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, 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. 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 on the subject at our June 18-20 Take Back America conference.

UPDATE 2: He's not leaving 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.