Wolfowitz Picked for Arms Control Panel

WASHINGTON — Former World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz will head a high-level advisory panel on arms control and disarmament, the State Department said Thursday.

The move by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice marks a return to government for Wolfowitz, a conservative with close ties to the White House. As deputy defense secretary under President Bush, he was a major architect of the Iraq war.

Wolfowitz was replaced as World Bank chief last June after a stormy two-year tenure. His leadership was undermined by a furor over a hefty compensation package he arranged in 2005 for a bank employee who was also his girlfriend.

Wolfowitz will become chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, which reports to the secretary of state. The panel is charged with supplying independent advice on arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation and related subjects.

The portfolio includes commentary on several high-profile issues, including pending nuclear deals with India and North Korea and an offer to negotiate with Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

Wolfowitz currently is a defense and foreign policy studies expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

Controversy over job arrangements for his companion, Shaha Riza, put the World Bank's staff of 10,000 worldwide in revolt, tarnished the bank's reputation and strained relations with other countries, especially Europeans, who led the charge for Wolfowitz's ouster.

Wolfowitz was essentially forced to step down after a special panel found that he broke bank rules. He was replaced by Robert Zoellick, who had been Rice's No. 2 at the State Department and the administration's top trade envoy.

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On the Net:

State Department's arms control panel: . http://www.state.gov/t/isn/isab/

Comments

[ibivi]

It's an exclusive club where they hand out cushy jobs to their friends. They have to do it before their tenure expires.
Doesn't surprise me in the least.

[ignorantwillyharper]

Has bush ever made the right judgement call in his life? Well, other than borrow six hundred thousand dollars from his poppie's friends and buy into the Texas Ranger's. This netted him a little over sixteen million a few years later, but he's never helped anyone but little George.
He'll get in bed with a Saudi, quicker than you, or I would get out of bed with a rattle snake...he­'s just a great all round son of bitch.

[LenP]

He's the Achmed Chalabi of the US.

The more he screws up, the higher up the ladder he goes.

All because Bush need to be the smartest man in the room.

[aznurse]

Now Im really sure that something will happen prior to the next election that will keep these vampires in power! They never go away they just transform.

[aznurse]

Its much more important to have an article on the homepage about Detroits Mayor getting some kind of text than to have this info concerning the Wolf.

[ljsfolly]

This is the fool who helped start the war in Iraq! How can he be unbiased about anything? He's a bush hawk and war loving idiot. So this is what Bush and Rice are doing to further more war and conflict? I had hoped with the economy tanking bush and rice had forgotten how much they want to start another war. I guess haliburtin and blackwater has not made enough money off us in Iraq. I want to have a count on how many blackwater sewage people have died in Iraq/middle east so we can compare numbers with our soldiers dead and maimed.

[SCLib]

GREAT....l­ets see what ELSE he can FUCK UP!

[Plowboy]

Wolfowitz, the Architect of the Iraq War, to "serve" on an arms control panel? Whom does he intend to serve? I suppose his selection makes sense to some; and back in the thirties we should have had conferences on tolerance, with perhaps such leading exemplars as Adolf Hitler serving.

[Malarcus]

Disgusting.

[leftLibertarian]

Wolfowitz should be in prison.

[LaurieLee]

Washington Post, December 8, 2005:

"Only when questioners pressed him about Iraq would Wolfowitz address the subject. "How do you account for the intelligence failures regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?" he was asked.

"Well," he said after a long pause, "I don't have to."

Being Wolfie means not having to say you're sorry. Nearly three years ago, he offered some of the most memorable forecasts about Iraq: that it was "wildly off the mark" to think hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to pacify a postwar Iraq; that the Iraqis "are going to welcome us as liberators"; and that "it is just wrong" to assume that the United States would have to fund the Iraq war."

Incompetence is highly rewarded by this administration.