It's a slow news day in the U.K., so it's a good thing I'm not above reporting gossip:
Link: Daily Mail: Will a British divorcee cost 'Wolfie' his job?.
Influential members of staff at the international organisation have complained to its board that Paul Wolfowitz, a married father of three, is so besotted with Oxford-educated Shaha Riza he cannot be impartial.
Extraordinarily, they claim she played a key role in pushing the 61-year-old Pentagon official into the Iraq War. And the row comes amid claims that Wolfowitz's wife Clare once warned George Bush of the threat to national security any infidelity by her husband could cause.
A British citizen - at 51, eight years younger than Wolfowitz's wife - Ms Riza grew up in Saudi Arabia and was passionately committed to democratising the Middle East when she allegedly began to date Wolfowitz.
Could indiscriminate boinking bring down yet another powerful figure? No, I'm not talking about Bill Clinton; there's a more recent analogy. Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war, bears a passing resemblance to David Blunkett, the architect of homewrecking. (Whilst boinking Mrs. Quinn, Blunkett, the former Labour Home Secretary, not only fathered her child but fast tracked her nanny's visa. It was that visa thing that cost him his job, though, not the boinking. Anyone know if Wolfie's lady friend has a nanny?)
The rest of the British press is taking a more subdued tack, arguing that "Warmongering Wolfowitz isn't qualified to clean the dustbin, much less the World Bank:"
Link: Guardian Unlimited: The poodle and the Wolf.
Wolfowitz is hardly even a champion of the values on which the bank itself was founded. He is neither well placed to help it meet its early goal of helping countries rebuild, nor its later one of poverty alleviation. Wolfowitz recently told the US congress that war-ravaged Iraq should pay not only for its reconstruction but also for the war itself out of its oil revenues.
Someone made the suggestion we should appoint Bono to head the World Bank. I'd go with that (although, what's the world coming to when you have to look to the rock world to find a World Bank head who's boink-free?). A guy who sings "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is probably just the person to explain to Africa that we're calling in our loans.
And if the World Bank runs out of cash, why, Bono can just organize another U2 world tour, only instead of Ticketmaster charging the usual bazillion dollars a ticket, concert goers would agree to take on the debt of a third world country.
Even better than the real thing!
