Smell The Accountability

Looks like Wolfowitz is a goner.

World Bank officials say the bank's board is completing an "exit strategy" that will allow World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to resign this afternoon and "still save some face" over the issue of his efforts to seek a promotion and pay raise for his girlfriend at the bank.

The officials say the bank's board will accept Wolfowitz's resignation but will also acknowledge that the World Bank's Ethics Committee bears "some responsibility" for giving him bad advice on the issue of his girlfriend.

The decision is likely today, officials say, because Wolfowitz had been scheduled to leave tonight for a European trip.

Only took a few months and the full weight of the international community (and most important, the threat that the US wouldn't be allowed to accuse Wolfowitz' successor) to get the Bush Administration to accept defeat. See, we have checks and balances!

Again, there's a "getting Al Capone for tax evasion" angle to this, but you cannot go out into the world and rail against corruption in the developing world when you commit an obviously corrupt and nepotisitc act yourself, one that wouldn't be out of place in an African dictatorship. There are other things to concern one about Wolfowitz' stay at the World Bank, including his selective enforcement of those corruption standards based on who is in line with American military goals. But clearly, Wolfowitz needed to go.