Delicious. These neocons really don't know when to quit. Nothing is beneath them.
Personal responsibility? Feh. Who cares?
Screwing up THIS country is not enough. Now they're sending their Nomenklatura across the globe to blow up everything else they can find. The boys in the WH are not content with wrecking national institutions. They have to screw up INTERnational institutions too.
The World Bank was such an easy target for them. Wolfowitz, that kleptocrat, was groomed for that position. (Though, with Wolfie, grooming is a relative thing.) Unfortunately, they forgot that the Europeans have a big say.
The wolves are circling Wolfie. After claiming that his "arrangement" with his mistress was common knowledge around the World Bank, it turns out he fought hard to keep it a secret, and sounded positively Nixonian in a confrontation with the Bank's personnal director:
According to one document, Mr. Wolfowitz had a bitter showdown with the bank’s personnel director, Xavier Coll, in March 2006 over Mr. Wolfowitz’s concern that word of the salary was leaking out to the press.
Mr. Coll recounted that Mr. Wolfowitz became "increasingly agitated" and said he was "tired of people" who were "attacking him," and added, "You should tell your friends to stop it."
So not only did he engage in frank corruption, he tried to cover it up. Is this a surprise to anyone?
The Bush administration is starting to see the writing on the wall, in its habitually reluctant fashion.
The Bush administration, shifting strategy in the face of mounting opposition to Paul D. Wolfowitz, opened the door today to him resigning voluntarily as World Bank president if the bank board drops its drive to declare him unfit to remain in office.
But the administration’s new approach — outlined in a telephone conference call between the Treasury Department in Washington and economic ministries in Japan, Canada and Europe — appeared to gain few immediate supporters, various officials said.
Indeed, bank officials said the board seemed determined this evening to endorse the findings of a special committee that Mr. Wolfowitz broke bank rules and ethics and governance standards in arranging for, and concealing, a pay and promotion package for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, in 2005.
The link has more. Bush passed his "shift" through Henry Paulson, who is rapidly distinguishing himself as just another lickspittle.
I swear to God. Don't these people have the remotest semblance of a clue?