I thought of Agatha Christie’s story today when I read the NYT’s coverage of the Paul Wolfowitz controversy, which is beginning to look much more like a political hit job than the simple case of corruption I originally thought it was [e.a.]:

Mr. Wolfowitz’s defenders say that he was right to come in with a mission of shaking up the ingrown bureaucracy at the bank, and that the place desperately needed shaking up. But even they acknowledge that management has never been his strong suit, and that his judgment in dealing with the transfer of his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, was questionable.

In the backlash against Mr. Wolfowitz, though, there is also an undercurrent of settling scores — including those that go beyond the World Bank. Europeans still fume over Mr. Bush’s decision to send John R. Bolton, one of the biggest critics of the United Nations, to New York to serve as ambassador there — an experiment that ended when it became clear that the newly Democratic Senate would not confirm him to finish Mr. Bush’s term.

Stitching together the details from another piece in the Times, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that Wolfowitz and his companion were set up—by circumstances, if not deliberately.

On one hand, the documents made it clear that Mr. Wolfowitz was very much involved in the decision to give Ms. Riza a raise to more than $190,000 a year, with the aim of compensating her for the disruption of the transfer, but critics said he violated his own preaching to the bank about the need for transparency and integrity.

On the other hand, Mr. Wolfowitz’s defenders noted that the documents showed he had tried to recuse himself from involvement in personnel decisions affecting Ms. Riza when he arrived at the bank, and reluctantly became involved in her transfer only after the head of ethics for the board directed him to do so.

Surely a longtime insider like Paul Wolfowitz knew this would not be an easy situation. Nevertheless, I’m glad to see him and his companion mounting a vigorous self-defense.

She had already worked at the World Bank for seven years by 2005, when Mr. Wolfowitz, whom she had been seeing for several years, arrived as president.

At the bank, Ms. Riza worked with the Middle East and North Africa Social and Economic Development Group, as the senior gender and civil society coordinator in the office of the group’s chief economist. She was later appointed the group’s senior communications officer. …

Her friends say that she has complained in recent days that she is being portrayed in the news media in a one-dimensional way, as Mr. Wolfowitz’s partner or close friend, not for her accomplishments. They say she believes that she is a vehicle for employees of the bank to get rid of Mr. Wolfowitz, with whom they have clashed on policy and style.

I like to see people stand up for themselves, even against huge odds and even if they lose the battle. I tip my hat to Ms. Riza.

Here’s Gerard Baker saying everything that needs to be said:

Some neocons continue to defend the Iraq war on the ground that the idea was right but the execution was disastrous. This blames everything on Donald Rumsfeld, and, increasingly, on George Bush, for not providing resources for the struggle commensurate with the challenge.

This is not really honest. … A more honest judgment would have to be that neoconservatives and their sympathisers — yes, me — badly underestimated the scale of difficulty of effecting radical change in a country such as Iraq. It’s no good blaming either Bush-Rumsfeld or Iraqis themselves. The fact is, the war’s opponents had it right when they said the US would not be able to pull that brutalised, fractious country into the community of civilised states.

It was an error of judgment and not to acknowledge that is to dodge responsibility for the massive daily suffering of the Iraqi people. I still do not think, however, that the basic neoconservative diagnosis was wrong: that the course of history in the Middle East needed a radical change if the world were not to suffer an even greater misery.

Moreover:

Monetarism was discredited as policy because, while it offered the correct analysis, it failed as policy. I suspect the same will be said for the much derided, little-lamented neoconservatism. It would be foolish if the US tried to do again what it tried in Iraq. But it would be even more foolish to believe that ridding the world of tyranny is itself a mistake. The essence of good policy is fixing the right means in the right circumstances to that end.

If you want even more, you can watch this half-hour with Charlie Rose, who recently gave a platform to Marty Peretz, Franklin Foer, and Leon Wieseltier to explain themselves and TNR’s support for the war and why they should still be allowed to be called liberals. Rather big of him, I thought, ’cause TNR is on a lot of people’s shit list. (See just about every episode of bloggingheads.tv, about which more another time: I’ve become an addict.)

For all of you who are not obsessed with neocondom, Weiseltier has some typically thoughtful things to say about the value of scarcity and long-form journalism.

Through gritted teeth I offer the following offensive defense of free speech:

Naturally, there are a lot more where that came from.

You didn’t really think this was the end of offensive speech, did you? Good. Because we First Amendment absolutists haven’t yet begun to fight.

It’s coming up on five weeks since the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza and there is still no movement on his release. His parents made a heart-wrenching plea the other day, and the director general of the BBC went to meet personally with Abbas, who claimed that Johnston is “safe and well” but had nothing else to say.

Simon McGregor-Wood, the Jerusalem bureau chief for ABC News, writing in the Independent, has plenty to say about the situation:

The kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza reporter, has shocked the community of foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also having a devastating impact on the coverage of the story. … But ever since Alan’s disappearance, fewer and fewer of us have dared to go.

There have been reports of armed gangs turning up at the local TV production offices in Gaza looking for more foreign journalists to kidnap. That has scared many of us. The Western consulates, including the British one, continue to issue dire warnings and discourage us from going. The danger of further abductions seems real enough.

As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s this:

Until recently, Alan’s BBC colleagues were staying in Gaza working for his release. Now they have pulled out, fearing for their own safety. In the five years I have been here, working for ABC News, the situation has never been this bad, the threat against foreign journalists so real.

And then he gets into the gruesome details—Gaza, which a few weeks ago looked like a great story for journalists because of the very dramatic conflict between the various Palestinian factions, has turned frightful:

Ever since the Israelis pulled out their settlers and soldiers in the summer of 2005, Gaza has provided the battleground for competing Palestinian factions and ideologies. It is the home of Hamas and the place in which the very character of the Palestinian national movement is being fought over. Far from becoming the model of a future Palestinian state that some optimists hoped for, it has become a lawless and chaotic place and, by definition, a compelling story.  …

The environment was certainly hazardous and several reporters were caught in crossfire, and there were some isolated cases of intimidation. But this was all in the realm of manageable risk. The kidnappings are different - Alan’s in particular.

It is thought that the group responsible for the Fox abduction may also be behind Alan’s disappearance, and may be of a different calibre. But there has been no claim of responsibility and, as far as we know, no demands made and no negotiations started to secure his release. Talk to different Palestinians and you get different theories as to why Alan is still being held. But most think his fate has become entangled in wider internal political struggles, and is no longer simply about cash, jobs for the boys or some new guns.

When seasoned war correspondents in the Middle East get scared, it’s time to stand up and listen. Gaza is completely out of control, there is no Western press there to report on it, and all the while Abbas and Olmert are encouraged to make nice.

And Frank Rich thinks he wrote about the Greatest Story Ever Sold. Yeah, right. That’s because he only focuses on homefront political theater.