President Bush will today name Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the war in Iraq, as president of the World Bank.
Wolfowitz is a “highly controversial” choice for the position, the Financial Times notes, in no small part due to his flagrant misjudgments and extreme positions over the last several years. Wolfowitz has been criticized for pressuring intelligence agencies to produce false links between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, attacking Gen. Shinseki’s troop estimates as “wildly off the mark,” holding up funds for Iraq reconstruction, and reportedly approving the harsh interrogation methods that led to abuse and torture in U.S. prisons.
Current bank President James Wolfensohn, appointed twice by President Clinton, was known for “bully[ing] the bank’s staff and board into changing the bank’s focus toward a greater emphasis on alleviating poverty”; last month, the Washington Post described Wolfensohn as “eager to stay on well past June, when his term expires, but increasingly resigned to the prospect that the Bush team would prefer to replace him with someone else.”