The Wall Street Journal points out what has already been clear from a careful reading of the Paul Wolfowitz saga — that he has been scandalously set up and smeared by the World Bank, which has made use of the all-too willing offices of a malevolent media still obsessively seeking revenge upon Wolfowitz for his (absurdly) presumed role in single-handedly taking the west to war in Iraq. The story luridly painted over the past few days — with only one or two honourable exceptions — is that Wolfowitz, the President of the World Bank, covertly engineered a plum job at the State Department for his girlfriend Shaha Riza, until then a Bank employee, with a stonking pay increase. The truth of the matter, however, is that faced with an obvious conflict of interest he asked to be removed from Ms Riza’s case altogether — but his request was turned down by the bank’s ethics committee (sic), which itself advised him that she should leave the bank and be compensated for this blow to her career.

In other words, in this respect Wolfowitz behaved honourably; the Bank itself was responsible for Ms Riza’s promotion but chose to smear Wolfowitz — who has been campaigning against corruption at the Bank — by claiming falsely that this was the outcome of his secret machinations.

Scandalous.