That would be Shaha Ali Riza, Paul Wolfowitz‘s main squeeze.

Maybe we are now starting to see what Wolfie finds so attractive about her?

She does a pretty impressive job of misrepresenting, and aggressively brazening it out, with a cheerful disregard for the facts. She would have fit right in with the gang that couldn’t shoot straight that took us to war. I’m probably not the only one thinking that she may well have done some well-concealed back seat driving as we drove straight over the war-cliff.

The woman at the heart of the controversy that has embroiled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz says she is a victim and was forced into a job transfer because of their relationship.
[...]
Riza said that at no time did she report directly to Wolfowitz and that he had proposed to recuse himself from any decisions involving her to avoid a potential conflict of interest.

She said the ethics committee of the World Bank’s board had required her “to go on external assignment contrary to my wishes.”

Riza was moved to a high-paying job at the State Department in September 2005. “I have now been victimized for agreeing to an arrangement that I have objected to and that I did not believe from the outset was in my best interest,” she said.

I’m probably not the only woman thinking: where do I apply to be victimized like this? Not only does she get to take home $193,590 free of taxes, but it looks like she no longer has to do anything by way of actually earning the money:

Riza remains on the World Bank’s payroll though she left the State Department job in 2006 and now works for Foundation for the Future, an international organization that gets some money from the department.

When asked what Riza does at the foundation, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey on Friday said his “best understanding” was that she is an adviser to the foundation’s board. “I do not have a job description for her, no,” he said.

The best part, though, has to be “he had proposed to recuse himself from any decisions involving her”.

It’s bothering you, right, where you have recently read something very similar? It’s wiggling around somewhere at the back of your mind, but you just can’t quite put your finger on it? You think it may even have been right here at 1115, but it just won’t come to you?

Does “taking the 51″ ring a bell? That’s taking the fifth at one remove, the revolutionary doctrine propounded by Monica Goodling’s lawyers that no one should have to actually take the fifth. It should be enough to formally declare your intention to take the fifth.

Goodling worked like a girly-girl, from behind a screen of lawyers. Riza is a proud girly-man, she does her own heavy lifting. Like I said, the lady has balls. (You alone are responsible for any images that flash into your mind of world-class weightlifters of questionable gender from ex-Communist countries.)

It doesn’t matter that Wolfie didn’t actually recuse himself “from any decisions involving her”. Doesn’t matter that he “personally directed the World Bank’s head of human resources to offer his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a huge pay increase and promotion” that totally violated World Bank staff rules. He did nothing wrong, and she’s just an effing victim. Because he proposed to recuse himself. A man of principle. A man of great moral strength.