Funny how the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have lost their jobs through corporate cost-cutting haven't been able to "negotiate" their departures the way Wolfowitz is trying to do with the World Bank:
The negotiations over Mr. Wolfowitz’s possible exit unfolded quickly on Wednesday, officials said. As recently as late on Tuesday night, they said that a last-minute appeal by Mr. Wolfowitz to deny the charges against him and to demand a fair process in which he could stay on the job seemed to backfire. Especially galling to bank board members, officials said, was Mr. Wolfowitz’s request that the 24-member board reject the conclusions of its seven-member subcommittee charging him with violating several codes of conduct and trying to cover up his involvement in Ms. Riza’s salary and promotion.
By the next morning, a flurry of second thoughts and back-channel conversations spread through the bank, officials said, in large part because of the signal from the White House on Tuesday. Previously the administration had rebuffed suggestions that he could not lead the bank, as both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney declared their confidence in his abilities.
In the morning, some bank officials said they were worried that the White House signal was a feint aimed at getting Mr. Wolfowitz to stay. They said they wanted Mr. Wolfowitz to put in writing his promise to resign under the right circumstances.
The events of the day added up, in any case, to a hairpin turn in the fortunes of the beleaguered bank president, who over his two-year tenure has alienated virtually all segments of the bank, and a fair number of economic ministries around the world. In the last few weeks, he has reinforced their anger by dismissing the charges of misconduct against him as a “smear campaign.”
The saga seemed to be playing out according to a time-honored Washington formula: confrontation, impasse and crisis, followed by sudden negotiations to avert a possible breakdown of the institution.
What a disgusting display of Administration incompetence and cronyism this is, and what a dark stain on our relations with the rest of the world. It's one thing for me to let loose a stream of invective on my little bloggie here; it's quite another for a former Administration official and head of the World Bank to let loose with this:
"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."
I hate to tell Wolfowitz this, but this is the real world, not a gangster movie, and he is not James Cagney, he's a pompous blowhard who is largely responsible for the Iraq debacle and is now doing what he can to further shred whatever tatters are left of the United States' reputation in the world. Someone ought to tell him that "Come and get me, coppers!" is not how one behaves on the world stage.
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