Friday, April 13, 2007

Don't Let The "Little Philosopher" Do Your Thinking, If You Catch My Drift

"I made a mistake," World Bank's Wolfowitz says

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Thursday he made "a mistake for which I am sorry" over his handling of the promotion and pay increase of his girlfriend and staffer Shaha Riza.

"I proposed to the board that they establish some mechanism to judge whether the agreement reached was a reasonable outcome," Wolfowitz said in a statement he read at a news conference, ahead of the upcoming meetings of finance ministers in Washington this weekend.

"I will accept any remedies they propose," he added.

Wolfowitz defended his actions to send Riza on an external assignment to the U.S. State Department soon after he joined the bank in 2005, saying he was in "uncharted waters" in his new job.

"In hindsight, I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations. I made a mistake, for which I am sorry," he said.

But the World Bank's employee representative group called for Wolfowitz's to quit during a staff meeting at the bank.

Paul, you should have just asked yourself, "What would Leo Strauss do?"

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