The Wolf in the Bank

Crooks and Liars has a concise look at Paul Wolfowitz, once proud neocon ally and servant of the current president, now head of the critical World Bank.

He's gotten caught, not with his hand in the till, but spreading the wealth.

The saga of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank really is indicative of the US under neo-con control: A crony with fairly insubstantial bona fides within the arena is appointed to a position of critical importance on the world stage solely on the basis of his connections to ideological brothers. He then bullies and pushes his own arrogant notions, alienating his colleagues and promotes more cronies (and love interests) without regard to appearances. Then when the house of cards inevitably comes tumbling down, he pleads ignorance or cries victim and must send out other cronies to argue for his job. How many times have we seen this pattern–with very little variation–play out again and again in the Bush White House?

There was one passage in the WaPo report that I think may be a much larger issue than his promoting of his girlfriend.

Both staff and management also have raised concerns over what several described as Wolfowitz's insistence that the bank accelerate its lending to Iraq and open an office there.

A principal architect of the Iraq war as deputy defense secretary during President Bush's first term, Wolfowitz has pressed the issue in the bank against strong concerns about security and poor governance in Iraq. "He was pretty aggressive about it, given that he's generally a mild-mannered person. He was really quite hard," said one source with first-hand knowledge of internal bank discussions on Iraq. "I don't know how much of it was flogging for the [Bush] administration rather than his own ghosts and convictions."