Saving face

When the hell is the Bush Administration going to stop embarrassing America before the world and fire Paul Wolfowitz?

Oh, wait: never. According to ABC News, [1] the World Bank is instead finalizing an "exit strategy" to allow him to resign and "still save some face."

Let's review the nut of the charge against him: he ordered the World Bank's head of human resources to give his girlfriend a promotion and raise worth $193,000.

Let's review what Wolfowitz made his central crusade at the Bank: refusing debt relief to countries he says are corrupt.

One of those countries is the Republic of Congo. [2] That $193,000 is about a thousand times what the typical citizen of the Republic of Congo makes in a year. Save face? Anything short of seppuku, and the guy deserves more shame than Bill Buckner.

UPDATE: My colleague Bill Scher blogs about an excellent panel [3] on the subject at our June 18-20 Take Back America conference.

UPDATE 2: He's not leaving [4] without a fight, the bastard. And even when he does leave, he gets a $375,000 payout - or two thousand times the average daily wage of the Republic of Congo citizens he made it his policy to refuse World Bank aid.