One Conservative Slams Another in Column on Wolfowitz

By: E&P Staff Conservative Pat Buchanan used his latest Creators Syndicate column to blast conservative Paul Wolfowitz, who's fighting to save his job as World Bank president after raising girlfriend Shaha Riza's tax-free salary from $132,660 to $193,000.

"For a man once hailed as the brightest of the neocons, Wolfie has behaved with a stupidity born of the arrogance of power," wrote Buchanan. "Hailed in 2003 as architect of the Iraq victory, Wolfowitz, by late 2004, was being singled out as the bumbler of postwar planning and the man most responsible for what Gen. William Odom was already calling the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history.

"With the roster of U.S. dead and wounded rising, Wolfie was looking for a place to hide. George Bush, who had heeded his cawing for war on Iraq from the first hours after 9-11, took pity [and] made him president of the World Bank. ..."

Buchanan added that Wolfowitz's new position was "not your average sinecure. The job commands a munificent salary, tax free. Nor does it require Senate confirmation, where Wolfowitz might have had to explain his role in deceiving us into war.

"Nor is that all. The job consists of flying first-class around the world, dining in palaces ... and doling out billions to Third World dictators and despots. For Wolfowitz, it was a heaven-sent chance to rebuild his ravaged reputation. And he blew it."

Buchanan -- who noted wryly that Wolfowitz's self-proclaimed goal at the World Bank was "fighting corruption" -- said the raise for Riza and Wolfowitz's own World Bank pay of $400,000 illustrate "the systematic looting of our country by parasites who are paid the world's fattest public salaries ... supposedly to alleviate the suffering of the world's poorest people."