http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason...ent/print.html

Head scratcher
Bush cites Wolfowitz's Pentagon experience in choosing him to head the
World Bank. Considering his atrocious track record at Defense, the Bank
should get ready for an epidemic of waste, fraud and corruption.

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By Joe Conason



March 18, 2005 | Taken at face value, the appointment of to run the
World Bank is mystifying. The sudden elevation of the controversial
deputy secretary of defense has elicited both cynical speculation and
naive rumination. Is President Bush using the world's most important
antipoverty position as a patronage plum, to reward a loyal servant in
the typical manner of the Bush dynasty? Is Bush emphasizing his contempt
for critics here and abroad, as the dismayed Europeans suspect? Or is he
seeking, as a New York Times analysis

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/po...ner&oref=login

suggested, to change the direction of global development financing with
"stern discipline"?

As a disciplinarian, Wolfowitz has certainly left a strong impression on
the Iraqis, whose lives and infrastructure have been sacrificed to his
determination to oust Saddam Hussein by military force. And the former
diplomat clearly knows how to enforce his will in bureaucratic disputes,
as he demonstrated during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq.

In announcing the appointment, Bush himself insisted that Wolfowitz is
the best choice to take over the World Bank because he's a "man of
compassion" who "believes deeply" in uplifting the world's poor. Yet
there is precious little evidence to support that assertion (and plenty
to contradict it).

As for Wolfowitz's actual qualifications, which many experts have
questioned, the president cited his appointee's recent experience at the
Department of Defense, "managing the largest U.S. government agency with
over 1.3 million uniformed personnel and nearly 700,000 civilian
employees around the world."

Evidently none of Bush's White House briefers has ever mentioned just
how badly Wolfowitz and his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, have managed that big
old agency. The president also seems to have forgotten how Rummy and
Wolfie decided to ignore the State Department's planning for
post-invasion Iraq; how they brushed aside the Army's warnings about the
need for many more troops to secure the country; how they permitted or
even encouraged the ongoing scandal of detainee torture; and how they
lost track of the most important weapons sites, which were the supposed
reason to go to war, and allowed them to be looted.

The indisputable fact is that the Pentagon's civilian leaders, an
arrogant clique of ideologues, provided no viable plan for securing and
rebuilding Iraq after the invasion. Against the advice of wiser and more
knowledgeable officials, Wolfowitz insisted that his own vision would be
realized. Surely our soldiers would be greeted as liberators, our
favorite exiles would assume power in Baghdad, and our expenses would be
paid by oil revenues. The deputy defense secretary couldn't imagine any
other scenario and dismissed anyone who did.

Since that inauspicious beginning, Wolfowitz's management capacity has
not improved much.

For a would-be banker, he has allowed rather huge sums of money to be
squandered both at home and in Iraq. During Wolfowitz's tenure, auditors
from the Government Accountability Office have repeatedly found the
Defense Department lagging behind other major agencies in management and
fiscal responsibility. Last year, the GAO complained of its inability to
issue a clean audit of the entire federal budget because of "serious
financial management problems" at the Department of Defense.

Two months ago the GAO again singled out the Pentagon for harsh
criticism, reporting
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Jan25.html
that it operates eight of the 25 worst-run government programs.
Comptroller General David Walker said that the cost is reckoned "in
billions of dollars in waste each year and inadequate accountability to
the Congress and the American taxpayer." The failures, which have
persisted for many years, relate to financial and contract management,
the operation of military infrastructure, and the modernization of
Pentagon information technology -- which, in short, are a total mess.

Pentagon traditions of boodling and bungling have been replicated in
Iraq, where they have intensified the misery of the country's
inhabitants and encouraged the murderous insurgency. According to an
audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction that was
released in late January, the Coalition Provisional Authority lost track
of nearly $9 billion in spending over the past two years. (Of course,
the official directly responsible for this fiasco, former CPA chief L.
Paul Bremer, is now wearing the Medal of Freedom that the president
pinned on him last fall.) And thanks to the incompetence and
carelessness of Iraq's U.S. overseers, far more is likely to be lost as
a result of waste, fraud and corruption.

A newly released report from Transparency International, the
Berlin-based organization that monitors corrupt practices around the
world, warns that Iraqi contracting may soon become "the biggest
corruption scandal in history." The group blames the United States for
providing "a poor role model" in contracting and auditing. (They've
likely heard about Halliburton.)

Waste, fraud and corruption, those perennial government buzzwords, are
indeed the most pressing problems for the World Bank as it seeks to
reform development aid. So it is difficult to understand why the
president -- or any truly compassionate conservative -- would entrust
those enormous concerns to someone with Wolfowitz's grim and blemished
record.

"Jim," wrote in message
...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason...ent/print.html

Head scratcher
Bush cites Wolfowitz's Pentagon experience in choosing him to head the
World Bank. Considering his atrocious track record at Defense, the Bank
should get ready for an epidemic of waste, fraud and corruption.

The last few years notwithstanding, Wolfowitz spent at least a little time
learning under some real diplomatcs, during Reagan's tenure, and performed
fairly well. Unfortunately, he forgot what he learned, especially during
sticky affairs like the removal of Ferdinand Marcos from power. And
unfortunately, the current president is too stupid to not see that the last
few years were NOT the high point of Wolfowitz's resumé. He should go back
further, but he is unable to.

I'm wondering if someone has suggested to Bush that Wolfowitz be buried at
the World Bank because it'll keep him bogged down in committee thinking, and
therefore, relatively quiet.