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03/04/2006:

"Cronyism and Corruption: Wolfowitz at the World Bank"

In an article on the eclipsing fortunes of the neocons vis-à-vis Bush foreign policy, the Wall Street Journal said: "In the past year, the ranks of the neoconservatives within the administration, who moulded the American response to 9/11, have grown thin and their influence has ebbed." It mentioned the departure from key policy-making positions of some of the administration's most prominent neoconservatives. Some of them left in disgrace, others left their jobs for other Bush appointments. Perhaps the most interesting of these career changes involves that of former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was promoted for his role in the Iraq war to president of the World Bank.

From day one, all vice-presidents, directors and staff members of the World Bank were apprehensive in view of his reputation as the "high priest of the hawks" or "The Vulcans"; nicknames for Mr Bush's tight-knit group of security advisors, the architect of the Iraq war, and the driving ideological force behind the decision to invade Iraq. They also wondered about his arrogant dismissal of all misgivings about the war. They remembered his rosy forecasts, his predictions that the Iraqis would greet US soldiers as liberators, with open arms, and his casual dismissal of warnings by Eric Shimseki, former US army chief of staff, that the US would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq (and who was fired for daring to give his expert opinion). They remembered well his assertion that the "oil revenues of Iraq over the course of the next two to three years would bring in 50 to 100 billion US dollars which could more than finance its own reconstruction." But, to be fair, they were all willing to give him the benefit of the doubt despite the deep moral struggle they are each grappling with; working for a man who is morally and politically responsible for a horrendous war that has shed the blood of thousands of innocent victims in Iraq.

Now, it seems that the honeymoon is over. On the cost of the Iraqi war, it is becoming more and more obvious that Wolfowitz's predictions are, at best, a joke approaching the fanciful, and, at worse, outright intentionally misleading. When White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsay forwarded an estimate (September 2002) of the Iraq war at a higher level of $100-$200 billion, the administration dismissed his analysis as "likely very, very high" and promptly fired him (another person who lost his job because he did it conscientiously and professionally). Now it turns out that even his figures were wildly low. According to Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner in economics, and Linda Blimes, a Harvard budget expert, the war in Iraq is likely to cost up to $2 trillion. The American Conservative magazine says: "What is certain is that before hiring him to run the World Bank, someone should have recalled Paul Wolfowitz's prediction that Iraq would fund the operation itself." Normal people under normal circumstances would have been fired, but not "Wolfie!"

However, even with this grim history in mind which they fear will impact on their ability to address their global clients' needs and fulfil their mission of addressing world poverty, World Bank staff have even more immediate worries to contend with. What everybody in the Bank perceives most evidently is the increasing rift between Wolfowitz and his inner cabal of advisors and the staff at large. The problem is manifesting itself on several levels.
counterpunch.org