,000, tax free. Now imagine that the couple has been photographed at a nudist beach--him wearing nothing but a baseball cap.

The latest sordid twist in l'affaire Wolfowitz? Not at all. This is the story of Günter Verheugen, first vice president of the European Commission in Brussels.

...

But this isn't just a story of European hypocrisy (an old story).

...

Now consider the Wolfowitz saga. Superficially, the similarities with Mr. Verheugen rest with the details of their respective scandals: a close lady friend on staff, a suspiciously generous pay raise, allegations of nepotism and conflicts of interest. But aside from the facts that Mr. Wolfowitz is unmarried and prefers his clothes on, the substance of the cases could not be more different. Mr. Verheugen seems to have obscured the nature of his relationship with Ms. Erler; Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged his relationship with Shaha Riza before he took the job as Bank president. Mr. Verheugen sought to use the power of his office to bring Ms. Erler nearer to him; Mr. Wolfowitz sought to use the power of his to move Ms. Riza away. Ms. Erler moved into a better job; Ms. Riza was forced into a lesser one. Mr. Verheugen ignored his own code of conduct; Mr. Wolfowitz followed the instructions of his ethics committee, whose chairman later praised him for acting in a "constructive spirit."

There's tons more at the links, this is just the "highlights."

Wolfowitz is a scapegoat, nothing more. Let the media spin away...

[Wagner]

I'm not questioning that there was probably, and as you posted obviously, other reasons for his firing...but don't say "the media did it to me".

[rebound]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

They did. There was no reason to fire him other than the outcry (falsely) raised by the media.

[rebound]

Well, here's the new guy:

Link

Mr. Wolfowitz was removed from the bank in a bureaucrats' coup via a made-up scandal, the real purpose of which was to undermine an anti-corruption agenda that threatened the bank's zero-accountability, self-dealing culture. Mr. Zoellick seems to have been recommended by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in part because he has experience building international coalitions and is well known and liked by Europeans. But if he is to succeed as president, Mr. Zoellick will have to do more than become a mouthpiece for the bank's shove-money-out-the-door culture.

Mr. Zoellick's first test will come early. As we go to press, sources inside and outside the bank tell us that a follow-up to the putsch against Mr. Wolfowitz is being engineered by Managing Director Graeme Wheeler and Staff Association Chair Alison Cave against Suzanne Rich Folsom, who runs the bank's Department of Institutional Integrity, or INT. Ms. Folsom, an ethics lawyer brought in by former president Jim Wolfensohn and promoted to her current job by Mr. Wolfowitz, has been aggressively pursuing corruption investigations, much to the alarm of some at the bank.

Wonder how long it will be before he's falsely accused of something and kicked out?

[Wagner]

The only real question is, why is Bush still appointing people...just give up already