Wolfie and his girl Riza
The ties between Paul Wolfowitz and Shaha Ali Riza go back further than has been previously reported. The New York Times reports that back in 2003, the Pentagon directed one of its contractors - SAIC - to hire Riza for a short consulting gig in Iraq. Of course, SAIC was happy to do so - they had just been granted more than $100 million worth of no-bid contracts by the Pentagon. But that's another story...
The goal was to have Riza advise the Pentagon on setting up a new government in Iraq. According to Jean-Louis Sarbib, her former boss and a former VP at the Bank, she came back with a relatively upbeat report on the prospects for a "free" Iraq, particularly for women. And as with other Iraq predictions from the White House and its servants, this one turned out to be spot on, too. Things are just going splendidly in Iraq.
